> Didn't realise these were valid arguments in the face of the Climate Catastrophe!
They're not even arguments.
I'm not saying that people should keep driving.
I'm answering the question "why aren't cars going away".
Unless you think that people just aren't aware that public transport / riding / walking is more environmentally friendly than driving, the only conclusion I can come up with is that people care more about the factors I mentioned than environmental impact (or at least, that time-discounting of delayed negative externalities is significant).
> It's by far the most convenient and quickest to burn coal.
For who? I'm talking about the factors that influence consumer choice, not producers.
An electric car produces no CO2 over its lifetime. It uses electricity, not a fossil fuel.
If you are observing that electricity is currently being produced with some fossil fuels, I will respond that we should get rid of fossil generating capacity. This does not require getting rid of electric cars.
In the ultimate zero fossil fuel economy, we can still build and operate electric cars. This will not involve any release of CO2 whatsoever; do you imagine this would create carbon atoms out of nothing?
There are two things involved: CO2 emission inherent in operation and construction, and CO2 emission that just happens to be occurring today because of how the materials and electricity are presently generated.
The anti-EV argument is deliberate confusion of the former with the latter.
There is no inherent CO2 emission required in construction and operation of an electric car. This is unlike gasoline powered cars, where petroleum has to be involved in their fueling.
From a policy point of view, an EV that replaces a gasoline car is a good thing, even if there is at the moment some CO2 emission in the construction and operation of the EV. It reduces CO2 emission in the near term, while also pushing EVs down their experience curves to enable total replacement (and abolition of CO2 emission) in the far term.
Ignoring the fact that there are no renewable energy-powered EV factories, there are also plenty of industrial processes that inherently emit CO2. Steel manufacture first comes to mind.
By your same argument, I could say that there's no inherent CO2 emission required to manufacture petrol (as in, there theoretically is a way to do it).
>The anti-EV argument is deliberate confusion of the former with the latter.
I'm not confused about the distinction between the two. The pro-EV crowd seem happy to ignore the former, as long as it's far away, or could be solved by some as yet unimplemented technology.
They're not even arguments.
I'm not saying that people should keep driving.
I'm answering the question "why aren't cars going away".
Unless you think that people just aren't aware that public transport / riding / walking is more environmentally friendly than driving, the only conclusion I can come up with is that people care more about the factors I mentioned than environmental impact (or at least, that time-discounting of delayed negative externalities is significant).
> It's by far the most convenient and quickest to burn coal.
For who? I'm talking about the factors that influence consumer choice, not producers.