Climate change has been a central focus in Joe Biden's first term. But fossil fuels have also flourished, and meeting the country's climate goals would require even bigger steps in a second term.
Its poison for any effort to curb climate change. The concrete production alone is a major source of greenhouse gases, and its being done to further prioritize the single largest source of emissions in the US, personal vehicles. I cant think of a more effective thing to spend money on if the goal is to accelerate climate change.
This shit is like clean coal. Its not a thing, concrete production involves releasing the co2 from calcium carbonate, not even mentioning the heating and fuel requirements that go into that process. These highways are going to be built with conventional concrete.
The problem hasn’t been “you can’t do it” but “architects and engineers don’t have enough experience with it to trust it, so they don’t use it” — a federal government purchasing program can fix that.
You are reaching far too deep to try and imagine this somehow turning out alright for the climate. The hundreds of billions are budgeted already. Highway construction is happening. Conventional concrete is being used. Truck and SUV sales are increasing to fill the new highways.
Its poison for any effort to curb climate change. The concrete production alone is a major source of greenhouse gases, and its being done to further prioritize the single largest source of emissions in the US, personal vehicles. I cant think of a more effective thing to spend money on if the goal is to accelerate climate change.
Which is why the federal government is trying to buy concrete made in different ways that don’t cause those emissions.
It’s not at full scale yet, and won’t be for some years. but it’s how you actually solve that kind of problem without making peoples’ lives worse.
This shit is like clean coal. Its not a thing, concrete production involves releasing the co2 from calcium carbonate, not even mentioning the heating and fuel requirements that go into that process. These highways are going to be built with conventional concrete.
The problem hasn’t been “you can’t do it” but “architects and engineers don’t have enough experience with it to trust it, so they don’t use it” — a federal government purchasing program can fix that.
You literally cant do it, its a chemical reaction that outputs co2. In the same way you cant run a combustion engine without producing co2.
You can use a different chemistry to make a hard substance. There are a ton of options which look good in tests, and pretty much nobody uses them.
You are reaching far too deep to try and imagine this somehow turning out alright for the climate. The hundreds of billions are budgeted already. Highway construction is happening. Conventional concrete is being used. Truck and SUV sales are increasing to fill the new highways.
Vehicle sales remain below pre-pandemic levels
I don’t deny that conventional concrete is still being used at scale. It’s something like 1% of US emissions.