EV's By Themselves Will Not Save the World. But They Are an Improvement. Here are Some More Things We Can Do

I saw a story linked on Reddit, whose author had figured out that Tesla is bad, and concluded that EV's are bad. I commented that I hope this sort of simplemindedness wasn't widespread, and I hope people will actually judge EV manufacturers individually. 

 

I got some severe pushback for that remark, with people saying that EV's aren't going to save the planet by themselves, and that it would be better if people didn't drive at all. 

Well, I didn't say that EV's would save us all by themselves. And I agree that it would be better if people drove less. 

But I don't see a feasible way to get people to give up privately-owned cars and private trucks altogether. But driving less would be good, and it would be better if people drove EV's rather than ICE. 

And replacing ICE with electricity in public transportation, and in cargo railroad trains, and in ships and aircraft, wood be good.

And solar, and wind, and geothermal power, and tidal. And smarter grids, and smarter agriculture, and smarter manufacturing, and smarter architecture.

And reforestation, and afforestation. 

And restoring wetlands!

And just as I don't see a way, short term, to make all people go without driving, I don't see a way to persuade them all to go completely vegan right now. But still, it would be better if they ate less meat. We can't make everything perfect right now, but we can make improvements.

It would be better if we generated less household waste. Better waste management, better recycling, better land management, better water management, better city management. Everywhere you look, there are things we're doing that we could be doing in a more efficient, healthier way. Which is where we came in: manufacturing EV's can be done in a cleaner or dirtier way. Tesla does it in a dirty way. That's no reason not to see whether other companies aren't doing it more cleanly. As if somebody in those companies actually cared about reducing greenhouse gasses.

It's not always 100% clear which way is best. For example, are plug-in hybrids the best way to go for the moment? Are they speeding the transition to pure EV, or slowing it down? I think they're slowing down. But I realize that I might be wrong. And either way, a plug-in hybrid pollutes much less than an ICE car. 

And if BEV advocates spend too much time squabbling with plug-in hybrid drivers, it could distract them from lobbying for that bike path they both want. Denouncing all EV's, because you want nobody to drive at all, could persuade people to just keep driving ICE. Again, there's a question of efficiency. Your energy and eloquence are yet another resource which can be allocated more efficiently, or less.

Speaking of driving, there sure has to be a more environmentally-friendly way of making roads than our current asphalt-based approach. 

And hopefully I've helped you think of many more things to do.

Prague and Germany

The nation of the Czechs reaches farthest to the West of any of the Slavs. Their capital, Prague, is quite close to several major German cities: 91.2 miles from Dresden according to Google Maps, a drive of 1 hour and 55 minutes. Leipzig is a 158 mile drive, Munich is 238 miles away, Berlin 217 miles, Vienna -- the usual capital of the Holy roman Empire since the 15th century -- 207 miles. Other major Slavic cities are considerably farther: Prague to Warsaw is 396 miles, Dubrovnik 794 miles, 556 miles, Kiev 881 miles. 

The Slavic regions between Western Europe and Russia have been ruled by foreign powers for much of their history. Prague has the distinction of having been the capital of a foreign empire, in the 14th century under the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, and then again from 1576 to 1612 under the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II.

 

The Czechs were, and are, situated between Protestant and Catholic Germany: most of Germany north of Prague was, and is, majority Ptotestant. Most to the south was, and is, majority Catholic. From the time of Jan Hus onward -- he was burned at the stake for heresy in 1415 -- Protestantism among the Czechs tended to go with anegative view of the German Empire, and those Czechs who worked for the Empire tended to convert to Cathollicism. 

When the Prague defenestration is mentioned, most people think of the incident in 1618, but there have actually been three defenestrations in Prague, in 1419, 1483 and 1618. In German, the 1618 defenestration is called the Fensterstuerz, with the result that people actually know what is meant. Defenestration means being thrown out of a window. In all three Prague defenstrations, Protestants, followers of Hus, threw representatives of the Catholic Imperial occupation out of high windows, killing all of them in 1419 and 1483.

In 1618, surprisingly, the Emperor's representatives survived the 70-foot fall from a window in the Hradcany, the Prague Castle. However, the incident marked the beginning of the Thirty Year's War, in which millions died all over central Europe.

Prominent authors who lived in the Czech region and wrote in German range chronologically from Johannes von Tepl, who published der ackerman aus boehmen around 1400, to a remarkable amount of the very best German literature which was written in Prague in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, by authors such as Franz Kafka, Rainer Maria Rilke, Max Brod, Franz Werfel, Rudolph Fuchs, Egon Erwin Kusch and many others.

The Nazis led up to their invasion of Poland and the beginning of WWII with a series of smaller-scales crimes including the occupation of Czechia in 1938 and 1939.

In 1989, Czechoslovakia opened its borders, and ten of thousands of East Germans per day went through Czechoslovakia into West Germany, one of the major factors which forced the end of East Germany and German reunification.

Dream Log: Climbing a Skyscraper's Stairs

 Last night I dreamed that my brother and both parents and I were visiting a skyscraper in downtown Indianapolis for some reason. It seemed there were stores, restaurants ans other public businesses open on every floor of the building. My brother and I climbed a staircase to the second floor which was open to the retail space, not closed off in a stairwell. 

My brother paused to look at something a in a store. I looked around, found the staircase to the third floor, and kept climbing stairs. Each stairway between floors had been made different from the previous one. Some were in enclosed stairwells. Others were in the open space. 

The stairs and the stores tended to get more posh floor by floor. On some flights I was the only person around. On others, there were some exercise-oriented people. A couple of men were particularly overweight, but somehow it was apparent that they had recently lost a lot of weight, and were determined to continue doing so. Something about the ratio and position of muscle and fat in their bodies made this clear. Their sweatiness and enthusiasm made it even clearer. They did not seem the slightest bit pathetic to me. Also, their good mood and apparent high-self-esteem seemed invulnerable to anyone's opinion. 

In the dream I seemed to be in better condition than I really am, because I climbed up dozen of flights of stairs, hundreds of vertical feet, at quite a rapid pace, without stopping for longer than it occasionally took to find a drinking fountain and drink some water. I regretted having left my brother behind, but I was also exhilarated by the exercise.

On the 74th floor there was a door, very ordinary-looking and marked simply "EXIT," which led to an outdoor balcony with a railing that didn't look like it would reach my waist. I'm not good with high open places, and wouldn't have been tempted to step outside even if it hadn't been raining.

I don't think there are any buildings in Indianapolis with as many as 74 floors. But in the dream, the building kept going up higher and higher. At one point I saw a sign saying "110th floor."

And the businesses kept getting more upscale. This didn't necessarily mean that they kept getting more attractive to me. On the contrary, I felt a very unattractive atmosphere of ruthlessness among both the store keepers and their customers. I felt that my clothes became more and more out of place. I was pouring sweat, too. I assumed that everyone could see that I had been stair-climbing. I also assumed that they were used to seeing ambitious stair-climbers. People weren't lining my route and cheering me on. I assumed I could buy some hydration if I chose. Probably for somewhere over $10. Not a friendly atmosphere. 

As I got higher, the staircases just kept getting showier, and less likely to be hidden away in stairwells. And they became more crowded. I jogged up and up among crowds of strolling people, wealthy people and people trying to look wealthy. And then those making no effort to look rich, and therefore seeming much more likely to be very rich. I laughed out loud at the thought that someone might mistake me for a billionaire. 

Above the 110th floor, ramps tended to replace the stairs. Huge broad ramps, narrow steep curving ramps, ramps in between. The height of individual floors kept increasing. More and more of the outer walls was glass, letting us see for many miles.

Before I got to the top I turned around and climbed down, taking my time, full of endorphins. 

A golden eagle had landed on a table in an open-air cafe. A crowd of people, giving him a decent amount of room, stared at him. He stared back at us, seeming as curious and leisured as we were.

Then I woke up.

Dream Log: Love and Fast Cars

I dreamed I went to a rural canyon filled with thousands of fast street-racing cars and thousands of movie stars. It was sort of like a scene from a Fast and Furious movie, except that in this case, the movie stars were acting out various movies and TV shoes and the fast cars were driven by other people.

I drove my own car into the canyon before dawn, before the racing had started. I parked and walked around, looking for my girlfriend, who was going to meet me there. She was my girlfriend only in the dream, in waking life I'm single.

I found her, and almost lost her again right away. Besides the crowds and the darkness it was also foggy in the canyon. I said something about leashing the two of us together. She responded to that by taking both of my hands in hers, and twirling in a tango-like movement which ended with her back pressed against my chest and my arms wrapped around her waist. 

And then I couldn't remember where I had parked my car. I knew it was either very close to the entrance near the stream at the bottom of the canyon, or, looking in and up from there, to the right. The problem was that I couldn't be sure more specifically than that where I'd parked, and there were literally thousands of cars there. Also, I wasn't sure what sort of car I had. I thought it was a Porsche 911, and painted either black or dart two-toned. 

 

We checked the cars near the entrance, then started off to the right. Several times I was afraid I was going to lose track of her in the fog, so I stayed closer to her side. I was also afraid I was going to lose her in the sense of doing something to make her break up with me, but as the dream went on I felt more secure.

At the top of the canyon, some sort of military based was fenced off, patrolled by strolling riflemen. Some people on our side of the fence were convinced that there were holes in the fenced, and were concerned that, in this thick fog, someone might accidentally wander onto the base and into a lot of trouble. I thought that was utter nonsense.

We went on searching, asking people if they'd seen a 911, black or dark two-toned. 

Eventually it occurred to me that all or almost of these street-racing cars, Porsches, Ferraris, late-60's American muscle cars and others, must be converted to EV's. Otherwise the canyon would be reverberating with roar of ICE engines, and choking with their stink. But no, night birds were merrily singing, and the air was sweet. 

We came across a tract of small prefab houses. In here, some of the many movie stars acted out their shows. Several of the houses were occupied by Grey's Anatomy, which I have never seen, but which, I gather, has been a huge hit for a long time and employed many actors who went on to movie stardom. 

I stuck my head inside one of the houses, and asked an actor, whom I did not recognize, about the Porsche. He was dressed in green scrubs, sitting behind a counter in a set arranged to look like a nurses' station, and he did not answer me. Instead he seemed to think that he really was working in a hospital, and that I was some sort of strange imaginary being.

Eventually, as the sun came up and the fog stayed around I lost interest in the Porsche. I gave my girlfriend a big hug and asked her what she wanted to do, assuming we never found it. Then I woke up.