They appear to have proven that by walking more and driving less, you have a lower chance of dying prematurely in an accident, but for some reason which they have yet to uncover, that effect is not due to the extra fitness you get from walking.
You also do have a higher chance when walking of getting fatally hit by a car (because right turn on red is legal in most of the US). So it probably isn’t quite that simple. I think that was one of the original Freakonomics book studies?
> Reason No. 3: We only want to hang out like old times
I see this happen with many of my friends who have kids. They “want to stay connected to who they were before”, as you put it, and treat it like purely a scheduling problem that they don’t have enough time to do that.
As the friend, it’s very uncomfortable be witness to this. When I get invited over, they’ll arrange to put on a movie so the kids are occupied for a couple of hours and they can be their old selves, and their new family life is hidden away as if it’s some secret that I’m not invited to participate in.
Hydrogen-ready power plants are already being built, so that’s actually the least difficult part of the problem. The current bottleneck is actually producing the hydrogen, and next will be building the transport infrastructure.
The great news is that battery storage installation plans have drastically accelerated within the last year, as gas demand increased and battery prices plummeted. Whenever you read an article protesting the energy investment plans of your local utilities, it’s worth checking to see if the plans have already been switched to batteries in the last few months.
> In 2019, New York […] codified some of the most aggressive energy and climate goals in the country, including 1,500 MW of energy storage by 2025 and 3,000 MW by 2030. In June 2024, New York’s Public Service Commission expanded the goal to 6,000 MW by 2030.
I downvoted because it’s just plain trolling, even if eloquently written. If someone doesn’t like Musk, they can spend their EV budget on something else, like upgrading their furnace, without being the humongous hypocrites the parent commenter is smugly suggesting they are.
There are billionaires all over the world who haven’t built successful space companies. The key ingredient is the government funding which has made the US space industry possible, such as building the launch pads, subsidizing hundreds of companies which build specialized parts, creating the GPS network required to track launches, etc.
I found a much better article (5 page PDF) from the fire prevention expert quoted in this article, which details his method of prioritizing building fire-safe homes and dispels misconceptions of how wildfire spreads to homes:
The 2020 Australia Royal Commission on bushfire prevention is a good resource, too.
There are tons of things that could be done. Virtually none are being done nowadays, much less retrofitted to existing structures.
Bushfire prevention via design is essentially in its infancy, much like earthquake safe designs took decades to become widespread in California after the 1933 quake. It wasn't like structures built in the 40s had "learned the lessons" and were earthquake proof. It has taken the better part of a century to get there.
Changing How the World Does Business: FedEx's Incredible Journey to Success - The Inside Story by Roger Frock is an excellent story of creating a completely new way of doing logistics, and what it takes to start a network-based business that can only work if it launches on a large scale from day one.
