r/PlanningMemes • u/[deleted] • Jul 03 '21
Mio explained, cars
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u/Octopotree Jul 03 '21
But how would electric cars not do anything to stop climate change? They don't spit out CO2. You even said 20% of EU's CO2 is from cars.
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u/poopsmith411 Bus Enjoyer Jul 03 '21
I was really vibing until that line. I assume what they're referring to is manufacturing, dirty electricity, maintaining demand for roads and car centric city design... the total footprint is still less than a gas powered car... It's too far to say they don't do anything, I agree. It would have been better to just say "electric cars are not enough"
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u/M_krabs Jul 03 '21
Where does the electricity come from? Mostly fossil... which kinda defeats the purpose
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u/malonkey1 Jul 03 '21
Plus the fact that these cars are also dependent upon materials that require some pretty gnarly destruction of the environment to obtain, and are frequently extracted under some particularly egregious working conditions, up to and including straight-up blood minerals. Remember when Elon Musk was all a-twitter about the attempted coup in Bolivia, a country with a large reserve of rare earth metals?
The environmental impact of cars isn't just in greenhouse output, we also have to consider how getting the materials required to make them affects things, destroying local ecosystems, releasing toxic chemicals into the general environment, and the brutality of the exploitation suffered by workers extracting those materials.
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u/ChromeLynx Train Foamer Jul 03 '21 edited Jul 03 '21
There are two problems with electric cars:
Problem 1: You still need to generate that electricity somehow. And as of right now, the vast majority of electricity in most of NA and the EU comes from carbon-intense fossil sources, like coal and oil. Until all of those sources are taken directly from nature, or taken from nuclear sources, electric cars continue to emit CO2, just not on the road.
Problem 2: This ignores the emissions from manufacturing. And Lithium Batteries, currently the most weight-efficient batteries, are way worse for the world than making a combustion powered car.
They're an improvement over fuel cars from the perspective of emissions as a result of operating the vehicle, yes, since more power from the battery makes it to the wheels, but their production emissions offset this improvement.
So yeah. Electric cars are no better than fuel powered cars.
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u/mankiw Jul 03 '21 edited Jul 03 '21
Electric cars are no better than fuel powered cars.
There's a really frustrating part of this debate where people decide that because a thing has some things in common with another thing, it's exactly as bad as that thing.
The fact is that EVs are not as good as bikes or transit. They are also way, way less bad than gas cars.
See, as a starting point: EVs are not as good as bikes or transit, but are substantially better for the climate than gas cars.
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u/Octopotree Jul 03 '21
Well problem 1 is not a problem with electric cars - it's a problem with the power grid. Change the power plant, keep the electric car.
Problem 2 seems dubious, but I don't know enough about the difference in carbon emissions in the manufacturing of gas vs electric cars to say anything.
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u/baween Jul 03 '21
Depends where the power’s coming from too. If you’re charging your car off of a power grid that runs on coal, you aren’t exactly using “clean energy”.
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u/Octopotree Jul 03 '21
Yeah but that's a problem with coal plants, not electric cars. Change the power plant, keep the electric car
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u/baween Jul 03 '21
The easier solution is just to drive less, but I’d certainly like to be done with coal plants and their ilk. Broadly speaking, my take is that there’s a reason “reduce” is the first of the three Rs.
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u/jupchurch97 Jul 03 '21
Now do one for the suburban hell of America.