I’ve seen a lot of posts here on Lemmy, specifically in the “fuck cars” communities as to how Electric Vehicles do pretty much nothing for the Climate, but I continue to see Climate activists everywhere try pushing so, so hard for Electric Vehicles.
Are they actually beneficial to the planet other than limiting exhaust, or is that it? or maybe exhaust is a way bigger problem?
People who say EVs do nothing just want to complain for the sake of complaining a lot of the time. EVs aren’t ideal, but they are better and more crucially they shift the consumer thinking away from ICE cars and towards alternatives.
EVs do something - they’re better than ICE. But we’re wasting a lot of money on them that could go towards better public transit. We desperately need less cars and the EV vs ICE debate can distract from that - I think that’s why you see so much of a pushback against EVs.
Honestly, the rabid part of the fuck cars crowd are letting perfect become the enemy of good enough for now. The sort of thing they want could never stand a chance of happening. Not anytime soon, not under this breed of capitalism where corporations have a say in the government.
EVs are good enough to slow down emissions to the point where maybe our descendants will have enough time to shift public opinion and get rid of cars entirely. Until then, cars are going to stick around, best thing to do is compromise for now, and use the time bought to have a chance of getting everything you want later.
There is enough money to fund both EVs and public transit. No need to cut money from one to give to the other. We should take this money from the funding for military or religious purposes.
But it’s also really dumb to go the other way and focus so much on EVs, isn’t it? Why replace our cars with slightly-different cars, build a whole new charging infrastructure for them, and then phase them out, say, another 40-50 years down the line? It’s not just tailpipe CO2 emissions at issue, it’s poor land-use causing a major housing crisis, it’s the cost of cars skyrocketing out of financial reach of many people, it’s habitat destruction causing populations of wild animals to crash and many to go extinct, it’s particulate matter from tires causing human maladies like dementia and cardiovascular disease, it’s an epidemic of social isolation and loneliness, it’s traffic violence killing over a million people a year, it’s sedentary lifestyles leading to diabetes and cardiovascular problems, it’s CO2 emissions from manufacturing cars and building the infrastructure that they need, it’s the large-scale use of fresh water for manufacturing, it’s the loss of autonomy for children, it’s municipalities going broke trying to maintain car-centric infrastructure, it’s the burden on people in poverty needing to buy and maintain a car, etc. etc.
I mean, the ultimate solution is to have cities and towns that don’t force us to get in the car to drive everywhere, for every little thing, every day. There’s little meaningful difference between transitioning cities away from ICE cars and transitioning cities away from electric cars. We could just start now, and maybe Millennials might be able to see some benefit before they retire. EVs are fine as a stop-gap measure while we work on that, but I see them being treated as the main event.
I don’t think we are focusing completely on EVs, they’re just a very hot topic for some reason. There’s plenty of high speed rail projects, pedestrianisation and other non car related innovations coming through
So you want to change the entirety of human society in a few years. Nice plan there genius, have you ever met another human? We need more palpable incremental steps or else a proposal like yours just gets completely shut down.
I have met plenty of people who can phrase a counter-argument without sounding like an asshole.
Your right, not sure why I was so pissy. Sorry mang.
Hey, thanks for the follow-up. I figured it was just the result of a bad day. Hope all is well!