Climate activists and politicians constantly tell us that electric cars are cleaner, less expensive and better. California and many countries, plus the UK, Germany and Japan, will even ban the sale of new gasoline and diesel cars within a decade or two. But if electric cars are so good, why do we deserve to ban the alternatives?And why do we want to subsidize electric cars to the tune of $30 billion a year?
The truth is much more conf than the propellers of electric cars suggest. Car emissions from an electric car vary depending on whether it is charged with raw energy or coal. In addition, the manufacture of batteries requires masses of energy, which today are basically produced with coal in China. This is why the International Energy Agency estimates that an electric car, the global average combination of energy resources over its lifetime, will still emit about a portion of the CO2 that a gasoline car does. You can buy that same car emissions relief. in the oldest U. S. auto trading formula. However, many countries pay more than 20 times that amount in grants to convince others to make the switch.
There are no air pollutants coming from the engine of an electric car, but it does need electricity, which will end up polluting more. two-thirds of U. S. states are in the U. S. U. S. In China, another electric car pollutes less if driven in areas with new, cleaner power plants, but produces more pollutants in regions with older power plants.
Electric cars require a large battery capacity, which makes them much heavier than comparable gasoline cars. A new study shows that this weight difference means that electric cars produce more particulate emissions due to greater tire, road and brake wear than gasoline cars. These heavy electric cars are also more harmful to others in the event of an accident. A study published in Nature has shown that, overall, heavier electric cars will cause so many more deaths that the death toll may outweigh the overall climate benefits of reduction. CO2 emissions. Consumer orders for longer and larger batteries will exacerbate this problem.
While electric cars are less expensive to drive, they are more expensive to buy. The average American car costs $48,000, while an electric car now costs more than $66,000. A new report from the U. S. government The U. S. Food and Drug Administration shows that the lifetime charge of an electric car is 9% higher, even assuming very generously that the electric car will drive as much as a regular gasoline car. In reality, electric cars drive less than half, which makes the electric car much more expensive.
A new study shows that one in 10 families who own an electric car relies solely on it. The rest have at least one non-electric car, and the maximum adds an SUV, truck or van. For most families, at least one of those non-electric. Cars travel much longer distances, making the electric car your “second car. “
Electric cars require large amounts of minerals to be manufactured, and an enthusiastic replacement will increase demand for cobalt, nickel and manganese by 40 to 80 times by 2050. Demand for lithium will skyrocket to 140 times its current use for electric cars, with cars and garages each year gobbling up more than 10 times the existing annual global lithium production. There are moral problems with this production, for example, most cobalt mines in Congo use child labor, and there are protection considerations stemming from the fact that the maximum mineral processing is concentrated in China.
Lately, Norway is the only country where most new cars are already electric. But that path is only open to rich countries, as Norway will pay indirect subsidies in the form of sales and registration taxes worth $23,500. automobile, in addition to other tax exemptions, such as the reduction of tolls on the roads. Of course, oil is a giant component of the Norwegian economy. tons of CO2, to subsidize an electric car to reduce just one ton.
While many experts recommend that electric car sales will dominate within a few decades, the calm truth is radically different. Biden’s management estimates that even through 2050, more than two-thirds of all cars in the world will still run on fuel or fuel. diesel. And if the vast majority of the electorate continues to opt for an electric car as their first choice, even mid-century, it’s unclear whether politicians who promise bans will dare tell them to do otherwise.
Ultimately, the explanation for why electric cars are defended is by the promised emissions reductions. However, the IEA estimates that even if everyone meets all of its ambitious electric vehicle targets through 2030, the additional CO2 emissions stored during that decade will be 235 million. Tons. The popular climate style used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows that this will make global temperatures as low as 0. 0002°F until 2100.
Electric cars will only take over when innovation has made them bigger and less expensive than gas-powered cars. But politicians must replace them now and plan to waste billions of dollars subsidizing electric cars, preventing consumers from opting for the cars they need, to do virtually nothing for the climate.
Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus and a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. His most recent work is “False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet. “
The perspectives expressed in this article are those of the author.
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