Comment by bryanlarsen
6 hours ago
For comparison, the average car emits about 5 tons per year, and the average American household emits about 50.
6 hours ago
For comparison, the average car emits about 5 tons per year, and the average American household emits about 50.
Zoom in and enhance.
900,000 / 5 = 180,000
As of 2023, there are approximately 285 million registered motor vehicles in the United States, with around 96.9 million of those being cars.[1]
180,000 additional cars is something like less than one tenth of the decrease in registered cars between 2022 and 2023. There were five million fewer registered cars in 2023 than 2022.
900,000 / 50 = 18,000
Which is … random statistic comparison, about the same number of households in Bakersfield CA that are female householder with no husband present (2010 census) [2].
If there’s an argument to be made that AI is putting a significant amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, it certainly isn’t either of these.
1. https://www.consumershield.com/articles/how-many-cars-us
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakersfield,_California
This is a terribly misleading comparison. Your CO2 emissions are more than your house and your car. Do you consume food that was farmed and shipped? Buy things that were made in a factory that produces emissions? Fly on airplanes?
Your personal CO2 emissions are more like a proportional fraction of global CO2 emissions. All of those factories and cargo ships and airplanes aren’t emitting CO2 just because. They’re doing it for individuals who buy those products and services, and therefore your household’s CO2 footprint is primarily external to the house itself.
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COVID did far more than that. The upcoming healthcare cuts for the most vulnerable should take care of at least that many.
It is quite a fair and reasonable way of looking at it.
Or deport them.
> Unauthorized immigrants live in 6.3 million households
> Almost 70% of these households are considered “mixed status,” meaning that they also contain lawful immigrants or U.S.-born residents.
That works out to 1.9 million households with only illegal immigrants.
Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/what-we-k...
If those are below average in CO2 emissions you would make the numbers worse though, and that seems pretty likely to me. Need to deport only rich immigrants owning more than one car.
2 replies →
It might be a tiny bit more feasible to convince 200000 households that they don't need a second car (or switch to electric ones), but mass murder would have a comparable effect on CO2 emissions, yes.
Or we could have done something really wild like not insist on RTO just to appease the ego of middle managers across the US.
You’re totally right!
This solution is production ready!
well if we take the covid losses as a "close enough" timeline we've still got a lot of room to grow
I am sure there are more than 18.000 households the majority of US Americans would democratically decide on to cull.
Which makes the 900K tons annually even more implausible. Elon aside, which datacenter nowadays runs completely on gas?