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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • Look fab labs, hacker space, maker spaces or whatever it is named in your area. Those are not exactly everywhere, but common enough to have a look at. Another somewhat related space would be a repair cafe. That would give you not only access to a workshop, but also a bunch of folks for inspiration.

    Other then that look up Arduino and RaspberryPi solar projects. It is pretty easy to find some lists. 3d printers are pretty common, as are many other similar tools. Home automation can also be interesting, but that might not be that great of an option, if you rent. Micromobility can also be somewhat interesting(elector skateboards, self assembling a bicycle…). It is also rather easy to set up a solar system in a flat, as long as you can easily install it outside it on a balcony or whatever. There is also a pretty large diy loudpspeaker community, which apparently is pretty easy to built.

    Honestly there are lots of projects. Just think of something you would like to have and look up diy version of it. Seriously people built nearly everything at home. There even was a supersonic kit plane sold once, which apparently never managed to go supersonic and had a habit of killing its pilots, but you get my point.


  • First of all EVs do not need that much power. We are talking something like 25% more electricity production for a country like Japan. Then Japan has rather a lot of onshore and even more offshore wind potential. Mountains are a problem, but hardly something which can not be overcome. Solar can easily be installed on roofs and mountains are even less of a problem.

    Also really important to say it. Combustion engines in cars are massivly inefficent. So an EV is still better for the climate, even if run with coal electricity. The other factor is that Japans population is falling. So they will need less power over the long term.







  • Planes are very safe and we know how to handle hydrogen very well. It is a very common in chemical plants to have some steps including hydrogen and tanks are very well known. From a technical bases this can work. From an eviromental bases it is more difficult. Nearly all hydrogen produced today comes from cracking natural gas, which produced CO2 as a byproduct and takes a lot of energy. You can produce hydrogen using electrolysis, but the plants to do that are expensive, so the hydrogen produced that way is expensive as well. This is route easily done by train, which would be the enviromentally smart way. For small distances, to say islands or so, batteries work very well. For long distances there are some experimental hydrogen jet engines, but they are problametic. Turboprop regional planes lack the range to fly across oceans. However the A220 is showing that smaller regional jets, with long range can offer some intressting options. However that is a jet.

    That being said technically it is possible. Practically it is way to expensive.


  • It is always up to individuals to reduce our carbon footprint. Industrie is run by people, as are governments. They are not some artifical inteligence ruling over all humans. What you are doing is basicly throwing away your agency and hoping some miricale happens.

    If you go vegan your carbon footprint drops by about 1t of CO2 compared to the average Western diet. That is a fairly large impact for something, which is pretty reasonable to do. The other big impact things to do is to stop flying, give up your car and change your home heating system. Those all are able to reduce your carbon footprint by a ton or so, compared to the average Western one. That means for your average European, you just halfed your emissions, by four choices, which are all somewhat possible.

    For other stuff you are going to need to blaim industry and government. Even for some of the ones I mentioned above, like building proper hsr to avoid flights and so forth. Similar story with the electricity grid and so forth. However you do have the responsibility to work to fix the problems in your area of expertise. As an example it is unreasonable for the average guy on the street to be able to only buy plastic free tooth brushes. They are somewhat hard to find and pretty expensive, while having a low impact. But if you are a toothbrush designer it is your responsibiltiy to work towards creating a good, cheap and sustainable tooth brush. Everybody has their area of expertise, but it is foolish to expect things are not solved by humans in the end.