Speaking of my town just outside Boston ……

The food is just like the British: we have great Indian food

Plus methane is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2, even with the shorter lifetime. We seem entirely unable to reduce methane leaks or even measure them against natural gas usage.

But from a consumer perspective.

• where I live, electricity is much more expensive than natural gas, maybe double the cost per unit of energy
• and I pay even more for 75% renewables
• I just got a heat pump installed for my addition. So far temps have gotten just a bit under freezing and it has no problems keeping up

But that adds up to a reality where the cost threshold is mid-40°F’s. While it may be an argument in favor of solar, I don’t have enough unshaded roof to generate more than half my usage

Plastics

green alone isn’t going to support our society

Let’s find out. When I started advocating for increased renewables, the expected limit was the grid destabilizing at 30% renewables. Now many places are there. I recently read a piece expecting the limit to be about 95% renewables based on scalability of todays grid storage. Were a long way from that, so let’s work toward it and see what improvements we can make along the way

Note: one of the more difficult areas to greenify will be the military, but imagine instead shrinking that as we no longer have to defend petrostates or fossil fuel trade routes

Many states have very regulated utility prices: you may need just a half dozen buddies and get appointed to the oversight board that approves rates

Imagine the savings to society with the energy independence from green energy

• shut down most of the continent wide natural gas distribution infrastructure
• shut down most of the continent wide gasoline distribution infrastructure
• cut way back on the military when we no longer have to protect oil kingdoms

To be clear, I agree it’s important for mechanics to be able to read the codes, but disagree about consumers. I might do it since that’s gotten cheap and I like to see data but don’t expect it to be useful.

Basically if it’s easy enough to do myself, reading the code doesn’t usually help diagnose. If reading the code helps diagnose, the chances are tiny that it’s something I can work on. Obviously there are people who do a lot more of their own car repairs

Taking the analogy t to health…… a thermometer is an excellent diagnostic tool I can use to decide whether to take other actions like fever reducer, staying home, deciding whether so seek medical attention. It’s useful to me. An MRI machine may be very useful to a doctor but if I could have one in my home it would not be. It may be a great tool but I can’t use it to decide on my best course of action nor save money.

I suppose it depends on how much work you do yourself (and admittedly I do less than I used to), but I’ve never had such a readout change what I do. Even in the above example, addressing the error code was something I was going to have to have someone do and I have a shop trustworthy enough to point out when there is a potentially cheaper option for me

But does it actually help?

I just brought my car in for an airbag light and inspection. They read the codes and stopped without charging me anything. They handed me the manufacturer printout of possibilities and future steps, and recommended I goto the dealer for a related recall. Of course the recall wasn’t enough so now I’m out thousands.

I know this is just one example but reading the codes myself would have made no difference. As far as I can remember out of all the problems with all the cars over the years, reading the codes would never have made the difference. I’m tempted because it’s cheap and knowledge is power, but realistically I don’t see it helping

Maybe this is directly related to how much work you can do on your own vehicle, when guided by a problem code, but I’ve never had a scenario where this was even close