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Essay by Eric Worrall
Preparing the peasants for our glorious green future.
What to wear for a climate crisis
Published: October 27, 2023 2.47pm AEDT
Rachael Wallis
Research Assistant, Youth Community Futures, University of Southern Queensland…
The fashion industry contributes up to 10% of global emissions – more than international aviation and shipping combined. It also contributes to biodiversity loss, pollution, landfill issues, unsafe work practices and more.
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If we are concerned about these issues, responding thoughtfully means we will live our lives according to our values. And that’s an important factor in living well, flourishing and being happy.
Lessons from wartime
It’s not the first time people have adapted their clothing in response to the demands of a crisis.
During the second world war, clothing styles changed in the United Kingdom and Australia. To conserve precious resources, shorter skirts, minimal detailing and a focus on utility became the norm.
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This wartime response reflected the priorities and values of society as a whole as well as most people in that society. In other words, buying less (rationing meant this was not just a choice), mending and making do with what was already there was part of a value system that contributed to the Allied victory.
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If we begin to shift away from our slavish devotion to newness and novelty – following the dictates of fashion – to a mindset of value-led sufficiency, we can appreciate more fully the feel of lived-in, mended or altered clothes. There is a feeling of comfort in pulling on an old garment that is soft with age and repeated washing. There is joy in extending a garment’s life through creative mending, especially when that aligns with our values.
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Read more: https://theconversation.com/what-to-wear-for-a-climate-crisis-214478
There is also the feeling of fresh air when putting on a worn out garment, when the fabric tears.
What can I say? If I wanted to live like a bum I’d find myself a cardboard box. I have no problem with other people feeling “virtuous” by wearing worn out rags, if that is their thing, but don’t try to inflict your absurd wearing rags virtue signalling on the rest of us.
Let’s us do a strict accounting of carbon footprint and see how it actually turns out( see previous article)
The fashion industry contributes up to 10% of global emissions
If this is the case then my vote goes to The Fashion Nudistry
No clothes is surely the way to go to reduce your carbon footprint
So long as Kerry, Biden/Harris and Mann remain OUT OF THE PUBLIC EYE
The obesity level of most of the U.S. and probably the western world is too high for nudistry. Besides that the majority of the country requires clothing due to weather.
Glad to see some of us are thinking outside the box though.
I think many celebs are going with that idea though – at least as far as trying to outdo each other in the thinnest, most transparent dresses they can find.
See through fashion has been around since the sixty’s that I’m aware of. That’s their decision and some of them I don’t mind taking a gander at. Some, not so much.
We already have Nudistry.
It is called fishnet bathing suits, dresses, stockings, underwear.
They are more less, than they are more
The main original source appears to McKinsey. McKinsey estimated 2.1 billion tons of CO2 equivalents from the fashion industry in 2018:
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/fashion-on-climate.
But its not fashion, its the textile industry as a whole, including such things as car seat covers. There is another estimate of (just CO2 emissions) of 1.2 billion tons a year from the total textile industry, so MicKinsey was maybe over-egging it:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2022.973102/full
However, I think arguing about the details somewhat misses the point, which is cultural. People undoubtedly have more clothes now than in the 1950s and don’t wear them as long. Talk to people who grew up then about this, and they will (depending on their family background) tell you about their parents buying a tweed jacket or a suit or sweater and wearing it as everyday apparel for ten or more years. Shirts were worn till the collars frayed. In fact, separable shirt collars, with collar studs, were a thing until the fifties in the UK. Shirts came with several, and it got you twice the life of the garment.
The clothes themselves now are a lot less durable but they are also a lot cheaper. But I don’t think the carbon footprint is the real reason why liberal progressives write pieces like this. Its a category of belief and assertion whose main use is to define ones membership of the club. Notice that the author is not specifically advocating policy. she is not, for instance, advocating banning imports from China, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan etc. She doesn’t want to ban polyester from bedding or outerwear. Its all about states of mind and feeling.
These are what Mathew Goodwin calls ‘luxury beliefs’. Here he is in a Daily Mail interview touching on his new book ‘Values Voice and Virtue’:
One of the concepts I cover in the book is that of ‘luxury beliefs’ –defined as ideas or values that confer status on the wealthy, but are not fully embraced or practised by them. The influence of ‘luxury beliefs’ as a means of winning social esteem has been charted by a number of academics, led by Rob Henderson, formerly of Cambridge University. Their fascinating research shows that in the past, members of the old elite derived their sense of status from physical manifestations of wealth, such as fine clothes, jewellery, foreign travel, servants, private carriages and large properties. But today, with prosperity spread across society, such ostentatious displays of riches have less significance. So, instead, the quest for social status now focuses more on ‘cultural capital’ than ‘economic capital’.
Critical Race Theory is another instance of a luxury belief-set. There’s another cluster in gender, a set are currently manifesting on Israel and Gaza, and climate is the source of some striking ones.
The danger of them comes when they involve policy. So for instance, a belief in global warming from human emissions was fairly harmless, until it metamorphosed into the idea that we should move electricity generation to wind while at the same time moving transport to EVs and heating to heat pumps. Its when your luxury beliefs are in the impossible, and have implications for the whole population, that it gets dangerous.
In gender, the idea that a man can become a woman by surgery and hormones might be thought odd, but its not obviously disastrous and probably has few social implications. However when it metamorphoses into the idea that anyone is a woman who says he is, or that children should be cross examined on whether they feel they are in the right sex body, or that puberty blockers should be handed out like candy…
Well, that’s when it gets serious for a culture and a country.
Read Goodwin’s book. Specific to the UK, but with wide implications for the West as a whole.
Sorry, didn’t put quotes around the interview part. Its just the one para.
You would think that ostentatious displays would be frowned upon – Christian culture emphasized an austere manner of life, sort of continuing the ancient Roman and Spartan esthetic, then use also had the hippie phase in society and also fascinations with Zen.
But then you see ‘stars’ sporting tons of jewelry, overpriced designer crap, and probably worst of all: mouth grills – mouth guard type things full of diamonds and so on. Most of the most stupid fashion trend I’ve ever seen – makes you look stupid, unhygienic and must be uncomfortable – fashion without any payoff.
“stupid fashion trend”
I’d include new jeans that come with holes and tears. Since I wore real jeans with real holes and tears in the ’60s- I object to factory made holes and tears. 🙂
I have one comfortable sweater that I’ll pull out and wear in the winter. It’s fairly shapeless and baggy now but I’ve had that sweater for almost 40 years and it’s still warm and comfortable, still perfectly wearable and no holes or tears. I’ve had more modern clothes go through in a few months or years but this old sweater just keeps on going – best purchase I ever made!
“Since I wore real jeans with real holes and tears in the ’60s”
When I was a kid, I would get 2 pairs of new Levis each fall for school. One pair of tennis shoes. One set of gym clothes. A couple of shirts. A set of socks and underwear. That was about it. In the spring I cut off the jeans for the summer.
As an adult, after my father died, I was clearing out his desk and I found bank statements from the 60s. My parents rarely had more than $100.00 in the bank.
“Allowance” was about a quarter a week.
Once I could find ways to scrounge my own money, at about 10 YO, I saved up and bought myself a folding wooden chess set for $8.00. I still have it. It is still in reasonable shape considering I carried it to school and back for a couple of years.
Once I was working a “real” job for hourly pay, I started equating the cost of things in the “hours worked” it took to pay for them. I kept that mindset into my late 20s when I finally started saving money. For any bigger purchase, however, I would fall back on that mindset. It took me 3 years to finally buy a surround sound system for my TV room in the early 2000s. Now with multiple houses, rentals and mucho dinero in retirement, I am still using the 7.1 surround speakers in my media room in our mountain cabin. I would still be using the AV amp, but is was old RCA jack, coax video and optical audio, etc, and I needed to upgrade to HDMI switching.
I have no problem with being frugal, but I do have a problem with other people deciding how I must be frugal. As an example, when I find a pair of socks, a type of shirt, etc., that I like, I will buy 3 or 4 YEARS worth. I have the funds, and I have just seen so much change in what is available where what I liked was no longer available. This way, I don’t need to shop continuously to replace worn out clothes. And yes, the old comfortable clothes end up being work/painting/welding clothes until they are too far gone to use anymore.
From a text message I recently received:
“Only in America do you find a kid wearing $150 tennis shoes, drinking a $5 cup of coffee, typing on his $1000 cell phone complaining on social media that he is oppressed and that capitalism has failed him”
“But then you see ‘stars’ sporting tons of jewelry, overpriced designer crap”
Yeah, I see Dione Sanders son, the quarterback for Colorado University wearing a thick gold chain around his neck while he’s playing the game, along with wearing a $77,000 watch, which he displays to opposing teams to tell them how much better he is than them.
None of the other Colorado players sport thick gold chains around their necks or wear $77,000 watches.
This all springs from the new rule that allows some college football players to benefit monetarily from their expertise, and some of these college players are making millions of dollars from this which allows Dione’s son to display his arrogance.
None of the other Colorado players get to share in these riches.
I think allowing college football players to make money while they are still in college is going to ruin college football. It’s divisive, so must be detrimental to the team concept.
And it enables idiots to act like idiots on a national stage.
Of course, I guess you can’t blame Dione’s son, since Dione has gold hanging all over his person.
But what about all your players that don’t have the means to wear gold, Dione? Don’t they feel kind of left out while you and your son parade around showing off?
Team cohesion? It looks like “me, me, me”, to me. How does that work on a “team”.
Money is ruining football and characters.
I agree that NIL earnings should be curtailed, so should the vanity footage of the football and basketball players in the teams’ intro videos. ( As a fan of KU basketball, it really bugs me, but they usually play well.)
On the other hand, if they pay for the bling themselves, I really don’t care. Even if they look like idiots.
Congratulations to the Kansas University football team for their victory over Oklahoma yesterday. Both teams played a heck of a game, and the deciding finish came down to the very last play.
The Kansas University football team has not beaten Oklahoma very often. It’s has been kind of a one-sided series.
But Kansas University makes up for it by beating Oklahoma and just about everyone else regularly in Basketball. 🙂
It was a terrific game. My son was there, rain, lightning delays and all.
We always enjoy the conference rivalries, and Oklahoma is a good team all the time, in all sports.
The sooner football becomes extinct, the better. As others have said, “If high school football was a disease, millions would be spent in search of a cure.” Teen-age boys suffering injuries with life-long consequences while supposedly learning team play and discipline is a bad joke. Especially when all but a tiny minority never put on a football uniform again after the last game of their senior season. Let them learn tennis, bowling, golf or another sport that they can play for the rest of their lives with their spouses and children. US football is a mental illness.
Has she led by example ?
Didn’t think so .
😉
She looks like she over consumes the calories.
That is at least temporary carbon sequestration.
Yeah, they’re gonna lose the Instagram generation with this one.
The fashion industry contributes up to 10% of global emissions – more than international aviation and shipping combined.
I’m sorry, young lady, but you’ll have to put up some evidence for that extravagant claim before we feel a need for any belief in your flapping and squawking. Or are you assigning all those airplane passengers blame for wearing fashion industry clothes on their flights?
10% sounds like another one of those made up on the spot figures the left is so fond of.
What percentage of farmland is used to grow cotton and other fibers destined for clothing? I don’t know, but I’m sure it is a very small percentage.
What other clothing materials are there?
Wool, grown by sheep, Not very energy intensive there.
Leather, by product of the cattle industry, no extra energy there.
Man made fabrics. These are all offshoots of the petrochemical industry, not much energy being used to create them either.
How much energy does it take to cut and sew clothes, very little really. Especially in the highly automated factories.
What else is there? Runway shows, while they do use energy, most of the people in the audience would be somewhere else, using their own electricity if they weren’t at the shows, so that’s a wash.
I guess there is the area inside stores where the clothes are displayed. If we bought less clothes, that part of the store could shrink and therefore use less energy. Then again, the same stores would then need more room to sell us the stuff that we would need to keep old clothes functional longer.
Another made up problem whose only purpose is to further restrict what the peons are allowed to do with their money.
As a self described textile artist–quilter, needlepointer, and other avocations–I think you underestimate the amount of textile fibers grown and synthesized around the world. All fibers, whether they are grown or synthesized, must be carded, spun and dyed before they can be woven into fabric. You can’t just take wool off the the sheep or a boll of cotton off the plant and make a dress. I would suspect that this processing is where most energy is used, and the more complex the fabric–blends, for example–the more energy used.
I try hard to use only natural fibers, mostly cotton, but wool for needlepoint. I don’t make clothes–I used to but it is relatively inexpensive to buy things that are really hard to make, and so not worth my time. It is all but impossible to find all cotton thread, so I use mostly a cotton/poly blend, at the correct weight for my sewing machine and project. Cotton fabric is not the easiest to find, either, as most lightweight fabrics are blends. Almost all of my fabric is made overseas–usually in several places. For example, the cotton may be grown in India, possibly processed and woven there, but the dying and printing is usually done in Japan. All of this processing and transport takes energy and a lot of it.
In short, it is just not a simple as you make it sound.
One other point I would make is that dying of fabrics and fibers is not especially good environmentally, although better than it used to be. Having dropped the heavy metal dyes of the past is one of the reasons fabrics fade more quickly than they used to. And dyers don’t go mad from the exposure. (Think the mad hatter and mercury exposure.)
Like the person who wrote the original article, I specified fibers grown for clothing. Not all fibers grown for fabrics. And while cleaning and carding does take energy, Compared to other consumers of energy, it’s quite minor.
The USA great depression. The future net zero standard of living.
Hard times make strong people. My parents were children then.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, but my mother would save money on everything. She’d recycle Christmas wrapping paper, she would reuse the aluminum trays of TV dinners and fill them with left overs. If I wasn’t taller than my older brother, I probably would have had to wear hand me downs into junior high school.
Doesn’t everybody do all of those?
I miss the jam and peanut butter jars that could be re-used as drinking glasses.
My family had boxes of infant and children’s clothes that would get passed around to whoever had children of the right ages and genders. If something wore out, it was thrown out, if you bought something or had something gifted, it went into the box to be passed around when it was outgrown.
Infants grow so fast that even when toddlers, they rarely wear an outfit long enough for it even to start to show any wear. I swear that when my daughters were infants there were some outfits they only got to wear once.
I certainly have friends who recall “first up is best dressed”.
That era was so much a formative part of many of our parents character through their younger years. I wish I had more time to ask more questions of them and my grandparents too.
TV during the depression! Startling.
He did say his mother was a child then, and then HE remembers her saving the tv dinner tins – so decades in-between.
Side-note, I do that too (parents born in the 30’s and lived through the war in Europe).
I love to save plastic take-out containers -screw you, Trudeau – free Tupperware!
With door dash, etc. the take out containers are really good. My busy daughter uses that service a LOT.
We use them for dog water dishes while traveling, paint containers that seal up for a week or 2 without drying up, etc.
And even though I am from the US, Screw Trudope too!
My grandfather was just starting a family during the depression. As an adult, he never threw anything out if he thought it had parts that could still be used. He was a master at pulling parts from three items, and combining them to get one working product. Between welding, soldering and grinding, it didn’t matter if the parts weren’t made to fit together, he would make them fit together.
He could also completely strip down a car, everything, engine, brakes, suspension and then rebuild the car, good as new, if not better.
Definitely a sense of satisfaction that comes from that, even if you are left with a handful of leftover nuts that didn’t seem to be required…
My brother did that on his second car once, took the engine and various parts apart, cleaned and rebuilt them. Had a cardboard box of ‘leftovers’ on one side when me and my dad enquired – neither of us would accept a lift in that car after that.
My dad and grandfather did that too, except they had no left over parts. The car ran great for years. Except he kept running it with a dead battery. He had to push it down the street to start it and you had to be careful to not let it stop or you would be stuck.
Try that with a modern car.
Heck, you can get trapped in a EV with a low battery.
1950 MG TD. Dad bought it in ’65-’66 and drove it from the west coast to the middle of Texas, on his way home from Vietnam. It died in west Texas, and he shipped it on to Georgia. No EVs for our family yet.
Older than you, obviously.
I remember seeing the Coronation on a neighbour’s telly, but no TV at home for another decade.
Aluminium trays of TV dinners? Have yet to catch up with that! I’ll stick with properly cooked real food served on a china plate, sat up at table.
Younger than you. I remember being invited to a neighbors house to see Disney “in living color”. But it was about 6 years before we had a color TV.
Same with my parents. Unfortunately I was the youngest of six with four older brothers so I got hand-me-downs of hand-me-downs.
It was a great incentive to earn income from paper routes, shoveling snow, gardening, and washing cars.
“,,,but don’t try to inflict your absurd wearing rags virtue signalling on the rest of us.”
Somebody needs to grow a pair. If you see me with a tire iron you may want to go the other way.
I wore a ‘dress’ T shirt today. Last year I bought two new ones last year. My dress ones get hung on a hanger. Then there is the ones with holes I wear most of the time. Then there is another class. Ones for painting and working on diesels.
“. . . painting and working on diesels” is virtue signaling at its very best.
Hell, I’ve been wearing old patched cloths for years to reduce the impact on my bank balance.
Back in the 1980s I recall a friend and I being mocked for our sense of fashion by locals in Northern England for wearing jeans that had worn through at the knees.
Today, many women pay good money for jeans that are pre-ripped.
I guess if one waits long enough then your sense of fashion will likely become avant-garde again.
One would have to wear an old-school pair of Levis jeans a *long* time to wear a hole in the knee, or anywhere else.
I think I have a few pairs that are 30 or more years old, laying around here somewhere. No holes in them, but they are seriously faded in spots. The cuffs are a little frayed.
I don’t know what it was then but, growing up, we used to go through the knees in jeans quite often. Every pair I had as a kid had patches sewn over the knees!
I do remember the knee patches. You could buy them in stores, but I think those were for jeans not made by Levis. Or maybe I was just too easy on my Levis jeans. But I don’t think so. I was pretty active as a kid.
And let the woke wear used cloths as they drive around in their used Teslas they keep because they can’t unload. Story Tip: Elon loses 28 billion as EV sales slow.
Elon better start camping out at the factory again and get some hybrids coming down that assembly line.
And how many people does the fashion industry employ? What would the impact be on GDP and unemployment rates? What are the other possible negative unintended consequences of such a movement?
It’s the same old ‘do as I say not as I do’ mantra. The Marxist elite own the MSM and continue to spout the same rhetoric about doing with less to benefit society as a whole but fail to explain how this actually happens.
I thought I was just careful with money. It turns out I’m saving the planet 🙂
There was a DIY survey in the Daily Telegraph years ago. The result showed that if I drank more and took up smoking I’d count as frugal.
My clothes have 3 life times.
Bought new, I wear them when I’m going somewhere it is polite to be clean.
At some stage I’ll forget to get changed and do some hobby work in the shed or some outside work.
The “new” shirt/trousers now has paint or glue or a stain on it, so it gets relegated to a “shed” shirt. (Life 2)
Eventually it will get so much grunge on it, it will be chopped up for rags. (Life 3)
$20 jeans/shorts and $10 shirts from K-Mart or Big W..
I doubt I would spend as much each year on clothes as the female author does on one dress/outfit. !
Are we twins?
Triplets?
Quadruplets?
You spendthrift.
Value Village is awesome – something clothing even gets donated that still has the original store tags on it!
I gave a whole bag full of basically new clothes to the CWA a couple of weeks ago (Country Womans Association)
I was checking the clothes in the wardrobe, and somehow several pairs of business trousers had shrunk around the waistline, and business shirts had shrunk around the torso region.
How does that happen ?? 😉
Moths are getting very clever – they’re hiding the evidence. Has to be those little buggers eating away then resewing the clothes smaller to hide where they’ve been eating. It’s the only explanation I’ve ever been able to find that seems to cover it.
It’s the darkness, I know it is, everything I had 10 years ago has shrunk due to the darkness in the closet. If electricity wasn’t so expensive I’d install lights to stop the shrinkage.
The main message here is that unnecessary overconsumption is not good for the future. As populations expand, and/or the poor become less poor (hopefully), our consumption of energy will increase as a consequence, eventually resulting in diminishing energy reserves and increasing energy prices, even without the effects that wars have on energy prices.
In general, our modern socieities are terribly wasteful, spending vast amounts of energy producing unnecessary products, such as fancy clothes and fancy cars, just to satisfy peoples’ ego and vanity.
What is wrong with satisfying vanity and ego? Who are you to say excess consumption is wrong? The beauty of capitalism is people have the freedom to choose for themselves what is important to them.
Those on the political left have managed to convince themselves that they are the standard by which all other humans are to be measured. If Vincent doesn’t believe something is necessary, then it isn’t. If you disagree, you are part of the problem that needs to be solved.
Sorry Eric, but you are discussing FREE ENTERPRISE, not “capitalism”.
The term Capitalism only applies when proceeded by the word CRONY.
Don’t let Marx, or any liberal/communist, define the terminology we use.
BTW, Vincent probably has no problem with Kerry or Gore flying all over the world consuming excess jet fuel while scheming with crony capitalists to steal taxpayers money through solar or wind “energy” rent seeking scams.
When it comes to excessive consumption, where do $700 dollar hair cuts stand?
Who gets to decide what consumption is necessary and what consumption is unnecessary? You, the government.
We have hundreds of years of oil, gas and coal at current technology and prices. If prices rise, the amount of all three that is available will increase. The same happens as technology improves.
Beyond that there is nuclear, which should last 10’s of thousands of years.
Lighten up and stop worrying about non-problems.
Where did you get the stupid idea that modern society is wasteful, and why do you think it is your job to worry about it.
And here you go with the whining about unnecessary products. Where did you get the hubris necessary to give yourself the right to determine what other people need and don’t need?
Just crawl back into your mom’s basement and leave the adults alone.
chuckle…. Why not say what you really mean, MarkW ! 🙂
Lucky you. We don’t.
If prices rise, the amount of all three that is available will increase. The same happens as technology improves.
I have a magic spell for you too.
EROEI.
The elites are conditioning us for a future they are trying to bring about, by not using nuclear power.
Is not and never has been true.
“Who gets to decide what consumption is necessary and what consumption is unnecessary? You, the government.”
Everyone gets to choose from whatever options are available. However, foolish people can make foolish choices. Some people choose to break the law by speeding in their fancy sports car, resulting in a lethal accident, for example. I hope you are not suggesting they have the right to choose what speed they drive and the government should not interfere to set limits.
Some people choose to gorge themselves on huge amounts of tasty but unhealthy food, and eventually become obese, leading to serious health problems that cost a lot of money, perhaps most of it taxpayer’s money if the person doesn’t have private medical insurance.
Are you suggesting that people who become obese, become obese because eating excess food is a necessity. If they think that eating excess food is a necessity, don’t I have the right to express an opinion that they are delusional?
“However, foolish people can make foolish choices.”
Some people think it’s foolish that ordinary people might have abundant low cost energy so they can have a decent life.
Fructose seems to maybe be the obesity culprit.
Some people choose to speed in whatever old bomb they have, with wobbly steering, bald tyres, worn out shock absorbers and maladjusted brake shoes.
I love the nice stereo type of speeders being people with fancy sports cars.
An example of class envy?
Let me get this straight. Since government gets to decide what speed we drive on the roads that the government owns, therefore government also has the right to decide how much stuff we get to consume.
I’ve read some really dumb claims over the years, but that has got to be one of the dumbest.
Not only that, you want government to control what people eat.
Why just come out and admit that you want government to run all aspects of everyone’s lives.
“and fancy cars, just to satisfy peoples’ ego and vanity.”
You mean Teslas, don’t you.
Exactly!!! If rich people can’t buy wasteful hotrods then you never get benefits at the affordable and practical end of the spectrum. The Tesla Roadster and the expensive S and T helped drive demand and technology for the current cars but also the state of battery storage technology.
Important safety items like airbags were once only expensive items on Cadillacs. All the ICE car tech was once only rich kid race car ‘wasteful’ spending.
While I hate extravagant stupidity like bejeweled mouth grills, at least then the jeweler and his staff can afford proper braces for their kids teeth.
Teslas are fancy cars that currently cost fancy prices, but that initial fancy price is gradually offset by lower fuel costs over time, especially if the car is charged overnight at home.
As new technology develops and becomes more popular, the price tends to fall. When the 7 year warranty of my current ICE vehicle expires, in about 3 years, I think I’ll dump the car for a BYD electric vehicle, such as the BYD e2, which appears to be around the same price as an equivalent ICE vehicle, but is not yet available in Australia, but it is available in China.
“I think I’ll dump the car for a BYD electric vehicle”
You have just confirmed that you are an absolute FOOL !!
I see. So you think people who are frugal and pragmatic are fools. How very charming.
A Chinese EV with a lithium battery.
You go for it, loon !
You must be an inner city *anker that never leaves its 15 minute “section”.
Replacing a 7 year old car is frugal?
Uh, no. I still think of my 7 year old car as new. We run ’em 20 years or 300,000 miles which ever comes last.
Then they become paddock bashers 🙂
You couldn’t keep pre-1970 cars on the road for that long – they’d rust out in 10 years and wear out in less than 100,000 miles 🙁
Of course not.
I currently have one car that is 12 years old and running fine. We MAY get a new car with better 4X4 capability (snowy mountain cabin) but maybe not.
My diesel truck if 5 years old but replaced a 17 year old, 210,000 mile truck (in 2018) that my son is still driving daily.
Selling or trading in a car because the stupidly bought extended warranty ran out is double “foolish”.
No, I don’t get extended warranties. They NEVER pay for themselves IF you spend the time to get the right car in the first place.
Do EVs have extended battery warranties?
If extended warranties ended up costing the company money, they would stop selling them. The majority of people who buy warranties will never use them enough to justify the cost. That’s simply the way insurance works. All insurance.
If you can afford to fix it or replace it on your own, you are better off passing on the extended warranties.
It could be. It depends on the circumstances. After the 7 year warranty expires in 3 years time, the cost of maintenance will likely increase. Surely you can understand that!
People’s circumstances vary, and what is practical and economical for one person might not be for another. Since I live in a suburban house with solar panels on the roof, which reduce my electricity bill, and since I have the availability of relatively low-price off-peak electricity at night, the fuel cost of driving an EV will be very significantly less than the cost of petrol for an ICE vehicle.
Since I use my current ICE vehicle for relatively short distances, well within the range of an EV, the only obstacle to switching over to an EV is the very high initial purchase price. But that appear to be soon to change. As I mentioned in my previous post, the Chinese BYD E2 is expected to cost no more than an equivalent ICE vehicle in Australia, when it arrives.
Here is an estimate of the price.
Price in AUD: 22,120
Price in USD: $14,000
https://www.ccarprice.com/au/byd-e2-price-in-australia-15739
And here’s a video review, if you’re interested.
The biggest costs of newer vehicles which do low mileages are depreciation, registration and insurances.
If you travel 10,000 km/yr, you might use around 1,000 litres, so $2,000 in fuel. A service every 20,000 km is $500, and a major 100,000 or 120,000 service is $1,000. A set of tyres every 80,000 km is $500.
Lower distances reduce the variable (fuel, service, tyres) cost proportionately.
Once out of warranty, doing the services yourself removes the labour costs, so a service is under $100.
Registration and possibly CTP insurance may still be subsidised for EVs, but comprehensive insurance will be more expensive to reflect the higher market value.
Depreciation on a new vehicle is typically 25% as soon as it drives out of the dealership, then 20% of the residual per annum.
They all have to be juggled
Let me guess, you are a graduate of public schools, aren’t you.
Try taking a few courses in remedial reading comprehension. Perhaps then you won’t be so quick to make a fool of yourself.
I read yesterday that charging up your Tesla costs the equivalent of $17 per gallon of gas.
Don’t know if it’s true or not, but that’s what the article claimed.
Well they probably lowballed it, so just round up to $20.00 per gallon.
But you know it’s true that AGW is a hoax. (wink)
You have finally managed to say something that is actually true. Congratulations.
I believe that humans are causing some warming (Anthropogenic Global Warming/AGW), although what happens to that warming after feedbacks are figured in, is an unknown. It could lead to actually cooling the Earth.
I do believe Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) is a hoax, as I have seen no evidence that this is happening. And neither has anyone else.
Is there anything you know that is actually true?
The only reason why operating costs appear to be lower is because gas is taxed to pay for the roads and electricity isn’t. Pretty much every government on the planet is working to close that gap.
You are also ignoring maintenance costs. Replacing that battery costs several times more than replacing an ICE, and the ICE will last at least 3 or 4 times longer.
Batteries are not a new technology, they have been around for hundreds of years. The same thing with electric motors.
Warranties are transferable, so they are part of the price you will get for your used car.
If you feel that owning an electric car is so important, do it now. Quite coming up with nonsensical excuses.
Careful – those are very subjective, and forcing ones standards on other people is fascist/communist, especially if governments force that by impoverishing everyone.
And there’s the law of economics – even though I agree with a frugal manner of life and light, 4 cylinder cars, etc., it’s an undeniable fact that a large part of the world was lifted out of poverty by the consumer dominated ethos of the 20th century. Basically some rich folk bought some toys and trinkets that allowed a middle class to develop and they in turn paid for the layers below them.
Carbon taxes and forced wind/solar mandates are the opposite; they are regressive policies that punish the poor for the sake of making the rich socialists feel better about themselves.
You won’t find in any of my posts an endorsement of carbon taxes, or wind and solar mandates. I have no objection to undeveloped countries using fossil fuels to raise their living standards, as the West has been doing for the past century and a half.
So you differentiate by determining the more PRODUCTIVE societies should be reduced to the standard of living of the less productive societies?
You blame the western “judao/christian” work ethic for the failure of unproductive people/cultures to be productive and must punish the hard working for their hard work?
“our modern
socieitieswealthy classes are terribly wasteful”fixed it!
Some, not all.
Sam Walton was well known for driving himself around town in a 20 year old pick up.
washing? as in with soap and water? oops.
Washing clothes with a high quality washing machine helps clothes to last longer.
Modern washing machines are so focused on saving water and energy, that they end up being rougher on clothes, so that clothes have to be replaced sooner.
Ooops.
My 45-year-old heavy-duty Simpson washing machine… still going strong.
Only had to replace the timing mechanism once… so far. 🙂
How are they rougher? My fairly new top loader seems anemic compared to the ancient Herculean one it replaced. Swoosh swoosh stop, swoosh swoosh stop, etc. Saving electricity but taking a lot longer.
Front loaders don’t even have an agitator, they just let the clothing flop around on itself. Got to be better than an agitator wringing the clothes to death.
“Swoosh swoosh stop, swoosh swoosh stop, etc.”
I think that’s what I was calling “funny noises” in my post just above.
My daughter has a washing machine that sounds like that. Every time I hear it, I think to myself: “What is that doing”? I still don’t know.
Yes exactly. My front loader takes a min of a hour to flop the clothes around. My sisters top loader from 40 years ago takes 20 minutes for a cycle.
Using less water, means the machine has to be more forceful when it pushes that water through the clothes.
Hoping you have finished your breakfast.
But a favourite of mine are the modern WCs, designed to minimise water use, that you have to flush twice or three times to finish the job.
I hate those water-saving toilets.
I have a few of the older-type toilets and I plan to hang on to them. 🙂
And the machines will be replaced much sooner.
Washing clothes is one thing but drying them is another.
Written by a moron. Clothes dryers became common when middle class families had to send the WIVES to work so they could pay the ever increasing taxes caused by, in the US, the Vietnam war and Johnsons “great society” welfare programs.
Once there was no longer a “homemaker” at home, who actually had the time to hang and unhang clothes?
Ah, yes, Wally and the Beaver were left to their own devices because June had to install rivets at the Huey factory. The reality is that all most all of the “labor saving” devices that have been lugged into the home were designed as a huge percentage of the “consumer” economy. When they were offered for sale it was to save the labor of women, while Ward still had to slave away at whatever it was he did for a living. Idiot husbands somehow felt that giving their wives the free time to watch television and chat on the phone was doing a favor for Mommy. Why would any rational man care if his wife had to actually do some work around the house? That did give them the time to enter the work force, hold down the wages of men, and concoct feminist theories of oppression, so there is that. Since taxes are based on wages, the wifey going to work doesn’t produce all that much additional income. But what really proves that you’ve banged your head against the wall too many times is the fact that single white males then and now have paid the highest tax rates while using the smallest amounts of government benefits, in addition to being cannon fodder in phony wars all over the world. They’re also shafted in child support cases, divorce custody and alimony actions and any other male-female conflicts. While the selective service continues to exist just in case and men between 18 and 25 are committing a felony if they don’t register for the draft, the presence of women in the military becomes greater every day. They don’t have to register with selective service and there’s no plans to ever draft them.
The fact is the dominance of women in society can be blamed on the state of Wyoming, the first one to enable women’s suffrage in , believe it or not, 1890. The Democrats have rejoiced in that precedent ever since, as it more than doubled their political influence.
Women in Kansas could vote in municipal elections in 1887.
Inexpensive electricity and appliances that run on it are what has freed women up to have careers. Sorry if some men object to that.
and effective contraception.
A career and 8 children aren’t especially compatible.
I used to help my mother hang clothes on a clothes line when I was a kid, and in later years I hung clothes outside to dry when my dryer broke, and I was broke.
Some modern washing machines make very strange noises. I’m sure it has something to do with saving water, and maybe electricity, but it doesn’t sound like a normal old-style washing machine to me.
The washing machine in my house doesn’t try to save water, it just agitates the clothes for a certain period of time, at a certain water level, spins them dry, and then it’s done.
Then I toss them in the dryer.
Typically these sententious pieces always rely on lavish use of the first person plural pronoun to disguise the inherent arrogance and priggishness:
100%
And the real intent of the article is for the writer to be able to afford another set of Manolo Blahnik pumps.
I like that word “sententious”. Gotta start using it.
Well when they use the plural, we should always say, YOU FIRST, and PROVE IT.
Sounds like Vincent declaring that government needs to prevent people from making decisions that he considers foolish.
Most of us peasants have always worn old clothes. It’s only the town bred middle classes who don’t.
They’re a bit slow in Australia ain’t they..
In my 35 years as full-time cow-herder/beef farmer, all my ‘workwear’ was 2nd hand, 3rd hand etc..
I wore the things till they literally fell apart, or ‘got shredded’
Barbed wire, chainsaws, angle grinders, red-hot exhausts, welders, rusty pocket-knoves, baler twine, hayseeds, prickly hedges, corrugated steel, concrete mixing, bitumastic paint, silicon sealants etc ‘don’t take prisoners‘
Even before Cow Poo makes a better/permanent dye-stuff than that mud they use from a Hawaiian volcano – just not quite so fashionable. sigh, I’n be sooooo rich if only….
Bless the budget range at many UK supermarkets, a new pair of jeans could be had, for a long time running, for about £4. T-shirts maybe £2ea of 2 for £3
Otherwise, Charity Shops were great places and oversize baggy jeans in great condition could be had for 50pence or £1 a pair
Likewise fleece jackets and waterproofs – stuff that cost £50++ in the Farmer’s Merchant shop could be had for £3 or less.
But the charity shops have latched on (and have done for a while now, wakey wakey Ms Rachel) – those oversize baggy jeans now cost more (£5, £6 or £7) in the charity shop than they did in the supermarket (£4) barely 4 years ago
and she calls herself a ‘researcher’……………….
There is actually, me on my Hobby Horse, a Very Real Problem with cotton.
It is especially that cotton, 2nd only to tobacco, is The Hungriest Plant on this Earth
Cotton demands extremely fertile soil and if it doesn’t get, immense amounts of artificial fert, irrigation and pesticide
Regardless and in its wake – it leaves desert.
And they are now growing that stuff on the Nile Delta = a place that has maintained its fertility for over 7 millennia.
By growing cotton there, it will become part of the surrounding desert in that many years – massively assisted by the Aswan Dam (and others)
People did used to have standards, morals and ethics = why the London based consulting firm originally asked to build that dam, refused.
Because of that issue and also that over ⅓rd of all the water that entered the resultant lake, would simply evaporate.
(The lake was so large in area but shallow in depth AND, it would thus quickly fill with silt)
At the time, they predicted utter catastrophe for that part of the world, even before the CO₂ Catastrophe was even a ‘twinkle in anyone’s eye‘
haha *knoves
Tell me Spellchecker and before I google (I won’t) – was is one of those?
I like that word- gonna use it too. But in a different way. I’ll define it as a “knave know it all”.
“If I wanted to live like a bum I’d find myself a cardboard box.”
“Wanted to…”
Enjoy the freedom to choose not to live that way, while it lasts.
Governments are working overtime to impoverish everyone in the name of Gaia.
Cardboard box?
You were lucky. We lived for three months in rolled-up newspaper in septic tank.
You ‘ad septic tank? Luxury!
No new clothes – shop at Goodwill – should be mandated at every campus in America where students are demanding action on global warming.
Unfortunately, when the college kids start going there- the prices shoot up. That happened at the Goodwill in the 5 college area around Amherst, Wokeachusetts. Prices doubled and trippled in just the past 5 years now that old clothes are fashionable on campus.
As with all climate alarmist idiotic demands, ignore them
Reminds me of Cheryl Crow’s proposal to put a limit on “how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting.”
“…the demands of a crisis.”
What crisis?
I understand we are never to waste one, but didn’t current generations ever hear the story of Chicken Little?!?
We may as well be making sacrifices to prevent an invasion of leprechauns.
The founder of Soylent (meal replacement drinks) thinks that washing and drying is too wasteful so he wears his clothes once and throws them out…
People who sit around all day posting on blog sites emit more carbon dioxide than decaying dead dogs run over by climate changers driving cars that they do not maintain well. All of which is a waste of all of our good time.
One of the problems with mass market inexpensive clothes is that they look crappy very quickly. To get the well worn look it is necessary to buy good quality in the first place. Otherwise you look like a “street person”.
NB, I remember my father darning his socks. I wonder if you can buy a darning egg anymore.
At Walmart.
I remember the tv series “The Real McCoys” about a poor farming family, where Grandpa, on Sunday, would wear what he called his “Sunday-go-to-meeting” socks, to church, the only socks he had without any holes in them.