Reading his complaint I was thinking, combustion engines will still be around, after all I see people driving steam powered antique autos almost every summer. But that doesn’t mean we should stay dependent on old, damaging tech for basic tasks

This is a really cool use of white rot fungus! I hadn’t read about this particular one being used for mycoremediation before but it makes sense - others (like oyster mushrooms) are capable of breaking down all sorts of long-chain polymers. It turns out the toolkits they’ve developed for breaking down stuff like tree lignin are versatile enough for lots of other stuff like dioxins. OSB (made from wood and glue) probably offers an interesting mix of materials for it to work through.

Edit: I added this to the writing community’s worldbuilding wiki page on solarpunk building materials.

Maybe they could make a mode where the electric vehicle UFO noise they make so you can hear them coming gets louder when you accelerate

We haven’t found the upper limit yet, but with more research funding we can get closer

The community chores category is really interesting! Do you remember what kinds of work would fall into that? Or have any in mind?

I completely agree! I have much the same sentiment in the section “The work people take on despite the conditions and poor pay”

So you can steer it with a ps4 controller?

Hydrogen could/can be done greenly but there’s a reason the oil and gas companies push it as the green option of choice when they’re not trying to stop any transition at all: hydrogen keeps them relevant longer - most of it is obtained and transported through their systems. They’d love if we spun our wheels investing in a precarious energy transition into a new tech on the promise that the generation of hydrogen will eventually become green - they can draw that out for years.

Electrific cars are still basically the same thing for auto companies - keeping the car relevant, but there’s value in the comparative mechanical simplicity and the fact that the electric transition has already made significant progress and is hurting oil and gas sales now.

Full agree that public transit would be a significant improvement, especially improvements in coverage area