So we’re just spreading trash in the environment and feeling good about it because it can be reused by other animals?

This just made me look up and learn about the environmental impact of tennis balls.

Every year, an estimated 300 million tennis balls are manufactured globally, and most of them end up in landfills. The rubber core is pressurized with air or nitrogen to give the ball its signature bounce. However, rubber itself is a challenging material to recycle, especially when combined with pressurization and other materials. The felt covering is partially synthetic (nylon), which contributes to the microplastic pollution problem. Synthetic fibers shed during play, adding to global plastic waste.

I’m going to add Sony to this list.

I’m just pointing out that cheaper energy means people tend to use more. I’m very much for renewable energy and against AI. Just that we also need to find ways to be much more efficient with it. I live in a place with “cheap” renewable energy and we use more per capita than most of the rest of the world. So it’s just something to keep in mind. I’m saying it’s excellent to have renewable energy, it’s excellent to have it as cheap as possible, but it can also lead to waste and pollution in other ways.

You don’t have to make a false dichotomy where it’s either one or the other.

EDIT: Just to give you an example. People know here that our energy is “renewable” and cheap. So when we’re asked to reduce usage during peaks, there’s a few people yelling at the top of their lungs that we just have to build more dams, flood more land, and that “water will always flow in the turbines anyway”.

It’s a natural phenomenon but AFAIK it can be accentuated or accelerated by the rise of the sea level, or the passage of boats and vessels. It can be entirely normal, but it can also be provoked or worsened by other factors. And that’s why we document and do some research about it?!

I’m not a climate scientist but luckily the Wikipedia’s article on the Streisand effect has a link to coastal erosion if you want to know more.

It’s Barbara Streisand’s.

The term was coined in 2005 by Mike Masnick of Techdirt after Barbra Streisand attempted to suppress the publication of a photograph by Kenneth Adelman showing her clifftop residence in Malibu, taken to document coastal erosion in California.

If the electricity bill would be lower people would use more energy and switch to electric cars real fast. I’m sure some people would not change their habits, but I’m inclined to think a lot of people would just use more and care a bit less about trying to use it as efficiently as possible.

Just take cars as an example. Everyone wants low gas prices, but when gas prices are low, people are buying bigger cars that consumes more gas/energy. Another example are places with renewable energy powering the grid, having cheaper electricity, but also ending up using more per person.

The province of Québec is one of the biggest consumer of electricity per inhabitant in the world, behind Iceland and Norway. Source in French.

Those places have super high percentages of cheap renewable energy being generated, but they also consume much more per inhabitant. Sure, if we cover the earth in solar panels, reservoirs, tap geothermal, and have enough energy to waste for everybody, and every manufacture. But this takes resources, space, batteries, and ends up polluting too. The less we need, the better it is for everyone.

I’m not saying we don’t need renewable nor deserve lower bills. Just that the actual system of consumption cannot only be reduced to “more cheap renewable energy”. I’m in Québec and energy is mostly renewable and relatively cheap here. But we also can’t just continue to build giant reservoirs visible from space to quench our insatiable appetite for electricity. We’ll have to learn to use less energy too; be more efficient with what we have. Not just convert everything to renewable and call it a day.

Sometimes people forget what’s possible by laying in their comforting bubble.

I am car free and was looking for a place in the Carribean to go cycling a bit during my vacation. I looked online for a place that had public transit and ended up with Guadeloupe and the island of Marie-Galante for cycling.

Just to be sure I double checked online and every forum and comment I found was saying that visiting Guadeloupe without a car was impossible; that a car was a necessity. Yet, I knew there was public transit, I had the map and schedules in front of me. So I mentally prepared to have to use a taxi to go everywhere (like in St-Martin, ugh).

But I arrived at the airport, went outside, saw the panels and arrows to public transit, waited for a bus, and got to the hotel. The next day I took another bus to the ferry terminal then went to Marie-Galante. I rented a bike, cycled around the island, spent a few days there, then came back in reverse using public transit too.

Apparently what was impossible to visit without a car, can be visited without a car, when we just try a bit.

I get the same thing when cycling or walking more than a few km. People are like “you walked here?” Why yes, you put one foot in front of another and next thing you know, you’re in a different place.