I know about all the trade offs you mentioned. Personally I’m happy with my coil electric stove because a bit more difficulty cooking is a good trade off to avoid cancer and climate change, but that argument has been moot for decades anyway because induction stoves are better than gas in every way.
Modern heat pumps work fine at the vast majority of locations where humans live. If you happen to live at the north pole, you can supplement your heat pump with electric resistive heaters or even, god forbid, gas, and still come out far more energy efficient.
You’re absolutely right that people won’t do the right thing voluntarily, as seen with all these examples. That’s why we need governments to encourage them. That could be through regulation, taxes, subsidies, and building the right infrastructure to make it easy to do the right thing.
“Doing the right thing” needs to be easy and obvious. Doing it through regulation and taxes mostly pisses people off and leads to common sense things turning into political issues.
If replacing a gas furnace with a heat pump is cheaper than getting a new furnace, that’s a common sense reason to do that and there should be more awareness around that, so people can factor it into their buying decisions. I’ve seen a single heat pump on my block, and I’m guessing the people who live there are into that stuff, because the unit outside is right next to a compost barrel. I bet if I asked everyone on my block if they knew what a heat pump was, most would say they don’t know. Also, if supplemental heat sources are still needed on the coldest days, then they still need a furnace and things get more complex and expensive, so the pay off on an individual level isn’t there. Where I live it can reach over 100F in the summer and can reach -20F in the winter. For places without such extremes on both ends I can see where heat pumps have probably made sense for quite some time, so people may be more aware in those regions.
I think a lot of these things are marketing issues. Heat pumps only recently got decent for colder climates. Induction is still relatively new to a lot of people. If the first time people hear about a new technology is from a government mandate or tax, there will be a lot of opposition.
We’re talking about a couple of things that last a long time and aren’t cheap. People are already struggling with inflation. No one is going to voluntarily replace a functional furnace or stove when they are struggling to make ends meet as is, especially when they act in isolation won’t actually stop global warming. There are likely other, cheaper, actions an individual can take that would have a similar impact, and then once their stuff breaks, they can upgrade to the “right thing”… if the marketers have done their job to create the awareness that these things exist, solve the problem the old thing was solving, but doing it better/cheaper.
![[meme] Walk out your front door, take a gander, and tell me this isn't true](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/473b8c53-67c4-4a7d-a1e3-2034fca97432.webp){kind=link}
I know about all the trade offs you mentioned. Personally I’m happy with my coil electric stove because a bit more difficulty cooking is a good trade off to avoid cancer and climate change, but that argument has been moot for decades anyway because induction stoves are better than gas in every way.
Modern heat pumps work fine at the vast majority of locations where humans live. If you happen to live at the north pole, you can supplement your heat pump with electric resistive heaters or even, god forbid, gas, and still come out far more energy efficient.
You’re absolutely right that people won’t do the right thing voluntarily, as seen with all these examples. That’s why we need governments to encourage them. That could be through regulation, taxes, subsidies, and building the right infrastructure to make it easy to do the right thing.
“Doing the right thing” needs to be easy and obvious. Doing it through regulation and taxes mostly pisses people off and leads to common sense things turning into political issues.
If replacing a gas furnace with a heat pump is cheaper than getting a new furnace, that’s a common sense reason to do that and there should be more awareness around that, so people can factor it into their buying decisions. I’ve seen a single heat pump on my block, and I’m guessing the people who live there are into that stuff, because the unit outside is right next to a compost barrel. I bet if I asked everyone on my block if they knew what a heat pump was, most would say they don’t know. Also, if supplemental heat sources are still needed on the coldest days, then they still need a furnace and things get more complex and expensive, so the pay off on an individual level isn’t there. Where I live it can reach over 100F in the summer and can reach -20F in the winter. For places without such extremes on both ends I can see where heat pumps have probably made sense for quite some time, so people may be more aware in those regions.
I think a lot of these things are marketing issues. Heat pumps only recently got decent for colder climates. Induction is still relatively new to a lot of people. If the first time people hear about a new technology is from a government mandate or tax, there will be a lot of opposition.
We’re talking about a couple of things that last a long time and aren’t cheap. People are already struggling with inflation. No one is going to voluntarily replace a functional furnace or stove when they are struggling to make ends meet as is, especially when they act in isolation won’t actually stop global warming. There are likely other, cheaper, actions an individual can take that would have a similar impact, and then once their stuff breaks, they can upgrade to the “right thing”… if the marketers have done their job to create the awareness that these things exist, solve the problem the old thing was solving, but doing it better/cheaper.