Pirate's Cove

They’re super excited to force Other People onto buses, trains, and bikes. Of course, one major thing missing is Michael Schneider, founder of Streets for All, explaining how he only uses mass transit and bikes (also available at Yahoo News not behind paywall)

Op-Ed: Think bigger. Switching to electric cars isn’t enough

It might feel like the easy solution — just replace your gas-guzzling SUV with an electric SUV, and if everyone does that, eventually we’ll solve climate change. You can see why California regulators decided last month that by 2035, all new cars sold in the state must be electric. After all, car exhaust is the single biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in California, so surely switching gas-powered cars to electric ones will make a huge dent in fighting climate change.

Except it doesn’t. For starters, electric cars still pollute. They don’t have tailpipe emissions, but the process of producing and transporting them creates pollution. According to the International Energy Agency, the average gas-powered car will create 41.9 tons of CO2 emissions from the point it’s manufactured until it’s retired, in contrast to 21.1 tons of CO2 from an EV. In other words, while the average EV will pollute about 50% less compared with a gas-powered car, it’s still highly polluting.

There’s also pollution, and other harms, that come before the manufacturing stage, especially in the intensifying global competition to procure rare earth materials (concentrated in China) for EV batteries. In the past, we have often been dependent on the Middle East for oil. Do we want to create a future in which we’re again dependent on countries that may not be aligned with our values for required materials for our transportation system?

In fairness, Michael is correct, however, we would be cutting out the smog produced from internal combustion engines. To hell with CO2, cleaner air would be nice, right? Remember how nice it was for air quality during lockdown? Still doesn’t mean you should be forced into an EV, though

The second issue is power capacity. During the first week in September, California faced a historic heat wave, and alerts were issued asking EV owners to not charge their vehicles during peak times. And this is at a time when only 1.9% of cars operating in California are EVs. What happens when that number is 5%? Or 20%? Without a dramatic increase in power production from clean sources, it won’t be possible to supply power to all the EVs without ramping up use of coal and natural gas for electricity generation, increasing emissions from fossil fuels.

So, wait, EVs aren’t the solution? Weird. Has he told People’s Republik of California governor Gavin Newsom and President Brandon?

If all cars were electric, we would still spend a disproportionate amount of money building and maintaining car infrastructure, with little left over to build world-class high-speed rail, bus or bike infrastructure inside and between our cities. We would still have outdated parking requirements for developers — which drive up the cost of housing and aggravate sprawl. And because EVs typically weigh more than their gas-powered counterparts, and heavier vehicles wear down the road faster, we will need to spend even more money on maintenance over the long term.

Electric cars aren’t a panacea to solve climate change. They can be part of the solution, but a myopic focus on electric cars as the solution prevents us from seeing so many other ideas. We need a future with fewer cars (electric or not) and much more public transit and bike usage. We need a complete rethink of how we use our public space, and better infrastructure so people can take short trips without using a car.

And there we go, the climate cult is already pushing away from EVs. At least for you peasants.

Read: Climate Cultists Already Advocating Moving On From EVs »