America has lots of room compared to the rest of the world (no issue of overcrowding) and we have a slight demographic issue with too many retirees and the associated social security payments.
In a more general sense, it is because we want America to remain a strong vibrant country. That small dip in your paycheck today ensures that your child will live in a great economy.
Routinely the best and the brightest of foreign nations come to the United States. We get the cream of the crop. They come here, build, reinvigorate, and rejuvenate. They form dynamic networks allowing the US to sit in a privileged seat in the center.
Does America produce enough smart, dynamic people? Sure – why not. Can you ever have too many smart, dynamic people? No. Study and study has shown that immigrants contribute more than they take.
Hispanics are less of a mixed bag than you think. Older Hispanics tend to be mixed with a strong influence on where they came from. Young Hispanics skew heavily democratic. And it is the young Hispanics that is the faster growing group. As a Republican, I am very sad at how the Republican leadership (in particular the last presidential primary) are wooing the older white voters with the boggy man of illegal immigrants.
I am for increasing immigration and immigration reform but this remark is off base.
Most illegal immigrants are drawn to America for its economic opportunities and are not seeking asylum due to prosecution from back home (political, religious, etc.).
Because you are now touching on one of the more interesting issues / intractable issues when it comes to closing the "gender gap". IIRC women who have the same skills and job experiences as their male counterparts earn 95% of what they earn. The reasons why women earn far less than males is that they tend to choose careers which have a better work / life balance.
You can take 5 years off from being a HR person and you skills won't be out of date. Harder to say for a engineer. A saw one study that women who graduated from law programs had lower average wages than their male counterparts not because they were women but because of what type of law their practiced. Family law pays less than corporate law but offers better work / balance than corporate law. Women tend to pile into family law. Those women who go into corporate law earn about the same as males. The studies did adjust for the school and rank where they graduated.
In addition, because women tend to pick these types of jobs one has many women pilling into the same workspace depressing wages. High supply of applicants and a fixed demand. Males have a much wider dispersion in careers chosen.
This is why HR departments tend to be stuffed with women.
Amazon tends to be tight lipped on they actually will make money on new things (and they like getting into new things) but I would guess
Delivery: Amazon is slowly / experientially pushing into delivering goods for the last mile. They are building out their delivery service for same day delivery of many goods. Here may be another way to squeeze value out of their delivery trucks.
Amazon Prime / Fire table & phone service: Less sure exactly how this would make money, but in general making their services a bit more sticky, taking a deeper peek into consumer wallets, etc.
Maybe. The point of a carbon tax is to wring out the largest effect at the lowest cost. This leads to what the correct carbon tax should be. Set the tax too low and not much will happen. Crank it up and you will keep on insulating until that point – ignoring other factors such as poorly designed insulation can lead to interior air quality problems. The carbon tax sets the marginal rate on insulation, solar panels, etc.
The cost of carbon sequestering has been suggested as a logical upper end. I doubt if we can successfully do carbon capture on an industrial scale, but if we could then yes.
Because we don't care how much emissions that your TV or heater makes. We care about total emissions. It does not matter if we reduce emissions form one source or the other – just that total sources are reduced.
Assume you only have 2 choices. I could spend $40 for solar cells to generate electricity reduce the carbon emissions from your TV. I could spend $20 to insulate your home and reduce the amount of natural gas you need to heat your home. From an environmental viewpoint they both do the same thing. The rational thing to do is keep throwing on insulation on your home until the marginal benefits decrease to $40 a ton. Then you switch to putting on solar cells.
Because there are not enough wires today. One should not put the cart before the horse.
And at 7% per 4k miles (if it were only that easy – in practice it is very difficult to do) that push other solutions, such as wind and increased efficiency, ahead of solar.
Or I could install $40 in insulation, cut 2 tons, and put $20 in my pocket.
Or maybe that $20 subsidy could be better spent on health or education?
Or I could install $60 in insulatoin and cut 3 tons.
Solar tends to be a feel good solution rather than the most effective solution. (And at this point I feel like I am overselling my case. There are cases where solar will win but that is part of the beauty of a carbon tax – you get the most efficient solution.)
No, they receive subsides. Can you tell me the right tax scheme for coal, nuclear, wind, electric cars, etc.? I have mentioned this in this thread that carbon taxes are the right way to go. It covers all sides of the issues in the most efficient manner.
Regarding your statement about solar not cutting down on any CO2 emissions, I dont even know where to begin its so incredibly wrong.
Sadly for Germany it is spot on. Solar is variable and the backup is coal. It is fixable. Natural gas can be spun up faster than coal, the energy grid could be upgraded, storage could be added, etc. But until these fixes are put in investing in solar makes no sense.
before or after you add int he cost from illness caused by pollution? Before or after CO2 impacts?
After. And the costs get worse when you start factoring in capital costs, opportunity costs, etc.
A) there are solar generation technics for 24/7 base load power.
True, but there are cheaper and better ways of reaching those goals.
B) Even if you use it is still cuts down on the amount of coal. by about 22GW yes, but it still less then f the spun up to meet the demand that solar eliminated.
No. Germany and Hawaii are special cases where wind and solar have hit saturation points. In these cases 1. The renewables are a large percentage of supply 2. Are variable 3. Coal is the backup, which takes hours to cycle up and down. Germany last year had to pay wind and solar producers to go off line because their electrical grid could not shuffle the power around and they could not bring down the coal generators fast enough. A rare case put it does nicely frame the issue.
What the hell is wrong with you?
I hate people wasting money on things that look good rather than things that are good.
For nuclear plants, the fuel is the cheap part. An Germany can buy fuel from a wide variety of sources. If it dislikes the ethics or warmongering of one supplier of uranium to can go to another. It does not have that option for natural gas – they must buy the bulk from Russia.
But why? They are low hanging and high hanging fruit. You pick some of the low hanging fruit, life is good. Then you start picking some of the high hanging fruit while leaving other low hanging fruit on the branch. Why waste energy on second rate solutions when there are first rate ones still available?
Ummm. It is about $20 per ton. Yes, it costs thousands to do. Over 10 years it saves thousands of tons of carbon. Cost in $ / Tons in Carbon saved = 20 dollars per ton (about). For newish homes yes it is expensive, probably above $20. For oldish homes way below $20 – clear savings to be had here. For homes being built, it would be cheaper to up the insulation than to add solar cells except for the subsides built into the solar cells. If a carbon tax was in play I am sure we would see more new construction cavity walls and other such things.
This is what makes me grind my teeth. Society is paying extra money (via taxes and subsidies) for second rate solutions because of some vague notion of being "green."
Increased energy usage implies, but does not mean, increased carbon emissions. Increased efficiency can be applied either to the production (e.g. solar cells) or use (e.g. energy efficiency). Increasing either does not automatically reduce carbon emission. I can point to places in Africa where installing a few simple solar cells has drastically increased productivity, raising income where people can buy motorcycles and cars – dramatically increasing population.
So neither choice offers a magic bullet which is where a carbon tax comes into play. A carbon tax would help optimize the mixture of production and consumption improvements that need to be made.
I would be intrested to know where you got those figures and how they break down.
As a side note I will mention that southern states uses more electricity than the northern states (think air conditioning) but use less natural gas / oil (think heating) so the north actually uses a bit more energy. We can parse these figures even more finally but I still suspect that even if Germany is more energy efficient than America, Germany could probably wring more benefits though improved efficiency than with more solar cells using today's technology.
No, expensive is expensive when there are cheaper and better options available.
If I can cut a ton of carbon emissions by switching to solar for a $40 subsidy or by adding insulation to an attic for $20 why chose the more expensive option? Why not opt for more wind power or more efficient appliances? I have found that many Greens focus on feel good actions instead of focusing on the cold hard results. Actions (and money) is spent on nice sounding projects with mushy ill-defined goals and measurements.
In particular, why spend money subsidizing solar if adding more solar is not going to reduce carbon emissions or other issues with coal? Now you are just burring money for no good reasons. In Germany's case, it implies that money needs to be spent in other areas such as upgrading the power grid to efficiently use the solar and wind power that they already currently have.
This is one of the reasons why I advocate a carbon tax. Or, if you have a different concern, tax & regulate that.
Because you want to get the most bang for your buck. I can sympathize because I am in the same boat.
I live in the northern latitudes. In the winter I have high energy demands (some electrical heating) and very short periods of daylight. Assuming the storage issue was solved, I would still need to build a huge array that I would use for only 3 months of the year. During the summer 90% of the array would be idle. I am in a specialized case, but for the more general case in my area the numbers would be somewhere in the 50% to 75% range.
Solar power has large upfront costs so this is extremely wasteful in northern climates.
As for Germany being a large economy, what is your point? I have seen estimates that going aggressively green will cut 1 to 2 % off of GNP growth per year. In an era of 2 to 3% growth that is a huge cut.
Is it a good sign? Why? It is my understanding that Germany has passed the point where solar makes any sense.
Solar tends to be expensive in relation to other electrical sources. The only reason why German has so much solar is because of expensive subsides from the government - which I would argue could be spent better on improving the efficiencies on the user side..
Also, adding more solar won't cut down on C02 emissions. Solar power is variable and in Germany is backstopped by coal power plants. Coal power plants in standby mode still chomp though a fair bit of coal, so adding more solar is not going to help there.
Of course, all of what I am saying is based on how things are today. I hope and believe that tomorrow's technology will address these issues. But for today..
For a tax audit, Quicken et. al. only helps you a little. It is just a program with imputed numbers. Who is to say that the inputted numbers are valid? Normally you want original documentation.
There are expectations if you are running a business. Mileage forms, etc. Expect that if it is a ongoing business then the spouse / business partner would normally have access to the accounting system prior to death or would have access to the printed (or al least PDFed) year end documents that were generated. I mean you should not be preparing new tax reports for a tax audit - Those should be generated from the base data when the taxes and done.
Which kind of speaks to my point. From my personal experience, the spouse (usually the wife) is going to adopt a new accounting system that they are more comfortable with. And my definition of accounting systems run from custom enterprise jobbies to the shoe box variety. All they need at that point are the last statements to update their accounts. Rarely is there a strong need to have access to the old accounting system.
Quicken, and things like this, are good at handling internal flow data. How much am I spending on overpriced coffee drinks? What is my internal rate of return on investments? Etc. This data is most helpful for a continuous, ongoing business. The wife continues to run the personal finances; the business partner continues to run the business. However, this kind of implies that these people had access, and were using, Quicken prior to the death. So no change there.
On the other hand, I feel that the situation we are talking about represent "breaks" instead of "continuous" business. A new person enters the picture and inherits the assets. Normally they don't care what the deceased spent on coffee or what their old investments returns were. They might need prior knowledge of what is going on, but the normal course of action is for the new person to load the inhered data into their own accounting systems.
I think you are slightly off my point so let me try to restate. When I am talking about diesels, I am trying to compare diesels to other diesels.
As to your point, diesels tend to more durable then gas engines because they are simpler. Diesels tend to have higher compression ratios because it is the compression that ignites the fuel, not sparkplugs. However one has real problems when the diesels engine can no longer hold pressure.
Within diesels engines, diesels with lower compression ratios tend to last longer than diesels with higher compression ratios. The durability of 1950s John Deere tractors are legendary, big bores and low compression, less stress on the block. They can run for decades. It is a simple, robust design. Newer tractors have higher compression ratios so more power and higher efficiency. However this causes more stress and causes more pressure leaks, ergo their engines last for a shorter time.
Simple engineering. Higher compression ratios means that the engine is running hotter and under more stress, ergo shorter life spans all things being equal.
You are probably thinking of current day where they have mastered the engineering. If you look at the Japanese auto manufactures you can see small steady increases in engineering, fuel economy and higher engine economy. They were selling cheap, dependable, fuel efficient cars – they had to master the engineering. Contract that to the North American auto manufactures which tried to increase engine compression – lots of issues there.
That being said, I would argue that today's highly reliable high compression engines have a shorter life span than GM's late 60s 455 cu in V/8. Very low compression, very low stress, very long lifespan. And it could be easily fixed. Overall carbon emissions are probably higher overall than a comparable car today even factoring in the longer time span. As they said, it "could pass anything on the highway expect a gas station".
Another good place is to look diesel engines. Once they lose the ability to retain compress it is time to junk them – not much can be done to rehabilitee them. Go on any farm and you can probably find a 1950s era 2 piston diesel tractor still running on the place. Once again those engines run on very low compression.
Let us your example of timing belts. One can use a chain, less prone to mechanical failure but it is heavier and takes up more room – both affecting fuel efficient. Or one can use a belt, which is basically a glorified rubber band, which is lighter, smaller, but more prone to mechanical failure. And because the current engine compartment is so compact on today's cars it is a real bugger to replace in most cars.
Just one example of many. My personal favorite is engine compression. All things being equal, the higher the compression, the better the fuel mileage and the shorter the life of engine.
There are trade-offs. If you want to increase durability you need to use larger, less efficient parts or more expensive parts. Of course, using more expensive parts to increase durability my not decrease maintenance costs. Increasing durability does not automatically reduce total operating costs or total carbon emissions.
Slashdot Mirror
Why does the US need a population infusion?
America has lots of room compared to the rest of the world (no issue of overcrowding) and we have a slight demographic issue with too many retirees and the associated social security payments.
In a more general sense, it is because we want America to remain a strong vibrant country. That small dip in your paycheck today ensures that your child will live in a great economy.
Routinely the best and the brightest of foreign nations come to the United States. We get the cream of the crop. They come here, build, reinvigorate, and rejuvenate. They form dynamic networks allowing the US to sit in a privileged seat in the center.
Does America produce enough smart, dynamic people? Sure – why not. Can you ever have too many smart, dynamic people? No. Study and study has shown that immigrants contribute more than they take.
Hispanics are less of a mixed bag than you think. Older Hispanics tend to be mixed with a strong influence on where they came from. Young Hispanics skew heavily democratic. And it is the young Hispanics that is the faster growing group. As a Republican, I am very sad at how the Republican leadership (in particular the last presidential primary) are wooing the older white voters with the boggy man of illegal immigrants.
I am for increasing immigration and immigration reform but this remark is off base.
Most illegal immigrants are drawn to America for its economic opportunities and are not seeking asylum due to prosecution from back home (political, religious, etc.).
Because you are now touching on one of the more interesting issues / intractable issues when it comes to closing the "gender gap". IIRC women who have the same skills and job experiences as their male counterparts earn 95% of what they earn. The reasons why women earn far less than males is that they tend to choose careers which have a better work / life balance.
You can take 5 years off from being a HR person and you skills won't be out of date. Harder to say for a engineer. A saw one study that women who graduated from law programs had lower average wages than their male counterparts not because they were women but because of what type of law their practiced. Family law pays less than corporate law but offers better work / balance than corporate law. Women tend to pile into family law. Those women who go into corporate law earn about the same as males. The studies did adjust for the school and rank where they graduated.
In addition, because women tend to pick these types of jobs one has many women pilling into the same workspace depressing wages. High supply of applicants and a fixed demand. Males have a much wider dispersion in careers chosen.
This is why HR departments tend to be stuffed with women.
Amazon tends to be tight lipped on they actually will make money on new things (and they like getting into new things) but I would guess
Delivery: Amazon is slowly / experientially pushing into delivering goods for the last mile. They are building out their delivery service for same day delivery of many goods. Here may be another way to squeeze value out of their delivery trucks.
Amazon Prime / Fire table & phone service: Less sure exactly how this would make money, but in general making their services a bit more sticky, taking a deeper peek into consumer wallets, etc.
Maybe. The point of a carbon tax is to wring out the largest effect at the lowest cost. This leads to what the correct carbon tax should be. Set the tax too low and not much will happen. Crank it up and you will keep on insulating until that point – ignoring other factors such as poorly designed insulation can lead to interior air quality problems. The carbon tax sets the marginal rate on insulation, solar panels, etc.
The cost of carbon sequestering has been suggested as a logical upper end. I doubt if we can successfully do carbon capture on an industrial scale, but if we could then yes.
Because we don't care how much emissions that your TV or heater makes. We care about total emissions. It does not matter if we reduce emissions form one source or the other – just that total sources are reduced.
Assume you only have 2 choices. I could spend $40 for solar cells to generate electricity reduce the carbon emissions from your TV. I could spend $20 to insulate your home and reduce the amount of natural gas you need to heat your home. From an environmental viewpoint they both do the same thing. The rational thing to do is keep throwing on insulation on your home until the marginal benefits decrease to $40 a ton. Then you switch to putting on solar cells.
Because there are not enough wires today. One should not put the cart before the horse.
And at 7% per 4k miles (if it were only that easy – in practice it is very difficult to do) that push other solutions, such as wind and increased efficiency, ahead of solar.
Or I could install $40 in insulation, cut 2 tons, and put $20 in my pocket.
Or maybe that $20 subsidy could be better spent on health or education?
Or I could install $60 in insulatoin and cut 3 tons.
Solar tends to be a feel good solution rather than the most effective solution. (And at this point I feel like I am overselling my case. There are cases where solar will win but that is part of the beauty of a carbon tax – you get the most efficient solution.)
No, they receive subsides. Can you tell me the right tax scheme for coal, nuclear, wind, electric cars, etc.? I have mentioned this in this thread that carbon taxes are the right way to go. It covers all sides of the issues in the most efficient manner.
Regarding your statement about solar not cutting down on any CO2 emissions, I dont even know where to begin its so incredibly wrong.
Sadly for Germany it is spot on. Solar is variable and the backup is coal. It is fixable. Natural gas can be spun up faster than coal, the energy grid could be upgraded, storage could be added, etc. But until these fixes are put in investing in solar makes no sense.
before or after you add int he cost from illness caused by pollution? Before or after CO2 impacts?
After. And the costs get worse when you start factoring in capital costs, opportunity costs, etc.
A) there are solar generation technics for 24/7 base load power.
True, but there are cheaper and better ways of reaching those goals.
B) Even if you use it is still cuts down on the amount of coal. by about 22GW yes, but it still less then f the spun up to meet the demand that solar eliminated.
No. Germany and Hawaii are special cases where wind and solar have hit saturation points. In these cases
1. The renewables are a large percentage of supply
2. Are variable
3. Coal is the backup, which takes hours to cycle up and down.
Germany last year had to pay wind and solar producers to go off line because their electrical grid could not shuffle the power around and they could not bring down the coal generators fast enough. A rare case put it does nicely frame the issue.
What the hell is wrong with you?
I hate people wasting money on things that look good rather than things that are good.
For nuclear plants, the fuel is the cheap part. An Germany can buy fuel from a wide variety of sources. If it dislikes the ethics or warmongering of one supplier of uranium to can go to another. It does not have that option for natural gas – they must buy the bulk from Russia.
But why? They are low hanging and high hanging fruit. You pick some of the low hanging fruit, life is good. Then you start picking some of the high hanging fruit while leaving other low hanging fruit on the branch. Why waste energy on second rate solutions when there are first rate ones still available?
Ummm. It is about $20 per ton. Yes, it costs thousands to do. Over 10 years it saves thousands of tons of carbon. Cost in $ / Tons in Carbon saved = 20 dollars per ton (about). For newish homes yes it is expensive, probably above $20. For oldish homes way below $20 – clear savings to be had here. For homes being built, it would be cheaper to up the insulation than to add solar cells except for the subsides built into the solar cells. If a carbon tax was in play I am sure we would see more new construction cavity walls and other such things.
This is what makes me grind my teeth. Society is paying extra money (via taxes and subsidies) for second rate solutions because of some vague notion of being "green."
I think you missed my point on the carbon tax. Right? Let's unpack your argument which has some good points.
Increased efficiency => increased productivity => Increased GNP => Increased Energy Usage.
Increased energy usage implies, but does not mean, increased carbon emissions. Increased efficiency can be applied either to the production (e.g. solar cells) or use (e.g. energy efficiency). Increasing either does not automatically reduce carbon emission. I can point to places in Africa where installing a few simple solar cells has drastically increased productivity, raising income where people can buy motorcycles and cars – dramatically increasing population.
So neither choice offers a magic bullet which is where a carbon tax comes into play. A carbon tax would help optimize the mixture of production and consumption improvements that need to be made.
I would be intrested to know where you got those figures and how they break down.
As a side note I will mention that southern states uses more electricity than the northern states (think air conditioning) but use less natural gas / oil (think heating) so the north actually uses a bit more energy. We can parse these figures even more finally but I still suspect that even if Germany is more energy efficient than America, Germany could probably wring more benefits though improved efficiency than with more solar cells using today's technology.
No, expensive is expensive when there are cheaper and better options available.
If I can cut a ton of carbon emissions by switching to solar for a $40 subsidy or by adding insulation to an attic for $20 why chose the more expensive option? Why not opt for more wind power or more efficient appliances? I have found that many Greens focus on feel good actions instead of focusing on the cold hard results. Actions (and money) is spent on nice sounding projects with mushy ill-defined goals and measurements.
In particular, why spend money subsidizing solar if adding more solar is not going to reduce carbon emissions or other issues with coal? Now you are just burring money for no good reasons. In Germany's case, it implies that money needs to be spent in other areas such as upgrading the power grid to efficiently use the solar and wind power that they already currently have.
This is one of the reasons why I advocate a carbon tax. Or, if you have a different concern, tax & regulate that.
Because you want to get the most bang for your buck. I can sympathize because I am in the same boat.
I live in the northern latitudes. In the winter I have high energy demands (some electrical heating) and very short periods of daylight. Assuming the storage issue was solved, I would still need to build a huge array that I would use for only 3 months of the year. During the summer 90% of the array would be idle. I am in a specialized case, but for the more general case in my area the numbers would be somewhere in the 50% to 75% range.
Solar power has large upfront costs so this is extremely wasteful in northern climates.
As for Germany being a large economy, what is your point? I have seen estimates that going aggressively green will cut 1 to 2 % off of GNP growth per year. In an era of 2 to 3% growth that is a huge cut.
Is it a good sign? Why? It is my understanding that Germany has passed the point where solar makes any sense.
Solar tends to be expensive in relation to other electrical sources. The only reason why German has so much solar is because of expensive subsides from the government - which I would argue could be spent better on improving the efficiencies on the user side..
Also, adding more solar won't cut down on C02 emissions. Solar power is variable and in Germany is backstopped by coal power plants. Coal power plants in standby mode still chomp though a fair bit of coal, so adding more solar is not going to help there.
Of course, all of what I am saying is based on how things are today. I hope and believe that tomorrow's technology will address these issues. But for today..
For a tax audit, Quicken et. al. only helps you a little. It is just a program with imputed numbers. Who is to say that the inputted numbers are valid? Normally you want original documentation.
There are expectations if you are running a business. Mileage forms, etc. Expect that if it is a ongoing business then the spouse / business partner would normally have access to the accounting system prior to death or would have access to the printed (or al least PDFed) year end documents that were generated. I mean you should not be preparing new tax reports for a tax audit - Those should be generated from the base data when the taxes and done.
Which kind of speaks to my point. From my personal experience, the spouse (usually the wife) is going to adopt a new accounting system that they are more comfortable with. And my definition of accounting systems run from custom enterprise jobbies to the shoe box variety. All they need at that point are the last statements to update their accounts. Rarely is there a strong need to have access to the old accounting system.
I would tend to doubt that.
Quicken, and things like this, are good at handling internal flow data. How much am I spending on overpriced coffee drinks? What is my internal rate of return on investments? Etc. This data is most helpful for a continuous, ongoing business. The wife continues to run the personal finances; the business partner continues to run the business. However, this kind of implies that these people had access, and were using, Quicken prior to the death. So no change there.
On the other hand, I feel that the situation we are talking about represent "breaks" instead of "continuous" business. A new person enters the picture and inherits the assets. Normally they don't care what the deceased spent on coffee or what their old investments returns were. They might need prior knowledge of what is going on, but the normal course of action is for the new person to load the inhered data into their own accounting systems.
I think you are slightly off my point so let me try to restate. When I am talking about diesels, I am trying to compare diesels to other diesels.
As to your point, diesels tend to more durable then gas engines because they are simpler. Diesels tend to have higher compression ratios because it is the compression that ignites the fuel, not sparkplugs. However one has real problems when the diesels engine can no longer hold pressure.
Within diesels engines, diesels with lower compression ratios tend to last longer than diesels with higher compression ratios. The durability of 1950s John Deere tractors are legendary, big bores and low compression, less stress on the block. They can run for decades. It is a simple, robust design. Newer tractors have higher compression ratios so more power and higher efficiency. However this causes more stress and causes more pressure leaks, ergo their engines last for a shorter time.
Simple engineering. Higher compression ratios means that the engine is running hotter and under more stress, ergo shorter life spans all things being equal.
You are probably thinking of current day where they have mastered the engineering. If you look at the Japanese auto manufactures you can see small steady increases in engineering, fuel economy and higher engine economy. They were selling cheap, dependable, fuel efficient cars – they had to master the engineering. Contract that to the North American auto manufactures which tried to increase engine compression – lots of issues there.
That being said, I would argue that today's highly reliable high compression engines have a shorter life span than GM's late 60s 455 cu in V/8. Very low compression, very low stress, very long lifespan. And it could be easily fixed. Overall carbon emissions are probably higher overall than a comparable car today even factoring in the longer time span. As they said, it "could pass anything on the highway expect a gas station".
Another good place is to look diesel engines. Once they lose the ability to retain compress it is time to junk them – not much can be done to rehabilitee them. Go on any farm and you can probably find a 1950s era 2 piston diesel tractor still running on the place. Once again those engines run on very low compression.
Let us your example of timing belts. One can use a chain, less prone to mechanical failure but it is heavier and takes up more room – both affecting fuel efficient. Or one can use a belt, which is basically a glorified rubber band, which is lighter, smaller, but more prone to mechanical failure. And because the current engine compartment is so compact on today's cars it is a real bugger to replace in most cars.
Just one example of many. My personal favorite is engine compression. All things being equal, the higher the compression, the better the fuel mileage and the shorter the life of engine.
There are trade-offs. If you want to increase durability you need to use larger, less efficient parts or more expensive parts. Of course, using more expensive parts to increase durability my not decrease maintenance costs. Increasing durability does not automatically reduce total operating costs or total carbon emissions.