On Sep 15, 2014, at 8:34 AM, Peri Hartman via EV <[email protected]> wrote:
> Actually, in the big picture it is true - EVs consume fossil fuels. Even if > all the power to operate them comes from solar, please consider: > - energy to design and manufacture the vehicle, > - energy and materials to provide charging infrastruture (i.e. your solar > panels) > - energy and materials for roads > - energy wasted indirectly as a result of traffic congestion. > > All said, EVs are fantastic but there's no question that the best way to use > less energy, including fossil fuels, is to *not* drive! Well, if we're going to go that route, the #1 thing people do that increases their carbon footprint is to have children. Waving a magic wand and swapping all passenger vehicles with electric equivalents would basically solve today's fossil fuel crisis at both ends -- production and pollution. We'd still use substantial fossil fuels in agribusiness and plastics and the like, but the excess capacity from not having to fuel passenger vehicles would greatly extend the lifetime of existing reserves and dramatically reduce pollution. If the magic wand also made all the electricity for those vehicles come from solar power, the effect would again be greatly magnified, and it would leave us in the perfect position to stop mining hydrocarbon feedstocks and start producing them from atmospheric CO2. At that point, we'd basically be home free. Complaining that EVs still consume fossil fuels is the archetypal example of making the perfect the enemy of the good. EVs use so little fossil fuels compared to ICE vehicles that EVs might as well not use any at all in comparison. ...though, regardless, we still would be much better off with a much, much, much smaller population.... b& -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 801 bytes Desc: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20140915/98e57151/attachment.pgp> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
