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.

The Answer is, There is No One Answer

Sometimes when you come across something stupid, the best thing you can do is forget it and move on.

However, sometimes it just keeps gnawing at your brain like a stupid rodent. I suppose that's one of the things blogs are for.

Someone (I'll do him the kindness of not saying who) who seems to think he's extraordinarily intelligent, and has a considerable following who seem to agree, recently made an elaborate online presentation of all of the reasons why evs are not the answer and are not going to solve the climate crisis all by themselves: they are better than ice vehicles, he says, but they still have tires and drive on roads and other very bad things.

 

The thing is, I literally can't think of anyone, offhand, who has claimed that evs, all by themselves, are the answer. It seems to me that almost everyone bright enough to realize that evs actually are cleaner than ice vehicles, also knows that they are not perfect from an ecological standpoint, and also is in favor of addressing the climate crisis in a number of ways: not just with evs, but also with public transportation, solar power, wind power, geothermal, tidal, sustainable agriculture, a sustainable timber industry, afforestation, reforestation, veganism, smarter architecture, cleaner concrete, cleaner steel, cleaner rubber, better science, better education, better politicians, etc, etc, etc.

I say almost everyone, because this guy, after listing all of the reasons why evs aren't the answer,  said that trains, public transportation by rail, ARE the answer.

Maybe he was making a joke and I missed it. I've missed a few jokes in my lifetime. 

And public transportation by rail will be very helpful in decreasing humanity's carbon footprint. Along with with evs and many, many other things. As you very likely already knew. 

Making it questionable whether this blog post accomplished a thing. Except perhaps to warn you against those who believe that there is one single thing which, all by itself, will repair the Earth's climate. 

If there actually are any such people. There probably are at least a few here and there. Possibly even including the train-obsessed jerk who impelled me to write this.

Energy Usage is Changing Fast. It Needs to Change Faster

Things are changing fast in the world's energy consumption. For over half a decade, the oil industry and people who observe it have debated when peak oil would come: the point when global oil production would begin to decline -- the point when the world began to run out of oil. More recently, a growing number of people have expressed the opinion that peak oil demand would come before peak oil: that the global demand for oil would begin to decline. Some foresaw peak oil demand in 2050, others predicted 2035. Recent estimates have been around 2025.

 

And some say that peak oil demand has actually happened. They say the decline in demand during the COVID pandemic is the beginning of the end of the growth of the oil industry, that the world will never burn fossil fuel at a fster rate than it did in 2019.

It's not such a crazy opinion. Sales of EV's are surging, sales of vehicles which burn gasoline or diesel oil are declining. Solar and wind power are growing rapidly too, and every kilowatt of electricity produced by solar, or wind, or geothermal, or nuclear, or hydro, or tidal, or biomass, represent less demand for fossil fuels. 

Some of this change is being driven by free markets, by consumers and entrepreneurs who believe that clean energy will save them and make them more money than fossil fuels. (They're right about that, by the way.) 

Much more change can be caused by laws. Governments intervened and gave us seat beats, air bags, catalytic converters, gas mileage standards, scrubbers on smokestacks and a lot of other healthy things. Free industry didn't ask  for any of those things. They resisted all of them. 

We can wait for free industry to change the world over to clean energy, and the human race can die waiting, or we can pass laws to make it happen faster. It's about as simple as that. 

What about all the workers on oil rigs and in refineries? Climate change will kill them too, along with everyone else. That's one thing about them. 

This is all pretty simple, and very serious, and none of it is a secret. Vote for people who support the Green New Deal, and whoever your representatives are, call their offices and bug them, tell them to make these changes happen faster. 

Call them every day. Let them know you're very serious about this.

Energy Efficiency: Fossil Fuels vs Solar and Wind

In the process of powering things with fossil fuels, first geologists make guesses about where exactly oil, coal and gas deposits may be; then miners dig to where they hope the deposits are. Sometimes they have to dig several times before they find anything, because the geologists, after all, were just guessing. 

Once the fuel is found, it is transported, by ship, train, truck, or, in the case of oil and gas, pipeline, to refineries, where the raw material is made into usable products. Then coal, oil and gas are sent, again, by ship, train or truck, or, in the case of oil and gas, pipeline, to power stations, which burn them to generate electricity, which is sent to the grid, where utilities distribute it to businesses and homes. 

In addition, diesel oil and gasoline are sent, by pipeline, tanker ship, railroad or tanker truck, to gas stations and other users. Coal and kerosene are still burned by millions of people for heat and cooking in some of the poorer regions of the world.

The entire trip, from being in the ground to where it is burned for energy or heat, can be dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of miles. Just think for a moment about the distance from Saudi Arabia to the United States. 

Now compare this to solar or wind energy. In the simplest example, the journey is measured in feet, from where sunlight is converted to electricity by the rooftop solar panels on a house and then travels to the house's wiring and to its battery storage. The electricity may travel as much as several miles if there is some left over and it is fed into the grid. Or the distance may be dozens or, in rare cases, hundreds of miles, if the electricity is generated by solar and wind farms operated by utilities. But no ships, pipelines or trains are needed, and the only trucks involved are the ones carrying workers who build, install and maintain the electrical infrastructure. 

Building, operating and maintaining solar cells and wind turbines is a very simple and inexpensive thing compared to mining, refining and distributing fossil fuels. And solar and wind energy keep getting less and less expensive as more of it is generated, while fossil fuels keep getting more expensive. The point where electricity from solar or wind will be cheaper than electricity from fossil fuels? That point is several years ago, and the gap just keeps growing.

Plus with fossil fuels, there are those pesky little details of pollution and global warming. And also accidental fires and explosions.

Peak Oil and Peak Oil Demand

The term "peak oil" has been used since the 1950's to refer to the time in the future when mankind will begin to run out of petroleum. The "peak" refers to the point where maximum production of oil no longer keeps pace with worldwide demand. Since the 1950's some economists and oil-industry analysts, sometimes regarded as chronic pessimists by their colleagues, have been warning about this time when the world will begin to run out of oil, foreseeing massive worldwide economic collapse in a world which needs oil to live. People like Bob Lutz had phrases like "$60 a gallon for gasoline" and "fighting in the streets over scraps of meat" on their lips. When Lutz spearheaded the project to make the Chevrolet Volt, the first electric vehicle ever willingly manufactured by General Motors, he didn't believe global warming was real. I don't know what he thinks about it now. He's not a complete moron, by no means. He's just spent his entire long life in a very conservative culture.

More recently, however, another term has begun to be used: "peak oil demand." This refers to the time in the future when worldwide demand for oil will begin to decrease. When it came to peak oil, there was always great disagreement among experts. It's hard to tell how much of the world's oil can be practically mined. There are factors such as future improvement in oil-extraction technology. There is now much more of a consensus about peak oil demand: the great majority of those who specialize in such things predict that somewhere between the 2020's and the 2040's, demand will begin to decrease. There are a few who say that peak oil demand will NEVER occur. These people are either lying, to prop up oil futures or for some other reasons, or they are awfully optimistic, if they really believe that the global demand for and consumption of oil will rise FOREVER. I think such optimism would just about have to include the belief that climate change is a Chinese hoax.

I think we can disregard the peak-oil-demand-will-never-happen crowd as a crazy fringe, although their numbers may be large enough to be a problem, like the numbers of climate-change deniers.

The richest people in the world may lie now and then about what they believe, but their beliefs tend to be pretty practical. When they discuss peak oil demand in the financial media, they routinely mention factors such as changing technology. Trains and ships have been converting to electric-hybrid engines for some time, and are on their way to all-electric. Why? Because the people who own and operate trains and ships don't like to waste money. And of course, many trains have already been all-electric for a very long time. Amurrkins, note the wires just above the trains:

Electric cars will replace ones that burn gasoline or diesel, the only question is, how quickly. Solar and wind are already rapidly replacing coal, oil and gas for the purpose of generating electricity, why? Same as the answer about the trains and ships: because solar and wind are cheaper, and their cost savings over coal, oil and gas keep getting bigger.

Strangely, though, when experts get together in places like CNBC to discuss when peak oil demand will occur, there are certain very relevant things which they tend not to mention. Things like climate change, wetlands, lung cancer, wildfires, biodiversity and catastrophic storms.

Maybe they're only half-smart.

Dream Log: Renewable Energy Hero

I dreamed that the renewable-energy revolution was winning, worldwide. I was an electrical engineer who traveled the world helping people to set up solar and wind power, people who in some cases had previously had no access to electricity, and in other cases had relied on electrical generation which polluted heavily. I was world-famous for doing this. Many individual people, NGO's and actual governments gave money and other assistance to the projects with which I was involved.

Because of such projects, worldwide demand for oil, gas and coal was rapidly disappearing, and because so often I was a public face of such projects, petrochemical corporations kept sending assassins to kill me. But this fact was so well-known, and I was so well-liked, that the assassins were typically stopped long before they got to me. Some former assassins were now my allies. Some former petrochemical executives who had sent assassins after me had given up, and converted to the cause of renewable energy, and were now among the biggest donors. One of these former oil execs was famous for having publicly said, "It's just a lot more satisfying not to be a son of a bitch." Others were said to have given up fighting me and my colleagues and started planning their exit from the industry, although they had not yet publicly said so.

I and my team of engineers landed in an electric airplane in Central Africa to meet a group of local engineers who were working on the construction of a high-rise building which would contain public housing. We believed that when it was finished it would be the first high-rise in the world to be sheathed by transparent solar cells. Besides generating all of its own electricity, it would provide electricity to a wide surrounding region, and to a water-recovery plant which was being built next to it.

A crowd of joyously screaming children ran to greet us as we got out of the plane. We were used to that sort of thing. We made a conscious effort both to appropriately appreciate such kind welcomes, and to keep them from going to our heads. When we made speeches, we kept emphasizing that we were not essentially different in our outlook and actions from many other people who were getting much less attention. While we were being mobbed by the children, we could see a couple of petrochemical-industry assassins near the runway, being surrounded, disarmed and taken into custody by a crowd of local adults and juveniles.

After touring the construction site of the high rise and water recovery plant, I asked if we could be shown some typical homes in the region. Not places that had been dressed up for our visit, but actual average homes. We were shown huts with grass-burning fireplaces, with sewage ditches dug outside. We were carrying backpacks loaded with hand-cranked electrical devices which we distributed to the poor people we met. When I handed these radios and phones to people who kept bowing to me and thanking me profusely -- I knew what "thank you" sounded like in dozens of languages -- I felt like a phony who was vastly over-appreciated. Then I woke up.

Really Sick Of People Equating Hillary And Trump

Recently glimpsed:

"[...]neither candidate advanced their interests, but[...]"

No. No. No. If you voted for Trump, you're a -- I was going to write a very offensive synonym for "dummy," but I'll just say: if you voted for him, you're a dummy.. If you voted for Jill Stein, you're a very special and precious dummy. And if you're trying to tell me that Trump and Hillary are basically the same, you're a complete dummy.

The part about Trump not representing the interests of his voters, that part is accurate. Apart from his plans to massively embezzle from the US, apart from his exploitation of people's self-destructive hatred and stupidity -- what does this guy who's spent his whole life in big cities, most in the biggest city on the US, have to do with the rural Heartland again?

Hillary planned to expand and strengthen Social Security and other parts of the social safety net, increase funding for education, raise the minimum wage, massively expand solar and wind and other forms of clean energy, especially solar, and all of that advances not only my interests, but everybody's interests. You can't have a clearer example of advancing the interests of the entire human race than literally making it easier for everyone to breathe.

Recently I read a comment by someone who had voted for Jill Stein, addressing those of us who had voted for Hillary, showing not one bit of remorse for having supported Stein, refusing to acknowledge that Hillary was one bit less bad than Trump, and referring to

"your Saudi overlords."

The Saudi overlords of those of us who had voted for Hillary. How exactly were diabolical Saudi oil merchants supposed to have been overjoyed at the prospect of Hillary backing huge expansion of solar, wind and other non-oil forms of energy?

An Italian Leftist published an article after the election about how Italy had managed to survive Berlusconi. He advised people to focus less on Trump's personality and more on his policies. I don't know how anyone even vaguely familiar with the political platforms of both Trump and Hillary can claim that they were remotely similar. Maybe this Italian guy is right. Maybe Hillary's campaign took for granted too much that people new the difference between her plans and Trump's, and didn't talk about those differences enough. Maybe they ran too many commercials saying things like: everyone on this long list of generals doesn't want Trump anywhere near the nuclear button, and not enough commercials saying things like: Hillary wants there to be enough solar panels in the US to power every single home.

Obviously, I'm not referring to people who only think that they were familiar with Hillary's platform, but still refer to her as being a tool of the Saudis. Oh, by the way, here's her platform. I don't see anything in there that's similar to the crazy stuff Trump has in mind. Does this sound like Trump to you?

"We must continue to expand opportunities for people with disabilities."

"America's long struggle with race is far from finished."

"As president, Hillary will: Overturn Citizens United. End secret, unaccountable money in politics. Expand background checks to more gun sales. Take on the gun lobby. Keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers. Restore collective bargaining rights for unions and defend against partisan attacks on workers’ rights. Strengthen overtime rules."