[reducesuffering]

The initial emissions cost of an EV is somewhere in the range of 5 - 10% of total emissions of the ICE over its lifetime. Then as to the consumerism bit, there's generally two types people who buy Teslas. The practical side isn't doing excess consumerism and is likely to buy something like a Toyota Camry or RAV4 instead, still causing 10x the emissions eventually. The other side, luxury and consumerist, is going to be buying a Mercedes instead and still doing all the excess consumerism and traveling. EV are a net emissions positive on the margin, but feel free to inhale the particulate emissions sitting in traffic if you'd prefer. Only about 5 million globally dying of air pollution every year...

[FirmwareBurner]

>Then as to the consumerism bit, there's generally two types people who buy Teslas ... The other side, luxury and consumerist, is going to be buying a Mercedes

Pointing fingers and shaming groups of people we don't anecdotally like for one brand or another, is not how statistics work. Statistically rich westerners, whether they drive a tesla or a Mercedes, all engage in environmentally destructive activities through excess consumerism and lavish lifestyles than less well off people.

For example according to that book, statistically rich westerners, the tesla owning kind, tend to have bigger single family houses, buy a lot more stuff they don't need, throw away more food, travel and fly a lot more or go golfing or have heated swimming pools. Less well off people on the other hand can't afford eco-friendly Teslas but they also have much more eco friendly hobbies, travel less, live in denser housing, consume less stuff, therefore tend to be less environmentally damaging than the Tesla owning class by simple fact that they're poorer.

>but feel free to inhale the particulate emissions sitting in traffic if you'd prefer.

You're pointing out a "false choice". Yes, it would be nice that we all switch overnight to EVs, but the truth is that the global emissions of replacing all the existing cars on earth and replacing their numbers 1:1 with EVs is not feasible at that scale without destroying the planet in the process of mining and manufacturing at that scale needed to achieve the conversion.

The secret to the environment is less cars overall, not more cars but EVs. Therefore less consumerism in general. But tell rich westerners they need to stop owning/using cars see how that goes.

Hence the ever increasing global polluting despite the growing number of EVs.

[reducesuffering]

I'm in agreement that EV's are not a panacea, less cars and consumerism would be better, and the political difficulties of reducing those are especially fraught.

However, since rich westerners did the politically realistic move of increasing emissions standards and EV's, we are actually reducing our emissions[0], instead of doing nothing but hand-wringing that we "should" have less cars and get nowhere because 3/4 of the US won't have it.

Per capita US emissions are down 25% since 2007 and peaked back in 1979.

We help the environment by finding the wins whereever we can politically. If you get too idealistic, you halt progress because the rest of westerners aren't in for the ride.

[0]https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states

[orwin]

I'm pretty sure the move from coal to gas was way more effective at reducing emissions than the "move" from ICE to EV.

[reducesuffering]

Of course it was. Which is why we shouldn't be advocating for purist idealistic moves, but practically what can we do to reduce emissions the most per $.

[FirmwareBurner]

Fair enough. but out of curiosity how much of those emissions are strictly down to EVs?

Because to me it seems emissions went down to tougher broader environmental policies, especially on coal, rather than just people buying EVs now, as ICE cars were only 9% share of emissions anyway, yet people tend act as if they're the main culprit for it.