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Mammothmothman ,

What if I told you buying an EV is more about not paying for gas than it is about fighting climate change.

CCatMan ,

The used market is going to be full of gas cars for a longtime. Look there of you need gas otherwise go electric if you can.

HipHoboHarold ,

Keeping an old car is better, but having one that works is even better than that. Cause, you know, eventually cars stop working. That’s a thing.

Pixelle3D ,

What about just not using cars?

Dass93 ,

What about convert the old cars to electric?

Comment105 ,

No, buy new fossil fuel cars.

Oderus ,

There’s a heavy CO2 cost to making batteries so even if you convert an ICE vehicle to electric, you’ll have to drive it quite far to break even on the CO2 emissions from the factory.

bitsplease ,

Remember kids, if you’re not solving climate change entirely in one single step, there’s no point in trying.

Seriously, what a brain dead argument lol

PilferJynx ,

Plus, ev’s keep the pollution out of the cities and places we tend to live in.

UnverifiedAPK ,

Yeah! It keeps it in India and Madagascar, fuck those guys.

kryostar ,
@kryostar@lemmy.world avatar

What’s the matter with you? Who stole your lunch money?

UnverifiedAPK ,

Didn’t realize I needed an /s

Jarix ,

TYL

CaptPretentious ,

I think it’s under the premise of, of you have a functional car. It you got rid of that and bought an electric, you aren’t helping anything.

youtu.be/MQLbakWESkw?si=IGV7CRjQslRSI-er

Tak ,
@Tak@lemmy.ml avatar

There’s a lot wrong with this video as most videos on EVs from 2016. The data is sources for electricity production is actually over a decade old now (Sep 2013) and it rationalizes that the electric cars will break down before the grid ever moves towards greener sources. This is a very silly notion considering solar is straining the grid with too much power at times, times where EVs could charge. They can also charge over night encouraging nuclear power to be more financially feasible as nuclear relies on a base load as they don’t like to turn off.

They’re not a silver bullet and in some cases like the Hummer EV they are worse than an old car but if you have to drive a lot it is completely less carbon intensive than an ICE for most EVs.

Here’s a still pretty old but more nuanced video: piped.video/watch?v=6RhtiPefVzM

The greenest car is a train car.

Omega_Haxors ,

There’s this concept under socialism called “development” where you make small steps towards your desired outcome. Naturally, capitalists hate this which is why they spend so much money pushing for all-or-nothing “solutions” and encouraging people to quit when it doesn’t work. Whatever it takes to make sure that people don’t fundamentally challenge their illegitimate rule as they burn the planet for profit.

bastion ,

Socialism: development? Yeah, I created that.

mob ,

Right after it invented planning.

winterayars ,

Every car on the road being converted to electric with magic wouldn’t fix climate change. If you didn’t also get trucks and SUVs it may not even move the needle Personal car use is not a major cause of climate change. It just doesn’t matter compared to industrial and commercial emissions.

bitsplease ,

Of course it won’t fix climate change in one go, but doing so would remove a major fossil fuel dependency for your average Joe and make them much more likely to vote against fossil fuels.

Put another way, how many people driving gas cars would vote in favor of heavy taxes on fossil fuel use?

Now, how many would vote that way if they personally didn’t have any dependencies on fossil fuels?

Also, highway vehicles account for 1.5 billion tons of GHGs being emitted each year, that’s 11% of the global yearly GHG emissions, so yeah, it definetely would “move the needle”. In the US specifically it’s as much as 20% of our nations emissions.

And yeah I already know the next argument “bUt YoUr JuSt UsInG fOsSiL fUeLs To ChArGe It” - except you’re not necessarily, in my area (part of CA), you can choose to have 100% of your electricity provided by renewable sources for a small monthly premium ($18/month). Additionally in CA, all new homes are being built with solar power, which further increases your ability to charge without fossil fuels.

And in the areas that isn’t true, it’s at least getting groundwork laid down to make it true. An electric car can be powered by renewable energy, a fossil fuel car must be powered by fossil fuels.

There are a lot of steps to solving climate change beyond “buy an electric car”, and you’re right that industrial and commercial pollution accounts for the majority, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be pushing on all fronts.

We’ve already waited way too long to act, we can’t afford as a species to say “well, I’m not going to change my car until the industrial polluters get their shit together”, we have to push in Every possible direction, all at the same time to make progress, and electric cars overtaking fossil fuel cars is a big part of that.

There’s a lot of work to be done globally until electric cars are 100% green, both in terms of power infrastructure and the processes to create them, but there’s no way forward with gas cars, so we need to start moving over as a society now, phasing out the production of gas cars with electric

winterayars , (edited )

This is the exact kind of fucking bullshit that i hate.

Of course it won’t fix climate change in one go

Be honest: It won’t fix it at all. It won’t significantly impact climate change. It won’t insignificantly impact climate change.

so yeah, it definetely would “move the needle”

First of all: emissions are not the target. Climate change is the target. Even if all human related greenhouse gas emissions ceased tomorrow we would still be facing catastrophic climate change and then an effectively indefinite period (on a human scale) before things settled down again. We cannot not-pollute our way out of this mess.

Let me reiterate: We can no longer change the outcome by reducing carbon dioxide emissions, and consumer car usage is a small slice of overall carbon dioxide emissions. Of course, we could make it worse. So how much do consumer cars contribute to making it worse?

I don’t know if your figure of billions of tons is worldwide or not, the worldwide number i found here is about 3 billion metric tons. (It dropped for 2020! Yay we did it!) In contrast, Wikipedia (who I believe are taking their numbers from the IPCC) lists about 35 billion tons (about 32 billion metric tons) of co2 from fossil fuel burning, with total greenhouse gas emissions of about 50 billion tons (about 45 billion metric).

Then there’s also reduction in the Earth’s ability to extract co2 due to land use (chopping down forests). This is difficult to model because it’s not a direct emission but it is undeniably a result of human activity that unbalances the Earth’s climate. That Wikipedia article earlier says that total emissions from 1870 to 2017 were about 1.5 trillion tons from fossil fuels and 660 billion tons from land use change which works out to be about 31% of the total. Note that this is total and cumulative so again: Ceasing all emissions would not change this number. No longer cutting down forests (etc) would not change this number a single gram.

Then there are other factors that are making climate change worse but they’re not that important in comparison. I’m going to ignore them because i am not a scientist and i’m not writing a scientific paper here.

I am going to be harsh, however. If you take that 3 billion number and you divide it into the 32 billion number you get about 10%, as you say.

That’s not correct if you want to make a difference for climate change.

If you take that 3 billion number and you divide it into the 1.5 trillion tons number you get about 0.2%.

So to answer the question above: how much worse do consumer cars make climate change? Well, they worsen the situation with carbon dioxide by about 0.2% per year, coming from about 10% of our overall emissions, and carbon dioxide is only one of the factors contributing to climate change. So overall? Not much.

And yeah I already know the next argument “bUt YoUr JuSt UsInG fOsSiL fUeLs To ChArGe It”…

That is not my argument.

…except you’re not necessarily, in my area (part of CA), you can choose to have 100% of your electricity provided by renewable sources for a small monthly premium ($18/month).

Oh my god, of course you couldn’t help it. The smug liberal (derogatory) virtue signalling had to come out. Jesus fucking Christ.

You understand, right, that if you pay $18 and go from a 50/50 split of fossil fuel and renewable energy (about where CA is) and your neighbor does not what ends up happening is you go 0% fossil fuel and your neighbor goes to 100% fossil fuel and nothing changes, right?

Like, you’re paying $18 not to change anything, you’re paying $18 so you can go on the internet and complain about how everyone else isn’t fixing climate change like you are.

The corporate response to climate change has been to try to convince everyone to take shorter showers, switch to an electric car, and install solar panels. That is, for individual people to do things (that don’t matter) and for corporations to continue doing things (that do matter, negatively). You unironically listed two of the three elements of a fucking climate change denial meme.

Also current renewable energy isn’t actually that great. I guess this is the right time for my pitch for nuclear power.

If you want to actually have an impact (in the “stop making things worse” direction not the “fix climate change” direction) then let me suggest nuclear power. Nuclear power is great. It’s a proven technology. Even nuclear power at its worst is still better than coal, even if you ignore the greenhouse gas emissions difference. I’d argue nuclear power is better than modern renewables too but this post is long enough so i won’t.

Right now, coal fired power plants account for 20% of fossil fuel emissions and are the single largest source of emissions. and… well… let me direct quote:

Notably, just 5% of the world’s power plants account for almost three-quarters of carbon emissions from electricity generation, based on an inventory of more than 29,000 fossil-fuel power plants across 221 countries.

Putting it a different way, almost 15% of all fossil fuel emissions come from 5% of the world’s power plants.

So it’s great that California is doing better than average, but if you want to make a difference in emissions you don’t try to change every single car on the planet over to electric, which is a tremendous task to undertake. You kill that 5% of power plants and replace them with nuclear. (Or okay if it really makes you feel better i’d be on board with renewables too but nuclear is still the better and more practical solution.)

There are a lot of steps to solving climate change beyond “buy an electric car”, and you’re right that industrial and commercial pollution accounts for the majority, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be pushing on all fronts.

If you want to make a difference right now, probably the best thing you can possibly do is advocate against coal power plants. It’s both easier to do than replacing all cars and it would have a bigger impact.

In 2035, 12 years from now, Europe plans to mandate all new cars to be electric. Europe is not responsible for the majority of passenger vehicle emissions. Most countries do not have plans that are anywhere near as ambitious. The US is only aiming at 50%, and that 50% of vehicles that get switched over won’t be the ones emitting the most greenhouse gases. (Hybrids being switched to full electrics have little impact when Ford F150s are the most popular vehicle in America.)

Meanwhile, that 5% of power plants is still out there. Industrial and agricultural emissions are still out there. Land use changes are still out there. The vast majority of everything that brought us to this point is still out there, untouched. And when will you get your 100% electric cars worldwide? In 2045? 2060? How deep underwater will Miami and New York City be by the time that happens? How many people will die in the meantime? How much further will the ecosystems of the world be destabilized?

This isn’t about “pushing on all fronts”. This is about moralizing at individual people about their personal decisions, which did not cause this problem and cannot fix it. Paying $18 to California power companies isn’t about improving the world it’s about making you, personally, feel better. Like you’ve “done your part”. Meanwhile, the planet is burning. In the coming years, it will burn more and more.

Capitalism wants to pretend that everyone acting individually can solve problems but capitalism created this problem and it cannot and will not solve it.

bitsplease ,

So what do you suggest that can actually be done, besides removed about it on Lemmy?

You talk a lot about moralizing without actually making a difference, but that’s exactly what you’re doing in your comment.

So hit us with it - what should we be doing instead? Other than removed about it on Lemmy, I mean?

winterayars ,

So what do you suggest that can actually be done, besides removed about it on Lemmy?

I somehow fucking knew this was coming, Everyone has the same response regardless of what you say.

I suggested targeting the most heavily polluting power plants for conversion to clean energy. This suggestion is:

  1. Practical from a cost standpoint
  2. Could be accomplished with current technology
  3. Easier to implement politically than "make all cars electric"
  4. Would have a bigger impact on the environment than “make all cars electric”.

You: “Well if you don’t have any ideas…”

I know my comment was long but you aren’t really arguing with me, you’re arguing with the shadows that live inside your head. This was true of your previous post, too. See:

And yeah I already know the next argument “bUt YoUr JuSt UsInG fOsSiL fUeLs To ChArGe It”…

(Which is still not and never has been my argument.)

For the record it’s my belief that we could currently not only halt but fully reverse climate change (though it would take maybe 100 years) at our current technological level. I believe it’s possible. However, i do not know of any way to do it that does not require major change to the political and economic systems of the West (the ones that brought us to this point, in other words: Capitalism). Back in the '70s it would have been way easier to address this but now we’re on hard mode.

You talk a lot about moralizing without actually making a difference, but that’s exactly what you’re doing in your comment.

I’m critiquing a moralizing argument, it’s somewhat inevitable that my critique will also adopt the form of a moral argument. Unless you want me to argue that all morals, all ideas of “good” and “bad”, are phantasms that are propagated by the powerful as a form of social control or something. Which i also could do, but it seems a little abstract given the current conversation.

Even granting you that point there’s still a difference:

My arguments are concerned about outcomes, about material conditions in people’s lives, they include the concept of collective and corporate action.

Your arguments are superficial, concerned about appearances, do not acknowledge the context or history of how we came to where we are, and are primarily concerned with individual actions that wealthy Westerners can take without regard to the practicality of implementation across the rest of the world.

I’m going to throw out one more thing:

Even if cars were the biggest source of carbon dioxide, going to all electric cars is not the best solution. Building electric cars still has a significant environmental impact, including greenhouse gas emissions. Better still would be mass transit. Trains and buses are more environmentally friendly still and would allow us to make other changes to society that would further reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Of course, that option is not favored by our capitalist overlords…

PaperTowel ,

Electric cars are certainly preferable to gas cars, but the whole car industry I’m general that are needed for both gas and electric cars are bad. Roads, parking lots, highways, the lights needed to keep them lit, the process of mining enough materials to make electric cars. The issue in my opinion is that cars in general are awful for the environment and just quality of life, they’re better but I hope we can shoot for higher.

Borkingheck ,

This is a terrible arguement. It has the premise that all ice are going to be scrapped at once and we will just make a bazillion electric cars. It’s a phase out thing.

Also quieter cars and no tailpipe emissions are fantastic.

MrSqueezles ,

Well. Bought my new electric car. What am I going to do with my old gas one? Trade it in and get money? Nah. Pay to get it scrapped? I’m such a genius.

Guys, cars don’t last forever, but when you own a car that doesn’t burn dead organisms, get ready to almost never change your oil because it doesn’t collect soot and for engines and cars to last much longer because they don’t generate grimy grease and heat and exhaust, all of which are terrible for mechanical parts.

bastion ,

Part it out and scrap it for cash.

HelixDab2 ,

Pre-emptive caveat: I am fully in favor of electric cars, and will happily switch if I can ever afford to do so.

Yes, most of the parts that are going to wear out on IC cars are motor and transmission parts, and those are complicated and time consuming to fix. In many cases it’s not practical for the end-user to do so anymore. Electric cars OTOH are more likely to have electronics issues, and the batteries are ridiculously expensive to replace when the capacity is reduced below a useful level.So you’re still going to end up with similar maintenance costs over the lifetime of the vehicle, but they’re more likely to be concentrated at one or two irregular points in time rather than small bits of preventive maintenance done at regular intervals.

velxundussa ,

Small anecdote: I bought a new Cheverolet Bolt about two years ago.

A couple of months after I bought it there was a recall on the batteries, they had to replace all of them in the car.

They were out of stock for quite a while (I assume because of supply chain issues)

They finally replaced them a couple of months ago.

I choose to see that as a 2 years extension on my bettery life,lucky me!

DingoBilly ,

Huh? This is just flat out wrong.

Natanael ,

It’s not entirely wrong, public transit is better

doktorseven ,

Not for people with mobility issues, ableist.

Natanael ,

You haven’t seen good public transit then, are you being satirical or are you really that dimwitted?

vox ,
@vox@sopuli.xyz avatar

uhh how’s public transport bad at that?
most buses have spots and lifty thingys needed for wheelchair users

tslnox ,

Also not for people who don’t live in big cities and/or work shifts and overtimes. If I didn’t have a car, I wouldn’t be able to get to my job site in reasonable time and at times I couldn’t get there at all. And no, I’m not going to spend 2+ hours with public transport after working my ass off for 8 hours every day when I can do it in under 1 hour (both ways together) with my crappy old Dacia.

Leviathan ,

My man, all the buses around here have systems that allow them to go down to street level to allow wheel chairs and all the metros have elevators. If your public transportation isn’t helping the differently abled then your local government is to blame.

vox ,
@vox@sopuli.xyz avatar

like if you already have a car, buying a new one is a pretty bad idea for the environment even if it’s “greener”

DingoBilly ,

Well you sell the car so it’s net the same…

vox ,
@vox@sopuli.xyz avatar

it doesn’t matter, buying 1 car= manufactoring 1 car. net +1 car.

Omega_Haxors ,

Nobody does this. You are parroting billionaire anti-climate talking points.

Oderus ,

You are parroting billionaire anti-climate talking points

Where does one go to get these billionaire anti-climate talking points? Is there a service I can sign up for?

Omega_Haxors , (edited )

Ah yes, that “lets do nothing and say we’re saving the climate” take straight out of bill gates’ think tank. Stop watching kurzgesagt.

andy_wijaya_med ,
@andy_wijaya_med@lemmy.world avatar

What’s wrong with kurz gesagt?

Omega_Haxors , (edited )

Gates-funded eco porky. People watch them for their science videos then get sucked into neoliberal propaganda. Like it’s one thing to be biased (everyone is) but it’s a complete other to be parroting think tank talking points verbatim.

Demuniac ,

Maybe you should start. They highly likely do more for climate change than you do.

UFODivebomb ,

Double overly reductionist takes with no positive contribution. Congrats! This is crap.

Ranger ,

Economical retrofit kits for legacy vehicles would help reduce manufacturing pollution & reduce vehicle emissions, if carbine free electricity production is increased.

jelloeater85 ,
@jelloeater85@lemmy.world avatar

The problem is it’s fundamentally changing the source of energy in a car. Even if you ripped out the motor and replaced it with an electric motor and battery Bank there would still be a whole fundamental sleuth of systems that would be missing inside the car. I think I better solution might be to look into converting cars to hydrogen instead.

Also feel free to ignore anything I just said I’m not no automotive engineer, just a nerd who used to tinker with cars when he was younger 😅

Malfeasant ,

Hydrogen is not an energy source, it is a means of energy storage, and a pretty bad one at that.

Cort ,

Also, it’s primarily made using methane steam reformation, which releases co2.

bufalo1973 ,
@bufalo1973@lemmy.ml avatar

If you want to go that route I think you should look more towards bikes and less towards cars.

MrSqueezles ,

Yeah, that’s the real problem. I wish hydrogen helped. Fuel cells and hydrogen are another way to store and release electricity, like batteries. Switching a car from gas to battery is a tricky proposition. Since they require more components to achieve the same result, delivering electricity to an electric motor, fuel cells would compound that problem.

CADmonkey ,

Ford and GM both sell electric “crate motors” for classic cars to switch them over to electric.

Cort ,

Not direct to consumer though. You’d have to go to a specialty shop and pay them for labor and whatever markup they think the market can bear. Point being, it’s not really economical to do on a large scale.

CADmonkey ,

Yes, direct to consumer.

Honytawk ,

It isn’t.

But staying on fossil fuels is even worse. And by a lot.

camelbeard ,

Here’s another “fun” fact, with every 3 miles you drive you will polite about 1 straw of microplastics from the cars tires.

Yoinkle ,

Source?

Elivey , (edited )

You know how you have to buy tires every few years because they “go bald”? As in, they’ve lost that material that was once tread? That material isn’t just disappearing, it flies off the tires in the form of tiny particles that are in the air and water. It’s actually really toxic too, way more than other plastics. Fun fact EV tires are even more toxic.

Source: I work in a toxicology lab studying microplastics.

UFODivebomb ,

While notable: That wasn’t a source on the particular fact cited.

camelbeard ,

I responded somewhere above in the conservation.

It was something I heard this professor say in a podcast and there was also a newspaper article about it.

This English items doesn’t say the straw bit, but it does say 4KG of microplastics during its lifetime

theguardian.com/…/car-tyres-are-major-source-of-o…

After some Googling, a car tire will last about 50K miles. After 50K miles it has lost 4KG of microplastics. A car has 4 tires so 16KG.

16000 grammes per 50K miles, is almost 1 gram per 3 miles.

First Google result Straws on average weigh so little—about one sixty-seventh of an ounce or . 42 grams

Yoinkle ,

Yes I know that, but I’m asking for your source for your claim of those exact numbers.

camelbeard ,

It’s an article from a Dutch professor, unfortunately paywalled

fd.nl/…/autobanden-de-grote-vergeten-vervuiler

On his linked he summarized some points

nl.linkedin.com/…/carlo-van-de-weijer-961998_auto…

Google translated

Column FD

  • In the Netherlands, a total of around twenty million kilos of tire grit in various degrees remains in the environment every year.
  • **A car threw the equivalent of a plastic straw’s worth of microplastics out the window every five to ten kilometers. **
  • You cannot remove microplastics from the water with a well-intentioned ocean filter.
  • Time to start working on more sustainable or, better, biodegradable tires.
Elivey ,

Here’s a fun fact because I work in a lab that studies micro and nanoplastics:

Of all the plastics we have studied, tire particles are THE FUCKING ABSOLUTE WORST. They leach all sorts of nasty shit.

Bwaz ,

If they’re made instead of making fossil fuel vehicles, they do (addressing the cartoon, not the barely related added title) . Cars will still be made as many become no longer repairable. Which kind to build? Yes, better to make more electric buses and trains, but cars wont simply vanish in any scenario.

rug_burn ,

Just some points that I have not seen discussed-

  1. Time to refuel / practical vehicle range 1a. The cost involved in having charging installed on your property
  2. Weather. Snow. Effect of cold on batteries. I know everyone hates those evil SUV’s, bit when there’s 14" of snow on the ground your tesla/volt/insert your favorite EV ain’t gonna cut it
  3. To the “just put in mass transit” crowd, do you feel that eminent domain is justified to take property from someone to fulfill this need?

Honestly not trying to troll, these are real questions that should be answered

And for the record, my vehicle is a compact sedan, getting on average 34-37mpg, so I’m not in that dick-size contest over who’s truck has the bigger lift kit

SasquatchBanana ,

1/1a. Yep. Public transit.

  1. Oh no. How did people do it before in the past before SUVs?! Also, public transit.
  2. Yes. A steong public transportation infrastructure. As we are going to experience worst and worst weather that challenges the survival of the human race, we will need to make sacrifices.
rug_burn ,

The discussion was about EV’s, you missed the point. But ill bite.

1/1a. My relatively short daily commute of 20 minutes turns into 1:10. My time is more valuable than money, so no. 2. “Before the SUV” people didn’t have to commute much further than down the street for work, so no. 3. Cool. You first.

SasquatchBanana ,

You had answers to your questions? I knew your comment was bait.

Yes, I am first. I am more than happy to have new affordable housing built near me and public transportation expanded! If done well it will always be a benefit. Imagine walkable neighborhoods with buses on time?? Yes please!

If we have an expanded public trans option, there will be less people on the road which means your commute will be shorter. Not longer. People in like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and other congested places would feel it!

So please, less individual vehicles and more public transportation

rug_burn ,

Not to argue semantics, but moving people from cars to public transit keeps the same people on the roads, but fewer vehicles. While i get your line of reasoning, accuracy counts.

If you’re willing to give up what you own to move to denser populated areas that meet your needs, great! I’m all for it. That’s YOUR choice.

On the flip side, who decides who is allowed to operate a personal vehicle? To me, that seems like the opposite of a choice.

But once again, the conversation was about EVs. You want dense vertical growth urbanism, be my guest, but I’m really not interested.

Bytemeister ,

Gonna further add, if there is 14" of snow on the ground and the roads aren’t clear, then with 99% of the SUVs, Trucks, and cars sold today, you aren’t, and you shouldn’t, be going anywhere.

That’s a design issue of the vehicle anyway, and not inherently related to the ICE vs EV drivetrain.

mriguy ,

Weather. Snow. Effect of cold on batteries. I know everyone hates those evil SUV’s, bit when there’s 14" of snow on the ground your tesla/volt/insert your favorite EV ain’t gonna cut it

How so? I live in Boston, where it gets cold and snowy. During the winter, the efficiency on my Bolt goes from 4.0mi/kWh (134.8 mpg equivalent) to 2.7mi/kWh to (90.99 mpg equivalent), and I park outside in the cold. Otherwise, it works just like any car I’ve had. Why exactly do I need an SUV?

rug_burn ,

I never said you need one. I make do without one, however there are plenty of times during our winters here the larger wheels/greater ground clearance would be extremely useful. Just because it doesn’t work for you or me doesn’t mean there are people it does work for.

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