this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
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15% sounds like a great chunk to reduce.
Except that 15% isn't nearly enough to even really make a dent into climate change as a whole, and there is no way in the near foreseeable future to get anywhere near "nobody uses cars or anything that causes co2 emissions to move around."
Even if everyone swapped to electric cars or alternative methods of transport asap, which would cause a huge spike in emissions from their manufacturing (~twice of an ICE car) and all the infrastructure work required to handle their charging and all the extra maintenance of roads required from having vehicles two to three times as heavy as most ICE cars run on them, let's assume we'd get a reduction of 50% for personal transport - you've just spend an absurd amount of money and effort to reduce the overall emissions by 7.5%.
If 7.5% reduction is the goal that would be much cheaper, easier and faster to carve out of the energy sector, which currently accounts for around 70% of total co2 because majority of it is still made using fossil fuels.
We need to do it eventually, sure, and everyone who can afford to get an electric car should do so, but it's like tackling plastic pollution by removing disposable straws and forks instead of concentrating on the massive amounts used by manufacturing sector - visible and gives everyone a nice fuzzy feeling they are doing something, while not actually achieving much. A good cause, but not the most pressing one by far.
15% is a significant dent. It's 15%! Even half of that is significant. And I'd sooner say we transition to encouraging just about any other kind of transit via our city and infrastructure design (efforts are ongoing, so it's not like no progress has been made) rather than just encouraging everyone to switch to an electric vehicle, but there are all kinds of benefits to restricting vehicle traffic in city centers besides climate change too, probably helping them to sell this policy. It's still a reduction that helps climate change, but it's one of those ones like straws and plastic bags that are much easier to legislate even if it's not the largest reduction that could be made. I guess I just disagree that anything other than the largest slices of the pie are worth putting any focus on, because if it was easy to reduce those large slices of the pie, we'd have done it. Even those large slices can probably be broken up into smaller slices, of which some may be easy to deal with.
Principally agree. If we want to make a dent we need to be going into carbon capture mode - as most likely we’re already seeing cascading effects from the emissions already caused. Permafrost melting and releasing methane, the ocean warming up and holding less CO2.
But the numbers you use are horrid.
The average EV weighs maybe around 300 kg more than a comparable fossil car. Sure, the Hummer EV weighs a fuckton, but a regular Hummer ICE isn’t exactly a Lotus either.
The other negative trend in weight is the SUV-ification of society, and if you swap a Civic for an iX you get double padding.
Lifetime emissions cast a much bigger shadow than production emissions and most EV’s are climate positive one year in (average driving length, average electricity mix).
All of that said; don’t buy an EV to save the planet. Buy an EV because it’s a better car and better for your wallet. Depending on a multitude of factors these may not hold true for you yet, and you should probably just keep driving what you drive.
People focus way too much on the downsides of EV’s like charging infrastructure issues or waiting to charge.
All vehicles have tradeoffs and just because you’re used to filling petrol doesn’t mean it’s a pleasant activity. I’ve spent way too much time freezing at the petrol pump in the winter.
I actually did the math and found I’ve been spending way too much time at the petrol pumps. Driving electric I plug in at home. Takes a few seconds just like plugging in your phone.
Going out for petrol takes ten minutes. Driving on trips my bladder is still the weakest link, but every now and then charging adds a few minutes here and there, sometimes more.
Estimated net average time savings per year over the last four years is about 3-4 hours driving electric instead of ICE. That includes an hour less filling in freezing conditions.
But I digress.
TLDR; Climate is fucked, but EV’s can be good fun. Don’t feel obliged to buy one just yet, wait until it makes sense.