The electric cars are supposed to be religious. All of the companies are going electric. They are not effective at changing climate. We should focus on something else.
The planet will not be saved from climate change.
Electric cars look great in your driveway, but they are also a sign of a bigger problem: a consumer and car-based approach to addressing transportation’s climate impacts. They are an ineffectual one.
US carbon emissions come from transportation-related carbon emissions.
29% of the US’s carbon emissions come from transportation-related carbon emissions. The US needs to cut transportation emissions to meet the Paris Climate accords goal. The long-standing trend is that we have failed to make a dent in our transportation-related emissions for the past 15 years, despite the temporary lowering of some emissions in 2020.
If we don’t address climate change and air pollution from gas vehicles, what will happen? Mass species die off, increasing natural disasters, destruction of our fisheries, horrible air pollution, wars over water are just some of the problems we have.
It’s clear that we need to cut emissions from cars by taking them off the roads as quickly as possible. The solution has been popular for this. Electric cars do not go far enough.
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The problem with the car company is that they don’t want to find the best solution to the climate crisis.
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Electric cars have a problem called carbon lock-in.
The biggest problem is carbon-lock in that when we spend to build something like a power plant or an electric car, the economics and sociology of the new production incentives continued operations. After making significant investments in a solution, companies and governments don’t want to switch to a better solution immediately, and they pay off those investments over time.
With manufacturing lines for cars, new power plants, or oil pipelines, there are also jobs associated with new facilities, and this complicates shutting down such efforts due to economic and social ties.
Mass retrofits to electric cars are hard to move on from due to this. The sunk cost of an electric car is the same as the sunk cost of a gas car for a family to purchase. Even if we stop investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure, the investments we’ve already made will push us past the goals of the Paris climate agreement. We need to rethink the systems we use to address the climate crisis and other issues.
Reading clean energy won’t end war.
The massive investment in electric vehicles could be better spent on other solutions, such as building mass transit and changing construction practices to increase density, which would enable walkability and micro mobility options.
We cannot continue to be locked into a car-based system.
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More than one billion vehicles are in operation in the world today.
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Changing to electric vehicles has Logistical Challenges.
Electric vehicles are the key solution to our climate crisis, but they are not the only problem. Since the 1970s, the number of vehicles operating in the world has doubled every 20 years or so. It’s not feasible in many countries to swap out current vehicles for electric ones. Electric cars make up a small percentage of new car sales.
The electric cars won’t save us.
They don’t want you to know that electric vehicles won’t solve the ecological problems that come from transportation. The car companies want you to believe they will give you tax credits and incentives for buying electric cars. When it comes to space in our cities, cars are inefficient and electric vehicles aren’t fast enough to solve our carbon emissions challenge.
We need to act quickly with the second warmest year on record. Electric vehicles emit more than eight metric tons of CO2 in manufacturing and production and an additional two metric tons of CO2 per year based on the energy mix used for electricity generation. Environmental and human rights concerns include child slavery, massive water usage, pollution, and more.
In search of a cleaner world, with Isabel Hilton, Chris Huhne, Mike Berners Lee, and LierreKeith.
Not only that, the wheels of electric cars have the same disastrous impacts as gas cars: the particulate matter from car wheels is spreading throughout the environment and killing fish and other wildlife.
With less than a decade to reduce carbon emissions to 50% of our yearly emissions, electrics cars won’t get us close enough even if we dramatically increase our electric vehicle production and immediately switch to electric vehicles. We will lock-in a level of carbon emissions that is unsustainable as personal vehicles are sold across the world.
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There are a lot of other options.
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Climate crisis can be fixed with sustainable urban environments, micro mobility and mass transit.
In order to emit less carbon and cut down on forests, dense urban cities need to develop massive efficiencies in transportation, warehousing, and housing. It will take up a lot of urban space if everyone has an electric car. In urban environments where the majority of the world’s population lives, there are plenty of other greener, more sustainable options.
Half of all car trips in the US are under three miles and can be replaced with scooters and bikes, according to research. If you don’t want to get sweaty before a business meeting, or if you can’t or don’t want to put in the effort, e- bikes are a great option.
Urban environments allow us to use mass transit with buses, rail, and subway systems, alleviating the need for cars. The public health benefits of avoiding car accidents is one of the leading causes of death in the United States.
Is the good news? It makes sense to get ourselves off fossil fuels.
It pays to know that getting cars off the road will pay off in the long run. The air pollution from gas vehicles is more harmful to the environment than the cost of transitioning to alternative transportation options. Researchers have realized that the problem of air pollution is very serious. At the August 5th, 2020 hearing of the US House Committee on Oversight and Reform, Drew Shindell, Nicholas professor of earth science at Duke University, laid out the numbers over the next 50 years, keeping to the 2
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Benefits to the US from improved health and labor are more than the cost of the energy transition.
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According to David Roberts, all of those prevented deaths, illness, and lost productivity adds up to huge savings for the US.
More than $37 trillion is the value of the avoided deaths.
The avoided health care spending is $37 billion.
The increase in labor productivity is worth more than $75 billion.
The benefits to the US from improved health and labor are much larger than the cost of the energy transition.
The air quality benefits alone are enough to pay for the energy transition as clean energy has gotten so cheap. Even if the United States were to get rid of fossil fuels and the benefits of avoiding global warming were not realized, the air quality benefits would still be paid for.
The United States met the zero-emissions standards of the Paris Climate Accords, but the rest of the world continued with their policies. Shindell said that US action alone would bring us more than two-thirds of the health benefits of worldwide action over the next 15 years.
It is clear that we need to get rid of fossil fuels in order to save lives and money.
A sustainable future can be built by us.
We aren’t going to save ourselves alone by using electric cars. The truth is that we have to change our transportation model completely and move away from a car-centered approach to transit to achieve better health outcomes and combat climate change. Electric cars are better for the environment than gas cars, but they are still bad for the environment in other ways.
SteveKeen wrote about what economists think about climate change.
We won’t be able to meet our climate and space needs if we continue to sprawl. We will damage our environment by getting rid of green space for single- family housing, cutting down trees that are doing important work, and poisoning our rivers and streams with heavy metals found in car tires.
We need more efficient transportation forms to be prioritized so that we can move people faster and with less carbon emissions. Rail, both high-speed and in-city light rail, is an essential part of this equation: buses, micromobility technologies, and increased biking and walking through dense, connected neighborhoods.
The United States could be a better place to live if we stopped using fossil fuels. To have a thriving economy we need to sacrifice the planet according to companies and politicians. The truth is that we can switch to a sustainable and just green economy. If we are willing to make changes, the future is bright.