The Los Angeles Times is on a roll. After spending a lot of time saying how great EVs are, now they keep pushing pieces saying EVs are bad (non-paywalled at Yahoo)
Commentary: Driving an EV does not make you pro-environment
When I started driving an electric vehicle in 2018, I became part of the problem.
Not for the reasons cited by EV critics during the recent heat wave, when the state asked that electric cars not be charged during peak demand. That prompted howls of “I told you so” from those who think the electrification of everything from home appliances to cars is a left-wing pipe dream, especially in light of California’s mandate requiring 100% of all new vehicle sales to be zero-emission by 2035.
Nor am I part of the problem because of the worries expressed ad nauseum by EV skeptics, few of which have much merit. (lots of that stuff – snip past it)
And that’s part of the problem. In the end, an electric car is still, well, a car — and mass car ownership has devastating environmental consequences beyond tailpipe emissions.
I became part of this car culture in 2018, after The Times moved from downtown L.A. to El Segundo. Until then I was a dedicated transit commuter and even held out for months after The Times’ relocation. But five hours a day on buses and trains eventually got to me, so I leased a Nissan Leaf.
See, all cars are bad. But, Paul Thornton never does say that he’s stopped driving his Leaf. Weird, that.
But electric vehicles, like gas-powered cars, require vast expanses of concrete and asphalt for automotive use. This paving over of entire regions has turned neighborhoods into heat sinks that soak up energy from the sun during the day and release it at night — not exactly what we want in an era of accelerating climate change.
That’s called the Urban Heat Island effect, and, while man caused, is not global and has nothing to do with greenhouse gases.
And electric vehicles, like gas-powered cars, force their drivers to sit in the same traffic jams as everyone else, often on freeways that required the bulldozing of long-established, minority communities to be built. In Downey, locals are fighting a highway expansion plan that would displace residents from more than 200 homes. I haven’t asked, but something tells me “yeah, but more electric cars” wouldn’t convince those residents to give up fighting for their homes.
Of course there’s a raaaaacist component.
And what kind of systemic change would that be? Build out a big public transit system (L.A. is trying), and make it free, reliable and safe. Subsidize the purchase of electric bikes, which make it easier to commute longer distances on devices that use considerably less power and road space than electric cars. Think more of what people in neighborhoods need than what people driving through those neighborhoods want.
But, not for Warmists like Paul. Just for the Other People.
1. It’s great that people make personal choices about what they drive and how they choose to live their lives. Too bad government won’t let them if they disagree with the fashionable left.
2. There are no zero emission vehicles other than bicycles. EVs just shift their emissions to a power plant. Windmills and solar farms just shift their emissions to the manufacturing sector. The Left demanded the US military consider the “fully burdened cost of energy” when evaluating now vehicles to buy. The Anti-Fossil fuel lobby should do the same thing to evaluate their own hair-brained schemes.
3. What ever happened to that scheme to paint all the roads white to reduce heat island effect? Did they give up because of Big Climate couldn’t make as much money if the temperatures didn’t rise?
Yes, society sometimes infringes on one’s “right” to always do as they please, when they please.
Why can’t Herb pee in his front yard? It both waters and fertilizes his azalea bushes. It cuts down on his water consumption and sewer usage. Stupid fashionable Left…
And mufflers. What right does the gubmint have to force me to drive a “quiet” vehicle. This is America, or at least it used to be.
And crystal meth. We manufacture crystal meth in the garage, safely. We even check the purity before we sell it near the high school. Yet, the gubmint would squelch my right to make a living.
Note how the Socialist from St Louis celebrates the government restricting our freedoms, and wants to see more of it.
Of course, us country folk can pee in the front yard, and I have!
The neoFascist from near Lexington, confuses license with freedom.
Of course societies restrict what we can do, but the neoFascist who wants to control the reproductive freedoms! of women, draws the line at restricting the freedom of patriots to spew polluting gases into the atmosphere.
Shouldn’t Herb also have the FREEDOM to pee in his front yard?
I’m pretty sure people in the big cities do lots of public pee-pee. And no one is cracking down on them for it. Maybe Jeff wants to switch his examples of government excess. Seat belts is still available. Or maybe those pesky laws against Murder and Rape. Oh, but it seems that if you are a Democrat, you can do those things too.
Jeff doesn’t see the difference between people living in communities deciding that sewage treatment is a good thing and they want some so they come up with a collective plan to pay for it, and some conservation activist a thousand miles away telling you that your toilet can only use 1.6 gallons to flush your toilet… even though you live in an area where water is so plentiful, it literally falls out of the sky. But let’s just keep putting up those straw men about ridiculous points no one is making.
Edgar gets triggered.
What Edgar misses is that most people also agree with efforts to address global warming, just as most people agree that abortion should be legal.
But no, Edgar imagines that communities get together to decide that pooping out back is unhealthy and pool their money to build a modern sewage collection system and treatment facility!! And what if Herb decides that pooping in the yard is also FREEDOM?
Edgar, living in a society requires restrictions of your rights to do any fuking thing you want. Tough. I want to outline my property with landmines. But nooo!
Edgar wants to be able to purchase anything he desires and can afford!! The Leftist progressives won’t let him buy massive quantities of fuel oil and fertilizer! Heroin is hard to get. His granddaughter can’t buy him his Camels and Ten High from the 7-11. The Leftist progressive gubmint won’t allow Edgar to buy a new auto without a goldarn catalytic converter!
Dowd once again creates leftist logic from thin air.
Peeing on your grass, making drugs. These are crimes that pretty much everyone would agree with though peeing on your grass would be questionable at best.
There are a lot of differences between Making Crystal Meth and being forced to only drive an EV as opposed to a 20-year-old gasoline-driven automobile that cost me 600 buks from the guy down the street.
We all know that the leftist snowflakes all live in their concrete jungles and see the whole world as downtown NY CITY. They do not see the millions of square miles of Canada, USA and almost every country that is empty and filled with growing stuff. Sucking your co2 and growing like bean sprouts.
The infrastructure is not there and I believe that China is 1000 percent behind the drive to turn the USA into a loony bin by self-imploding while CHINA, INDIA and RUSSIA and most of the middle east and 2/3rds of the rest of the world’s countries all deemed developing just get to keep on burning co2 and polluting.
Your fuking nuts. You as in your cult of AGW NAZIS who would destroy the west because you have become guilty of the Stockholm syndrome.
Teach typed: But, not for Warmists like Paul. Just for the Other People.
Hardly fair. Mr Thornton had been a long-term user of mass transit sacrificing his time and comfort to not pollute the air as much as you.
Said Mr Thornton: I became part of this car culture in 2018, after The Times moved from downtown L.A. to El Segundo. Until then I was a dedicated transit commuter and even held out for months after The Times’ relocation. But five hours a day on buses and trains eventually got to me, so I leased a Nissan Leaf.
Dear Elwood:
The problem is that not everyone can, or wants to, live in a dense enough package to make mass transit feasible.
The problem is that not very many people can afford to lease or purchase an EV. Which, of course, subject EV would just moves those old meanie gases to the electric producing power plant and the manufacturing plant along with the digging/refining/storing of the rare earth materials needed for the batteries.
It is called TANSTAAFL…. There aint no such thing as a free lunch. (Robert Heinlein – CIRCA 1952)
If we assume that the problem exists and will not correct itself, then it appears that solutions are needed that won’t require killing off two thirds of the population and returning to a hunter gatherer society. A few of these would be….in no particular order….
Planting more trees
Capturing and storing CO2 as it is produced
Building levees and sea walls as needed
Developing grains and other plants that thrive on less water and more heat
Moving farming from area to area based on the new environment
Building nuclear power plants
Perfecting cold fusion
Hydrogen as a fuel
Hydro power
Note that EV’s, solar panels and wind mills are not included as they are net contributors with EOL’s that render them impractical.
That will require an educated population that thrives on engineering and change, not an uneducated population that thrives on women’s studies and hatred.
I confess that I am concerned that we won’t get there.
Lewis,
But since global warming is not a problem why do anything at all?
Most of those options will be used.
Dear Elwood:
No, they are not. The emphasis is on shutting down petro usage.
I have read that there are more forests now than ever, maybe not the old growth kind that look nice in pictures, but in acreage.
Not sure about CO2 capture. There is evidence the co2 level still hasn’t recovered from the last ice age, when it was so low surface plant life could have gone extinct.
On levees and sea walls, you’ll be fighting conservationists over habitat destruction.
Cold Fusion? I’m not convinced it’s real. Hot fusion, sure, but it’s been a decade away for 70 years.
Hydrogen as a fuel, is just a variation on the battery problem. It takes energy to produce hydrogen. More than you get from burning it or running it into a fuel cell.
With Hydro, I’d suggest most of the practical sites are already in production. And conservationists will fight you all the way.
I wouldn’t even mind this if our “elites” would just stop volunteering MY part of the population to go first.
I wish I had the hand lotion (for all the wringing) and hair shirt concession for the lefties. Everything is crap in their view. An endless sucession of idiotic causes and pointless solutions. So much so that the rare legitimate issue gets overlooked.