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Why do people think electric cars are good for the environment.
CalmOceans
Member UncommonPosts: 2,437
I read this recent study: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1530-9290.2012.00532.x/full
It shows how toxic EV are to the environment during production compared to normal cars. Add to that that lithium is a finite Earth resource and that these lithium batteries are not recycled, litihum batteries are extremely toxic and no one is recycling them. They production of EV makes the ground surface toxic, the water supply, aerosol toxicity etc.
Why do people believe EV are so harmless when they are one of most toxic things every made?
Things like trains and subways are green, since they directly use the electric current and don't need huge batteries to store it, but why do people think electric cars are "green", just because it has the word electric in them?
Comments
It does not matter anyway.
There are so many copyrights trademarks and pattens on developements that it would be years before anything good will come out of electric cars. Most only go 80 miles on a single charge and just wait untill your Warenty runs out, thats when you will really get screwed.
Now bak in the 1970's I remember golf carts could go all day...sure, I'm talking about golf carts, BUT THAT WAS THE 70's.
If people think they doing the right thing then why spoil it for them?
The most environmentally friendly light bulb is the incandescent, but that didn't stop idiots from lobbying the US Government to "phase them out" in favor of a hazardous-waste light bulb that gives people eye problems.
Environmentalists think that they are helping the environment, but in reality most of them are just following the marketing schemes of giant companies, which is sad when you think about it.
check this out:
"that electric cars do not make sense if the electricity they consume is produced predominately by coal-fired power stations
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/are-electric-cars-bad-for-the-environment-2012-10#ixzz2KuGOs5ku"
Agreed!
I'm all for taking care of what we have (earth wise)...but 90% of these things are retarted. Like Bloomberg in Newyork announcing that they are now going to "recycle food" and put it in compost piles..
first off...isn't a dump a giant compost pile? and how much is it going to cost to collect that extra food stuff every day?
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Nuclear is unsafe exactly because it has the potential to be poorly run or designed. That's a pretty big detractor that you can't simply wash over with a sentence. When a windmill falls down usually nobody even knows. Your comparison of the human race to radiation is only a testament to how good we are at killing things. We've beat radiation, huzzah.
Electric Cars always remind me of the South Park Episode about the Prius where everyone likes the smell of their own farts. When compared to buying a solid used car with decent gas mileage and exhaust ratings, buying a new car is buying a new car and using up new resources.
There should be R&D on electric vehicles, Battery improvements, improving and decentralizing electrical grinds, renewable energy. I agree. Technology leaps in the field of energy generation, electrical planes, etc, would result in a huge innovative surge and spinoff like the internet and computer, which were given their first breath of life largely thanks to the government. Buying a Prius supports this mission somewhat, but honestly not that much. The Manhattan project wouldn't have succeded if we put it in the hands of private enterprise being driven by consumer trends.
Likewise, the major challeneges of leaping from fossil fuels to "clean" energy power planes, trains, and automobiles likely wont be accomplished by car companies and their consumers who have for the last 20 years have cared more about cup holders than gas mileage. Important to note, I drive a pretty small 8 year old Asian Car and think everyone driving a Hummer is a tool.
Chernobyl isn't doing all that great it's a waste land for generations to come. When the reactor site stops being maintained it's game over for that area. If something like conflict doesn't see to it then natural elements will ensure that all that crap gets out eventually. How much man power and money does it take to maintain that site? How many similar sites are there around the world like that? Maybe they are not as bad, still.
Then there's all the waste we have just sitting around or buried somewhere. Our life time, the next, maybe a thousand years. Let's screw over that which follows us. Short term solution with long term devastating effects. Can't put the stuff on a collision course with the sun. Too dangerous and costly. Australian's seem to like the stuff though. ^^
Even if we had an abundance of sustainable electricity, electric engines have to many limitations for the world that we live in for most situations. Public officials waste public funds supporting ideas that otherwise couldn't stand on their own two feet and end up failing regardless after the funding dries up. When there's a solid solution or innovation the private sector will invest in it and mass produce it. This takes time. Crap subsidies for buddies/supporters/agenda's screws this process over.
Fossil fuel costs have gone up 300% - 400% in 10-15 years. Only going to keep going up. Yet most people and companies want nothing to do with electric vehicles. Hybrid type engines are about the best we got for some time. Then we are back to the ops post and also how is this electricity being produced.
Glad someone mentioned the light bulb crap. It's much worse I think. The idea of forcing a bad and expensive product on the consumer that is.
Chernobyl isn't a wasteland, it's a haven for wildlife, only Humans don't live there which to me proves Nuclear power isn't damaging at all if it goes wrong. It gets rid of the humans so the wildlife can propser......
Win win as far as I can see it.
Doesn't take up as much room as the so called clean energy sources like Wave or Wind or Solar, it powers more so you need less of them, it gets rid of such high demand of fossil fuels and it's mostly safe, especially in new stations. I mean out of the hundreds that exist in the world, there have only been 2 major disasters and even then the up side is nature does just fine, should turn them sites into wildlife parks for endangered species lol.
There's man made regional pollution such as smog, dumping, acid rain, E.coli, etc.
There's man made global pollution such as climate change, melting ice, green house gasses, ozone depletion, etc.
Sometimes they are one and the same and sometimes they are seperate issues.
Electric cars might reduce regional pollution, but as he points out, they might not reduce global pollution.
Electric cars are good for a specific region's environment but perhaps not for another region or the global environment.
The bigger issue with Nuclear isn't the risk of a meltdown. Its the amount of fresh water it takes to run the things stabily, and the amount of waste they produce.
-sighs- Nuclear power and hybrid fusion reactors (to process the toxic waste of nuclear reactors back into useable fuel) are both much safer and are not more than a decade or two from becoming a better option for getting energy with minimal waste. I cannot believe people are brining up nuclear reactor meltdowns when the most recent one (Fukushima) shows just how much technology has advanced since the crap model of reactor used at Chernobyl.
Proper fusion reactors are at most half a century away from being put into proper use so the electricity side of things no matter how much people moan about it isn't the real issue, the real issue is that patent holders of much better battery technology than lithium ion who keep that tech under wraps because it would damage their profits (yup, those corporations have the patents).
In the end if people truly think electric vehicles are so bad for the environment because the tech is bad at a baseline level I suggest people do their research a bit more throughly (look into why they're building them with those parts and those types of batteries).