If you’ve ever had any doubts about just how environmentally benign electric vehicles are, this article by Jonathan Lesser at Politico should tip you over the edge:
All of this might make sense if electric vehicles, as their supporters claim, were truly likely to reduce air pollution and tackle climate change. But are they?
To answer that question, I used the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s most recent long-term forecasts for the number of new electric vehicles through 2050, estimated how much electricity they’d use, and then figured out how much pollution that electricity would generate, looking at three key pollutants regulated under the U.S. Clean Air Act—sulfur dioxide (SO2), oxides of nitrogen (NOX), and particulates—as well as CO2 emissions. I compared them to the emissions of new gasoline-powered vehicles, using the EIA’s “real world†miles-per-gallon forecast, rather than the higher CAFE standard values.
What I found is that widespread adoption of electric vehicles nationwide will likely increase air pollution compared with new internal combustion vehicles. You read that right: more electric cars and trucks will mean more pollution.
and he doesn’t even get into the total environmental impact of electric vehicles compared with internal combustion. I guess this, too, is just another exercise in navel-gazing. The push for electric vehicles is mostly a gigantic exercise in NIMBYism. It doesn’t matter what their total environmental impact is as long as they reduce the emissions in Marin County and make its residents feel good about what they’re doing to reduce global warming.
Want to reduce vehicle emissions? Put steep tolls on all interstates.
The curent administration is pushing back the emissions requirements, so not sure this article is still valid.
Steve
Also, there are a number of articles from people writing from the left (this guy is a conservative) who claim much better results than he does. Who do you believe?
Steve