PERSONAL ELECTRIC VEHICLES ARE GREENWASH
1. ELECTRIC VEHICLES HAVE ENORMOUS EMBODIED CARBON
I made earlier posts on this thread in 2013, e.g. (
1,
2,
3). These questioned the embodied carbon in cars, especially Electric Vehicles. One reference gave the embodied CO2e as 16.4 tonnes for a gasoline car, 15.6 for a hybrid and 27 tonnes for the all electric car.
If these figures were correct, then one car per household is an environmental disaster. (It still would be at the previous figures I had assumed - these were about a quarter as much.)
2. SEPARATE DEVELOPMENT FOR PEOPLE WITHOUT CARS.
Back in the 1970's, I started to campaign for separate neighbourhoods to be developed where car ownership is suppressed so that cars are used rarely. Then I campaigned because life is so much better for non-motorists when cars are drastically restricted. (Now, of couse, avoiding dangerous climate change is much more important.)
Neighbourhoods with few cars can have much better facilities than those with high car use. (
4) (e.g. buses, pubs, shops, clean air). They offer a much better quality of life for the non-motorist.
One telling question is: "Would you like to live in (no-car) Venice or (high-car) Los Angeles?". (
5)
3. SEPARATE DEVELOPMENTS CAN PAVE THE WAY TO AVOIDING DANGEROUS
Very low car neighbourhoods would show the way to an (almost) car free world. Cutting the number of cars by an order of magnitude is necessary (but not, of course, sufficient) to save us from dangerous climate change and our descendants from a possible sixth mass extinction.
Many people don't like to live in motor-towns or motor-suburbs and would move to low car neighbourhoods - if they existed nearby. Many would then follow, once the neighbourhoods were established and their qualities shown.
An analogue is that most passengers stopped smoking on trains, when smoking was restricted to carriages reserved for smoking (
6). Most smoking stopped when smokers were confronted with the choice between cleaner air of the non-smoking carriages and their own pollution.
Many motorists would give up their cars to live in a nearby Venice. See the video
Carfree Venice.
4. PREPARING FOR A VERY HIGH POLLUTION PRICE
This approach may be a way of starting settlement patterns that would become prototypes for life after, the world gets to grips with climate reality and sets a very high price on pollution. In terms of a carbon tax I guess this should be in the order of £1000 per tonne CO2.
5. UNREALISTIC?
I know this argument sounds unrealistic but it is more realistic than the fantasy that we can avoid climate disaster with mass transport dependent on the vehicles we use for personal transport today – even if they are Electric Vehicles.
In short, mass personal transport with Electric Vehicles is unrealistic greenwash.
Let's talk of slower speeds, less travelling, more local goods and services and eschew the destructive, unhappy life styles we are being sold today. Lets talk green settlements (
7).