this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
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The resistance to allowing WFH really shows how bullshit the push for EVs "to help the environment" is.
I'm not anti-EV and do believe they are better than ICE. But even better than an EV-driven mile is a mile that isn't driven at all.
I'm not sure how you equate that first paragraph at all. Can you expound? The second one just nullifies the first lol.
My point is that if they were serious about protecting the environment, they would promote WFH (for those who can...not everyone can obviously) in addition to EVs. Instead, there seems to be a big push for return to office.
Got it. Thanks. It definitely read like you were saying EVs were some secret not as good as you thought it was issue...
When they're pretty damn fantastic at lowering pollution over time.
https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1110016823009055
Yeah, I think he was explaining that EVs ARE more efficient, but like everything with industrial capitalism, the idea is that they're solving for:
"How can we increase efficiency, while keeping inefficient traffic jams and pointless office commutes?"
When, if they actually cared for the environment, reducing office commutes in the first place has proven to work wonders in dropping pollution. There's just no psychopathic control and exponential corporate real estate profits involved.
An EV is more efficient than an ICE, but industry wants never-ending constantly-exponentially-growing production and purchasing of EVs, so they can enjoy a future of EV-majority traffic jams, instead of gas and diesel traffic jams.
We'll then get emotional-piano commercials about how they saved the planet by mass producing a product that was mass consumed.
But we could simply not have traffic jams, and everybody knows it. That would make people too happy though, and give them time to think. Like 2020, it would once again be difficult to find people who will put up with corporate nonsense.
Solving problems by putting dents in demand also has a way of making quarterly projections inconvenient. :p
While true I think most people understand that most of our modern economies that sustain billionaire corpos and the stock market are almost purely run by the magic that unstainable growth based gdp. This will always be the case until we work properly on fusion and a Dyson swarm.
We will reach a point when we hit 11 billion people and growth levels off. People will revolt en masse when they realize they can't retire without the magic rich made richer money generation machine that is the stock markets compounding interest. Turns out you'll have to save for a retirement by not magically generating more money from just hoarding it.
Until then, keep putting in your 401k and understand that any large change to an American economy to fix commute problems is going to cost way more than Europe due to our land size and heavily suburbian population centers.
Everyone is down for mass transit until they realize they have to pay for it lol.
It's not bullshit at all. It is a lot better for cars that are being used to not shoot out smoke from combusting refined oil. There will always be cars in use, so it will always be better for them to not shoot out smoke.
It's not possible for all workers to live inside dense cities and use public transport and work in offices or at home. MANY other jobs are out there and still need doing every day. Everyone who physically maintains all of our critical infrastructure, manufacturing, and food supply industries is pretty much going to commute to work one way or another. Millions of those people don't live in cities with public transport and/or don't work where public transport can take them to. EVs are an improvement for all of those necessary use cases, because the vehicles they need could not be shooting out smoke.
I'm not sure what percentage of workers could do their job from home if they were allowed to. It's probably a small minority, though a quick glance of numbers from COVID would suggest 15-20%. I'll use 15% for sake of argument but would welcome a more "confident" number if someone has it.
Reducing the number of miles is and important way to reduce impact. Additionally, even those who cannot work from home benefit from reduces congestion and reduces vehicle idling. Although idling has less impact on EVs (though they still have to run HVAC), ICE vehicles are still the majority of vehicles being sold today in most nations and will be in circulation for decades.
Not everyone can WFH, but it needs to be part of the strategy of reducing emissions from transportation. Not pushing WFH (for those who can) is leaving a lot on the table. This is not a replacement for EVs, rather in addition to.
I'm all for WFH and EVs personally. Haven't bought an EV yet but I would like to have a non-spyware-laden one for a reasonable price.
The spyware part. Agh!!
A big motivator for keeping my early-2000's car with almost 215,000 miles on it is just how CREEPY modern cars are.
Mozilla's "Privacy Not Included" column really highlighted this. It's terrible and it's currently all legal and you can never really trust you've circumvented it.
Sucks too, because those "Canoo lifestyle vehicles" or the new VW bus EV look so cool....but they have crap like face-monitoring cameras and app-connectivity in them. What the heck.
This is the truth. People like to tout EVs as the end all, be all, "silver bullet" for the petrochemical industry. Bullshit. Your EV is riddled with oil-based products and asphalt contains a shitload of petrochemicals. EVs are better than gas burning cars in the same way getting stabbed with a knife is better than being shot. If you really want to help the environment by buying a car, buy a used car instead of a new one. Still, nothing really compares to just having a society where the average individual doesn't need a vehicle. I think if we had a more robust service economy structured around couriers who took care of shopping and delivery, and then had a genuinely decent public transportation system or taxi options, we'd do a lot to reduce emissions. But the car is itself a sign of affluence and personal freedom in America. Always has been; probably always will be. Ownership of one, especially an expensive one, confers a certain status, and that's a cultural problem, not an environmental or material one.