US transition to electric cars threatens environmental havoc
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
City centers are already viable places to live without a car.
Unless the US had a waaay higher population density, we would have a hard time arriving at another system.
Here is a nice graph from back in 2018: https://images.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/d... (from https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/tra... ). Transit was the plurality of downtown commuters (and growing).
Being able to technically survive in 2% of the land if you never leave, pay a great deal more in rent, accept much greater inconvenience, suffer poor air quality from all the people driving, and endure constant abuse and threats to your life that are wholly unnecessary (such as right on red) isn't non-car-dependence.
Spending 20% of the space cars use on dedicated transit right of ways and active transport and having a handful of areas where you might have to park and walk or use a mobility aid for 1km isn't the authoritarian dystopia you're pearl clutching about and will make driving easier for you. It literally helps everyone.
The US had a better system. It was systematically destroyed at great taxpayer expense and done so in a way designed to cause as much economic harm on the people living where the highways went as possible. There are at least eight separate regions smaller than Switzerland with higher population. Even if the rural transit system the US used to have were impossible to build you could at least service those regions as well as the Swiss serve their tiny rural towns.
Probably the right solution, and the one being worked on, is to find different battery chemistries. People seem fixated on lithium, but even lithium is a N generation chemistry. (I’m too lazy at 6am to research the value of N, sorry) I know sodium batteries are advancing, iron as well, along with other chemistries that haven’t grabbed headlines yet. With the amount of money at stake, investment and research will happen. Predicting what we are building batteries out of in 20 years seems foolish at this point (note, I think a lot of lithium miners are about to be left holding a bag full of hype)
The problem in central north america is the Nacirema are a weak minded easy fooled people who have fallen for 50+ years of Koch propaganda and for the most part not even noticed as it happened.
https://grist.org/article/the-koch-brothers-hate-public-tran...
I may be weak minded and easily fooled, but my direct experiences made my weak mind want to own a car and gtfo of a public transit first urban core. I don’t hate the environment, I don’t think everyone should drive Suburbans. But I also think there’s a saddle point, and technology for batteries isn’t done yet.
I also suspect the “everyone who disagrees with my world view is a weak minded easily fooled idiot who can’t form their own opinions are are indoctrinated by a dark conspiracy” line isn’t endearing the public transit first folks to anyone but their echo chamber.
Don't take the "easily lead weak minded" description as a personal slur directed at you, more as a summation of the 50 years since the Koch brothers went aggressively full anti climate change pro fossil fuel after the 1970s recognition of there being a problem.
My only goal here is for more people to be aware of a constant pattern in the recent history of US social infrastructure debate; towns, cities, communities move toward public transport as an idea (or wish to spend to improve what they have), poll for opinions, find support in excess of %50, often in the 60 and 70th percentiles, and then ...
... various Koch think tanks start spending millions to change open, to push the "public transport == socialism == communism" notion, to pump up the fantasy ideal of car == individual freedom == american flag, etc.
They've covered the spectrum, funded oposition politicians, started community action groups for freedom, amplified crime related to public transport fgures, fostered notions of poor trash take the bus, all the tricks.
They've turned opinion, killed public transport development, and all to the end of selling more gas to a large individual mass rather than less to more efficient means of moving people in bulk.
I have no intention nor desire to endear myself to you, and it's your country so make the decisions you do, but at least be aware of your own history and the means by which you've been lead by the nose - it's a plain fact that's clear to all with perspective from outside.
Everyone here would agree that our addiction to burning oil is unhealthy for the planet. What surprises me is the fact that we can't also see how our addiction to cars is also unhealthy for the planet.
It's not a case of wanting to live a student life forever, or the fact that all guardian journos live in a metro area, it's that they (or this one, in particular) understand that electric cars aren't a drop in solution. I think these dismissals are incredibly childish, and something I would expect from a culture war type on Fox News or GB News. I expected better from HN.
If I remember correctly, for the entire world to live the same quality of life as Americans, it would require four earths. We obviously can't do that, it's going to require us changing our patterns of consumption, please think about that, and don't get offended when people question your lifestyle.
Lithium mining causes extremely localized harm, ICE engines cause worldwide damage.
How you can manage to construe that as a bad thing is baffling.
To use your analogy it's like attacking someone who wants to stop the arsonist while the firefighters do their job instead of building a new water reservoir.
Lithium mining is ~4 orders of magnitude less harmful than ICE engines. Perhaps someone could have improved the situation by rearranging deck chars on the titanic into a more aesthetic pattern, but it’s not the kind of thing that deserved their attention.
As for the Lithium production figures:
> Let us consider, for example, electric cars. To give an idea of this effect, producing a battery weighing 1,100 pounds emits over 70% more carbon dioxide than producing a conventional car in Germany, according to research by the automotive consultancy Berylls Strategy Advisors.
https://phys.org/news/2023-01-paradox-lithium-net-zero-emiss...
which to be sure isn't a full life cycle comparison .. but let's be very clear, the full G20 country demand for an electric future creates an unreasonably high demand on copper and rare earth mining and directly impacts all manner of marhinalised people - the US has a $64 billion copper reserve in Arizona on sites considered sacred by Native American tribes.
Those are useful for other things, if you want smaller batteries add in road charging. Just don’t wait for perfection when you can dramatically improve things today.
> 70% more carbon dioxide than producing a conventional car in Germany
Only today. Manufacturing currently produces carbon dioxide due to things like a fossil fueled electric grid not as an inherent part of the process. Fixing the grid is also required.
The reality is the only thing stopping most trips from being made in a light vehicle is the unchecked externalities from the large ones. And only one long range vehicle is 'needed' per household
I am all for improving cities, but just as a baseline not everyone lives in cities. Any long term plan needs to consider everyone not just people who live in dense enough areas public transportation is a clear win. Sure, ban cars in the center of cities, just don’t expect that to change how large most people want their car’s battery to be.
This article and discussion is doing the thing where you exaggerate a small problem to promote something that’s almost but not quite entirely unrelated to it. If you want people to use small batteries in EV’s electrify roads so people can travel on them without using a battery. If you want to reduce the need for cars do that, but don’t pretend lithium mining somehow requires changing cities. Because arguing from a false premise weakens your argument when people see through it.
Driving is the singularly most destructive and dangerous thing that humans have invented and CO2 is just the worst of its many downsides, the resources and space that go into them and the infrastructure is probably about third on the list after the millions it kills, lithium is just one aspect of that.
You may pretend I am talking about one person, yet I am describing the vast majority of humanity when I say the car has been one of the greatest inventions of all time. Greatly surpassing computers, telephones, and just about everything else you depend on daily.
> Dense rural environments served by transit exist
There are no dense rural environments, you may be confused at what this term means but towns are not rural. The term is referring to a lack of density.
> There are no dense rural environments, you may be confused at what this term means but towns are not rural. The term is referring to a lack of density.
You can have a region with low density where the services are all concentrated.
Your straw man about making it so people can do something OTHER than use a car somehow meaning all cars vanish is also extremely tiresome.
> You can have a region with low density where the services are all concentrated.
We call such things towns.
Which is not a privately owned car with associated infrastructure. Ie. The thing that does the harm.
> We call such things towns.
Google the words 'rural town'. You're attempting to overload the word 'rural' to include those people but simultaneously claim they could not possibly live within 5km of transport and therefore must he forced to use a car. Edge cases on edge cases don't justify removing the freedom of 99% of the population to live comfortably without one.
But explain again how on earth is someone driving themselves or a loved one to a hospital in their private car not a privately owned car?
> Edge cases on edge cases don't justify removing the freedom of 99% of the population to live comfortably without one.
Again you’re pretending the vast majority of people are somehow in areas where public transportation is viable. This is 100% absolutely false.
> Again you’re pretending the vast majority of people are somehow in areas where public transportation is viable. This is 100% absolutely false.
Citation needed. Also "At least one safe sustainable transport option" isn't "transit only".
Also it's amazing how quickly you went from "there's a bunch of reasons to reduce car dependence but you should dismiss this one" to a gish gallop of reactionary nonsense. Almost like it was a bad faith rhetorical technique to dismiss it.
<20% of the US population lives in rural areas, and <20% of those are more than 10 miles from their third nearest food shop.
If a region can service three food shops and a hospital it can support regional transit.
Personally not wanting to doesn't make it impossible to travel 10 miles by bike or LEV.
In terms of total harm, even people working lithium mines are better off if that eliminates ICE engines.
Australia has long been the major supplier of raw lithium concentrate [1] - sending it on to either China or Malaysia [2].
Soon we'll be shipping concentrate to Texas [3] [4] [5] so that the filthy dirty toxic work of heavy rare earths separation can take place as close to the greedy end consumers as possible.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20221110-how-australia-be...
[2] https://lynasrareearths.com/
[3] https://www.mining-technology.com/news/lynas-heavy-rare-eart...
[4] https://thetexan.news/rare-earths-processing-plant-to-open-o...
[5] https://www.miningmagazine.com/supply-chain-management/news/...
As to externalities, no one said that there shouldn’t be taxes or rules in place that make sure that the consumers of lithium don’t internalize the cost.
ICE cars cause damage and lithium causes damage so the damage from lithium must also be significant. Mining the non lithium components of EV’s cause more environmental damage than mining the lithium does.
Large infrastructure changes take time. You can of course also improve infrastructure, in road charging largely eliminates the need for giant EV batteries, but waiting is losing. If people want huge big batteries in EV’s then build them, you can always recycle lithium in a few decades it doesn’t get consumed.
But if we start with this (OPs) false dilemma then yes of course, let's all buy a tesla, just don't pretend it'll save the world
Sure, after we have electrified highways and improved cities they become more viable and could hopefully be the norm. But, in the short term the biggest impact of small batteries is convincing people EV’s suck. Especially when they don’t last for the full lifetime of a car.
Not buying a personal vehicle is infinitely better than forcing people to live in car centric societies, buying an EV will just perpetuate the issues we're already facing
btw it takes 130k km in Germany to make en EV pollute less than an ICE, with the average of 19km driven per day/per car, I'll let you do the maths.
Electric cars aren't here to save the planet, they're here to save car manufacturers
If you want to cut the average in half, it’s going to take longer than the breakeven point. Meanwhile in 2006 62% of electricity in Germany was produced by fossil fuels, that dropped to 40.9% in 2021.
So even ignoring inaccuracies in the study your thinking of, the breakeven point just keeps falling as both producing and using EV’s keeps releasing less CO2.
The majority of them live and work in extremely dense city centres. Not only that, their families do too.
They fundamentally don't understand the fact that people have friends, families, jobs, hobbies, etc that exist outside of the metro network.
The idea that people might actually enjoy driving is not only something they don't understand but actively detest.
It's not good enough to them that all of the roads around me are deliberately rate limited or blocked off so that I can't travel around my own neighbourhood.
They can't stand the idea that I could transport myself and my family securely across the country.
It has to be trains. I need to share with others. I need to take my bloody jacket to the bathroom with me. I need to lock everything down in case some scrote steals it whilst I'm distracted. Oh yeah, I also have to pay 50% more for that privilege.
Nothing is good enough for them. The entire origin of the "you'll eat bugs and be happy" meme comes from that idea that for some people it's not about the climate or ecology, it's about just being happy with a student lifestyle forever. They literally run articles like "we're going childless to save the planet". It's like hanging yourself now to avoid dying of old age.
I haven't had a car in over a decade, I don't want to have to pay a mandatory car tax that will cost me far more per year than public transport, parking, petrol, insurance, space, I don't miss sitting in traffic that will grow the more roads are added.
Just having public transport that can get you everywhere would reduce a tremendous amount of burden, instead of sacrificing every bit of road to cars, make room for public transport and pedestrians, plan for it.
No doubt we will always need cars, but they shouldn't be mandatory and we should have public spaces that aren't cut through with car parks and roads and endless, endless traffic
The same goes for public transit. That's the central argument, don't force other people to live the way you live. Everyone should have a choice in how they conduct their lives.
Of course other people can force you to live a certain way, that's like the whole basis of living in societies, we come up with rules and follow them, these rules change all the time
But haven't you read these well-upvoted opinions? It's the right of the adult to do whatever they want; the student-lifestyle of public transit is the position of the grubby, naive, cooperative youngster. Once you have the resources, you seal yourself away in your bubble -- preferentially ICE-based, of course -- and Become Traffic. It's the culturally superior option, as everybody's known since the 50s, and we here on HN are superior. Our paychecks tell us so. The public transit option, ill-funded as it is, will never be popular, because as sarcastic as I might seem here, I'm also simply describing reality.
Not everyone does, 99% of the world exists outside of cities. You can't apply urban reasoning to the majority of the world. Sure, all actions have consequences but that doesn't mean you need a policeman to supervise every step you take. The only reason societies function is because individuals decide for themselves that they will abide by societal norms. The laws enacted by societies are a tiny fraction of the rules we use to govern our behaviour and none of it would be any use if people simply decided to ignore those rules, hence why crime still exists, sometimes people just DGAF and do what they want for their own reasons.
It's pretty funny being accused of having an immature viewpoint when you are literally appealing to authority to solve all of your problems. Adults need to solve their own.
ok but you are forcing the consequences of your way of living onto others. I have to pay for all your ridicoulous infrastracture, i face the risk of being killed by your 2 ton monster..
Then remove cars from city centers, they're an aberration in every single way
> They fundamentally don't understand the fact that people have friends, families, jobs, hobbies, etc that exist outside of the metro network.
Cool, most cars are parked 95% of their lives, taking useful space for no good reason
> The idea that people might actually enjoy driving is not only something they don't understand but actively detest.
Some people actually enjoy meth too
> It's not good enough to them that all of the roads around me are deliberately rate limited or blocked off so that I can't travel around my own neighbourhood.
It's already the case in any dense city center, I commute faster by bike or pubtrans than by car for anything shorter than 10km
> It has to be trains. I need to share with others. I need to take my bloody jacket to the bathroom with me. I need to lock everything down in case some scrote steals it whilst I'm distracted. Oh yeah, I also have to pay 50% more for that privilege.
If we start making up arguments like these we can play all day. I've recently crossed germany for 17 euros, nothing was stolen even though I slept a good 4 hours with multiple toilet trips.
> being happy with a student lifestyle forever.
Wow look at Mr. big adult manly man with his own personal vehicle. I bet they even eat veggies, what are they ? 6 ?
You want the same thing as everyone else, going from A to B efficiently and cheaply, and in many case a personal car isn't the most efficient nor cheap tool for that. The problem is that in a car centric city everything is designed to be hostile to anyone but cars, couple that with the auto industry propaganda and we get people like you
Just run the maths, 1.4B personal vehicles on earth (it's not going anywhere but up btw), fully electric or running on pure lignite you end up facing the same issues. So yeah we get it, you like moving 3 tonnes of metal to go to walmart and see your friends, that's fine, but you have to understand it's not efficient or clean or sustainable
The same holds true, in my personal experience, with many of those claiming to go child-free for the sake of the climate. Most of my acquaintances who fall into my basket have clearly been uninterested in having children for a long time and have only recently latched onto the idea that they are doing it for the good of society. The reverse seems to hold true as well: I’ve noticed what seems to be an increase in the number of people claiming our moral obligation to have children for the sake of society stability and growth.
Let me be clear, I don’t believe that living in or out of a city, or having or not having children are “better”. I am just alarmed by how many seem completely unwilling to accept others may make different life choices than them. People are not content to live their life as they please. They must actually be martyrs and better than you for doing so. I can’t tell if this is an artifact of the age we live in, or it’s always been this way and I’m only become more aware of it as I’ve grown older.