Dearche @ Dearche @lemmy.ca

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2 yr. ago

That's right. Most likely this is only going to be a sale of public land wholesale on the premise that the buyer will build homes on it. No way anybody short of one of the huge corporations can afford to buy a thousand pieces of land at a time. The land'll be resold at an exorbitant price once they're done in the end.

It's especially bad when those same newspapers also write articles about how most millennials are living paycheck to paycheck, and a single unexpected $1000 expense is enough to bankrupt them.

I can't count on how many people I've seen who's become borderline alcoholics as they can't handle life between work and bills without a steady supply. I live and work in relatively better off parts of Toronto, yet I see dozens of people who are homeless or dealing with serious psychiatrics problems. Seeing someone begging on the streets or trains has become almost a daily occurrence despite it having been quite rare a decade ago. Not to mention all those who sleep on the trains and buses rather than trying to get anywhere.

We as a country have been steered the wrong way for a good decade now, and every measurement I've seen regarding the human life index, happiness, international reputation, etc, have all pointed that out. Canada isn't the bastion of freedom and equality that it used to be. Virtually all our leaders on every level have failed the population, including the opposition.

The problem is that there is no existing truly green technology as it stands. Wind and solar causes so much pollution in its construction that it's not much better than natural gas as it stands. Especially once you consider that they need to be replaced every 10 years.

On the other hand, I do agree that we should push on energy development for export. The Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Albertan governments have teamed up to develop SMRs, and hopefully we'll have a working model in the near future, ripe for mass production and export. It's not 100% green, but far cleaner than any other technology we can expect to have within the next decade.

The sad thing is that Canada is actually in one of the best places to make it's individual targets compared to most other countries. We're a rich nation with plentiful resources and all our needs are met domestically. Our major sources of greenhouse emissions are well known and clearly defined. They are also things that all have existing solutions to.

Even if complete elimination isn't possible, at least doing enough to reach our climate goals should've been easy. Heating and fossil fuel production account for more than 30% of our CO2 emissions, both things that could be replaced with electricity from clean sources like nuclear.

Unfortunately politics works counter to economics. You can bankrupt an entire country, yet if you can convince people that it was someone else's fault, you'll still get reelected and get a nice fat 7 figures while everything around you burns to the ground.

There is no incentive to make things better beyond pure patriotism, which we all know is pretty damn short in supply in the first place (and always has been at the top). The only incentive for the leaders is how to gain and keep all the benefits of the rich and powerful as they enjoy 5 star accommodations everywhere they go while receiving kickbacks from all the political favours they do to the corporations that helped them get to where they are.

We only get band-aid solutions because they know they can get away with just that. Because all they have to do is yell loud enough that they're trying really hard to solve the problem, and together with billions spent on propaganda campaigns, enough people are convinced that the system is somewhat working that serious change never happens.

All the while, we're dealing with a mental health and homeless crisis that you'd more expect from somewhere like Somalia or Myanmar.

I once ran the numbers, and it turned out that even if all my other bills are quadrupled, if my rent alone is halved in return, I'd come out vastly on top. How come one bill come out to more than double of all my other bills combined?

Few military assets are more expensive than fighter jets. Our CF-18s are verging on obsolete and the costs of just keeping them in the air is ballooning as every single part of them are going beyond their operational lives.

We basically won't have an air fleet in 2 decades if we don't buy the F-35s now, and trying to refurbish the CF-18s while we hold out for the next generation or something will cost us tens of billions in refurbishment and maintenance fees alone while running an air fleet that can only keep up with 3rd rate air forces. Even if we can somehow hold on until a newer and more cost effective jet comes to market, any discount we can get from that will be nothing compared to the extra cost of keeping the CF-18s running. Not to mention the pure reduction in capacity in the meantime. We still have to patrol the north, and anything we use for that can't be spending weeks under maintenance between sorties.

Why do you think we have a retirement home crisis already? Lack of funding is only a part of the problem.

I seriously doubt the person built those things by himself. If he did, then I bet there's no electricity or plumbing, and it would've just been better to buy actual trailers as he could have a fleet of them delivered in a few weeks rather than spend years of hard labour building them himself.

I would imagine that fund-raising would work regardless as long as you're showing that this is a charity thing.

Of course, I bet any sort of joined home would be illegal there as it stands. Zoning laws are the absolute worst in most western countries, making anything but an expensive and space wasting single family house illegal to build in most housing zones. It's the single biggest reason why housing prices are so out of control, and will likely crash taking 30% of the entire nation's retirement savings with it in the next decade or so (since most people who buy houses and bet everything on being able to sell it at a massive markup for when they retire).

The issue with your suggestion is that you're presuming that this guy can keep building more buildings, but he sold his company to be able to do this. It's a one-time deal, unless if he manages to start another company, raise it to a great value, then sell it off again. Even then, that's a decade venture at least. Planning as well doesn't take that long, it's the approval process that does. Planning can be over with in less than a month, and that's presuming he doesn't go for an existing plan.

There are always people on the verge of destitution, so either save a handful today, or save several times that many a year or two later. Low and mid-rise apartments are not only massively space efficient, but cost only a fraction to build compared to a hundred individual homes, as the single building shares many of the same components for all the units. Not only does it use less parts, but the amount of labour is only a fraction of so many houses.

In 2016, 13.5% of those between 30-34 lived with their parents, and it's been rising.

Also in 2011, 73% of 25-29 year olds have never been married where in 1981 it was 26%. I mean, how can you marry when you can't even get a place of your own? How will people even seriously think about having kids if having a home of their own becomes more and more of a pipe dream?

The volume doesn't matter. Hydrogen can't ignite without the presence of oxygen in the first place, and there isn't any inside the tank. A new fully pressurized hydrogen tank is no more dangerous than a propane or natural gas tank. And we already ship natural gas in this state on specialized container ships.

I might be in the minority, but I'm on the side of just washing our hands from this crap and let the genocidal zealots and the world's largest prison camp shoot each other like they have for the last half century and focus our energies on more important matters. Like giving names to newborn whales in the Pacific.

This. 90% of modern waste comes from excesses. Everything from kitchen waste to disposables and clothes. We build cheap crap and throw them out after one use all the time, rather than getting quality and enjoying their use for years.

There's a reason why fast fashion is considered one of the greatest sources of waste in the world.

But how long will that last? Are we talking about just making a few dozen homes one a week and call it a day after we've given homes to 1% of those who need it, and having used up all the space within 100km of anything decent? Those homes might be tiny, but they waste space like no tomorrow. Besides, building a low rise isn't expensive nor takes long at all, yet is far more space effecient. Especially if people don't mind such small homes.

For the space of four of those units, you could build a single building that could easily house a dozen. Hell, just build a normal house and give everybody their own room, sharing the kitchen and bathroom. It'll be a nicer place to live on top of housing far more people on a fraction of the land. It's basically just a college dorm house at that point.

Hydrogen is problematic, but all the points you've made are just typical disinformation on the matter.

First of all, hydrogen tanks don't explode. Even if you set fire on them, they'll simply leak and that leak will burn like a pressurized flame until the tank empties. Second, you can't really transport hydrogen in liquid form, as the boiling temperature for it is far too low (33K). They're always transported in gaseous form right now under high pressure, which is worse I'll admit. The energy needed to pressurize hydrogen though, isn't that much worse than LNG, since natural gas suffers all the same limitations as hydrogen as you've proposed.

In addition, the appeal of hydrogen isn't the energy potential per volume of fuel, but that it is quick to fill a tank compared to charging a battery.

The real downsides of hydrogen is that it is so small, it gets in between the molecules that make up any tank, making them brittle over time. Hydrogen tanks simply don't last very long, and are expensive to make if you have to replace them yearly. In addition, we haven't discovered a way to produce hydrogen at an economic level yet. The energy required to produce hydrogen far too high as it is, putting it at something like 20% or so.

Thus, the downsides of hydrogen isn't safety, but simply that it's very expensive from making it all the way to storing it.

Yes, a few tons of high level nuclear waste from every reactor ever made each year is comparable to covering an entire farm for old windmill blades and burnt out solar panels aren't comparable. Especially since nuclear waste can easily be recycled into new fuel while supposed "green energy" waste can't.

I agree the bureaucracy is a huge issue. NIMBY is a scourge in the western world.

But still, while he could build one a week, he could also build a 40 unit low rise in a single year, occupying the space of only one block rather than fill a good hectare of wheelless trailers that all need separate sewage and heating systems, and have a total upkeep of only a small fraction of all the independant homes that'll probably only last for a decade or two without being rebuilt on a regular basis unlike the apartment that could last for 50+.

The thing is that people have a terrible level of patience in regards to long term benefits. For example, people constantly advocate for wind and solar, yet both only last ten years before having to be replaced. And as an alternative, natural gas is often proffered and employed, yet they only last about 20 years before being replaced. Nuclear fission plants have a typical lifespan of 60 years, with even existing plants having a theoretical lifespan of over 100 if the will to continuously refurbishing them exists. As things stand, we actually don't have a single source of energy as cost efficient as nuclear fission as things stand aside from hydro. It's just that it also has the single greatest initial investment cost as well, and won't be paid back during the term of any administration that commissions it, as even in the best case scenario, they take 6 years to build, and can often take more than 10.

I do agree that SMRs are a great next step for nuclear as well as power generation in general, but they are also only a stepping stone. They only last 5 years or so before having to be replaced (as they generally cannot be refueled). But at the same time, we can survive using only stepping stones for the next few decades until a better alternative (aside from full scale fission) rounds the corner. I do hope fusion ends up being that power source, but traditional fission (as well as the newer advances in fission) are still one of the most cost effective, efficient, reliable, and safe. They just have a high political hurdle to face, as people fear what they don't understand and there is no power source right now that people understand less than nuclear.

I know. It's just idealism at its finest. Just like how proportional representation won't ever be implement because it won't ever benifit the one who has the power to put it into practice, such a policy could never actually be enacted.

But I like to dream, even if I know it'll never happen.