They don’t address car dependancy
Some people got convinced that banning thermal personal vehicles was incompatible with the bigger picture goals. You can develop a 15min city and a public transport system while also banning thermal personal vehicles.
I don’t know what’s driving this misinformation campaign about electric vehicles “polluting more” or “polluting just as much” when it takes 5 minutes of googling to find 6 reputable sources disputing both these claims
Banning the sale of new thermal cars, motorcycles, vespas does help with climate change in the long run
Some people have taken it upon themselves to refuse some incremental improvements and it’s only leading to doing nothing
What is a thermal car?
An internal combustion engine (ICE) car, or in other terms one that burns fuel to generate motion.
OP should just say that then, no one fucking says “thermal car”
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
But EVs aren’t even good.
Compared to ICE? Yes, they are.
From what I’ve seen: EVs normally produce about half the carbon of regular cars, mostly from making the batteries. Switching fully to EVs would therefore reduce worldwide emissions by about 8%, compared to 16% by just getting rid of cars completely. EVs also don’t fix the societal problems of cars including sprawl and all of its related problems.
An ideal future would have no internal combustion engines and only EVs. But there would be a lot fewer of them, and preferably in a much smaller form factor.
As an unrelated side note, when I read ‘ICE’, the first thing that came to mind was the train. I’ve never even been to Germany…
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
And they shed even more microplastics into the environment because they’re heavier so the tires wear down faster :(
This is an obvious bad faith argument.
“Let’s keep burning fossil fuels as we go extinct from climate change cause I’m worried about the 0.00001% micro plastics that MIGHT be shed from an EV”
Uhh, you say .00001% that MIGHT? I think you mean: nearly twice as much because EV’s go through tires nearly twice as fast, and ABSOLUTELY ARE. Microplastics are shed from tires, I don’t know what makes you think they aren’t. All that tire tread that is now gone on your tires when they go “bald” didn’t just disappear, they shed into the air and the rain washes them down into streams.
Also fun fact, EV tire particles are even more toxic than regular tires. And regular tire particles are already one of the most toxic microplastics studied.
I work in a nano particle toxicology lab that has a pretty big focus on micro and nanoplaatics.
Respectfully, no one gives a fuck. Greenhouse gases are so much more important than microplastics, it’s not even a comparison.
While they don’t address it directly, they do provide a route to address it. The issue is a lot of governments are pushing electric cars, and washing their hands of the rest.
There are 3 issues with electric cars.
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They are cars - Obvious to most here, but better public transport can vastly improve the situation, regardless of how the car is powered.
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Batteries - Electric car batteries are far from perfect. Their range is reduced and they are heavier. There is also the issue of lithium, and/or other chemicals used in the batteries.
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Power source - An electric car is only as clean as its energy supply. Powering it from a coal power station is far worse than using renewables.
Counter to these however.
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Cars will still be needed, to some extent. Electric are the least worst option we have NOW. We no longer have time to wait for a better option, or find a perfect solution.
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Lithium can be recycled; we currently don’t, due to the small amounts, but this will change as economics adjust . Also, we are not actually that short of it, it’s just not be economically valuable enough to mine on a larger scale. Range can be adjusted as tech improves. We can also change how we operate. E.g. Combining out of town parking and charging with public transport options is an excellent way to get people using public transport on a large scale again, in an organic manner.
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Power wise, it’s easy to shift an electric car from fossil fuel to renewables. It’s very difficult to shift an ICE car. This is also something we should be doing far more anyhow (but no-one seems to be interested in improving the grid!). On a side note, even accounting for various losses. The sheer efficiency factor of a power station means it’s still better to burn oil to run an electric car, than to run the car directly on the oil.
Don’t get me wrong, the fixation on electric cars is dangerous, but they are still required as part of the solution. We just need to actually work on that solution. While the right, in politics, has a tendency to “circle the wagons” which causes a significant number of problems. The left has a tendency towards “circular firing squads”. We should all be careful not to help kill ideas and projects that pull in vaguely the right direction, even if it’s not exactly what we want.
Sir, you’re on “fuckcars”, get your measured reasonable response out of here. All that people want to hear is “cars bad”.
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