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>His argument distills to: solve it all-at-once, or don’t solve it at all. I disagree. I think the argument that's being made is rather that switching to elect

>His argument distills to: solve it all-at-once, or don’t solve it at all. I disagree. I think the argument that's being made is rather that switching to electric cars isn't enough, but people focus on it so heavily that people feel as though switching to an electric car is saving the planet. The problem here is that it's not enough and due to how hyped up electric cars are there won't be enough will left to tackle many other problems that affect climate change. I don't know if I came across properly, so I'll explain it in a different way: humans have a limited amount of attention and will. Switching to electric cars is a useful move to combat climate change, but due to how hyped up electric cars are, it will satisfy many people's urge to do something for the climate. This occupies most of the limited amount of attention and will, thus there isn't enough left over to tackle all the other, bigger, problems.

jmnicolas 7y ago
> switching to electric cars isn't enough It's not enough it's worse : basically by buying an electric car you're outsourcing your pollution to China and Africa.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  Aren't a lot of electric cars (e.g. Tesla, Nissan Leaf) made in the US from batteries made in the US?
  - jmnicolas 7y ago
    Where do rare earth materials contained in the batteries come from ? To the best of my knowledge it comes from Africa and China.
llsf 7y ago
So the problem is the "hype" around electric cars, not the electric car itself. Nobody said "buy an electric car, and you are done, the planet would be saved". And if some people do believe that, then it is an education issue, not an electric car issue. A bit tired of people shooting for perfection and berating those who actually try to make a difference, even so slightly. Maybe a more effective solution would be to ban any fossil fuel powered large ships and planes ("the 15 largest ships in the world emit as much nitrogen oxide and sulphur oxide as the world’s 760 million cars." http://www.industrytap.com/worlds-15-biggest-ships-create-more-pollution-than-all-the-cars-in-the-world/8182 http://www.industrytap.com/worlds-15-biggest-ships-create-mo... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_shipping#Atmospheric_pollution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_shippi...). And yet we all know this is not going to happen anytime soon... and still we would keep getting blog posts saying that electric cars are a problem (of hype or whatever) for the environment.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  >Nobody said "buy an electric car, and you are done, the planet would be saved". And if some people do believe that, then it is an education issue, not an electric car issue. It's irrelevant what people said. What matters is what people believe. >A bit tired of people shooting for perfection and berating those who actually try to make a difference, even so slightly. The problem here is that you only have a limited amount of attention from people to spend on trying to improve climate change. If you misspend it, even when your proposed solution helps, you won't deal with the problem. Imagine you're in a desert with a jug of water. You know the direction you have to go in to get to a city and be saved. You can choose to walk or crawl. If you pick the option to crawl then you're moving in the right direction, but you'll die of thirst before you get there, because you have a limited amount of water. People's attention and will are like that jug of water. You need to make the best of it. Electric cars are great, but people need to understand that that isn't all that needs to be done.
  - llsf 7y ago
    I guess we agree that electric car is not the problem, education is. So, let's the 0.2% of them buy electric cars. And let's find a way to get rid of all large (fossil fuel powered) ships/planes and coal/gas power plants polluting way more than all cars combined. All that hair splitting about electric cars is just noise.
    - Mirioron 7y ago
      Nonono, I think you still misunderstand a bit. Electric cars are good. It is a step in the right direction. The problem is the perception that many people have that gasoline cars are the main problem and switching to electric is what's needed. The argument by the author is against the rhetoric of electric cars, not against electric cars themselves. All of what you said is what needs to be done (and more), so we should use rhetoric that acknowledges that cars are only a part of the problem.
swagasaurus-rex 7y ago
The bigger problems is industry. People have plenty of attention for the things they care about. What they don't have is the ability to change much at all about the bigger problems
WorldMaker 7y ago
But all of that is built on the false premise that this is solely and directly a individual level consumption-based problem (which the article ends with, and is wrong about). Most carbon problems are industrial or only indirectly affected by an individual's consumption patterns. In terms of individual consumption habits that make a noticeable difference on the scale of climate change: - Energy saving appliances (LED lights) [Mostly a checkmark; done] - Vegetarianism / local, sustainable, slow food [Growing trend] - Electric vehicle [Current fight] That's mostly it from an average individual's day to day carbon footprint. After that you might argue over things like flight patterns and cruise ship carbon, but those are less day-to-day and more infrequent and start to get into "nice to have" easily interchangeable work/vacation/models. The article is correct that there are greater systemic issues to solve. Sure, it would be great to bring back more public transportation, (re-)build better more walkable cities, better deal with the environmental externalities of our many industries, etc. But we aren't going to push the scales on those without collective effort, real political policy decisions, and probably regulation and taxes. We aren't going to correct these things on "many people's urge to do something" at an individual level, and focusing on it heavily isn't what's exhausting or will exhaust individuals from bigger problems, focusing on it only being an individual effort crisis is distracting us from dealing with bigger problems. This isn't a problem solvable from consumption alone and it is well past time we stopped pretending it is. It's a political problem we keep pretending the markets will solve because the markets own the politicians and that's what they want the politicians to tell the people.

jmnicolas 7y ago

> switching to electric cars isn't enough It's not enough it's worse : basically by buying an electric car you're outsourcing your pollution to China and Africa.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago
Aren't a lot of electric cars (e.g. Tesla, Nissan Leaf) made in the US from batteries made in the US?
- jmnicolas 7y ago
  Where do rare earth materials contained in the batteries come from ? To the best of my knowledge it comes from Africa and China.

llsf 7y ago

So the problem is the "hype" around electric cars, not the electric car itself. Nobody said "buy an electric car, and you are done, the planet would be saved". And if some people do believe that, then it is an education issue, not an electric car issue. A bit tired of people shooting for perfection and berating those who actually try to make a difference, even so slightly. Maybe a more effective solution would be to ban any fossil fuel powered large ships and planes ("the 15 largest ships in the world emit as much nitrogen oxide and sulphur oxide as the world’s 760 million cars." http://www.industrytap.com/worlds-15-biggest-ships-create-more-pollution-than-all-the-cars-in-the-world/8182 http://www.industrytap.com/worlds-15-biggest-ships-create-mo... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_shipping#Atmospheric_pollution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_shippi...). And yet we all know this is not going to happen anytime soon... and still we would keep getting blog posts saying that electric cars are a problem (of hype or whatever) for the environment.

Mirioron 7y ago
>Nobody said "buy an electric car, and you are done, the planet would be saved". And if some people do believe that, then it is an education issue, not an electric car issue. It's irrelevant what people said. What matters is what people believe. >A bit tired of people shooting for perfection and berating those who actually try to make a difference, even so slightly. The problem here is that you only have a limited amount of attention from people to spend on trying to improve climate change. If you misspend it, even when your proposed solution helps, you won't deal with the problem. Imagine you're in a desert with a jug of water. You know the direction you have to go in to get to a city and be saved. You can choose to walk or crawl. If you pick the option to crawl then you're moving in the right direction, but you'll die of thirst before you get there, because you have a limited amount of water. People's attention and will are like that jug of water. You need to make the best of it. Electric cars are great, but people need to understand that that isn't all that needs to be done.
- llsf 7y ago
  I guess we agree that electric car is not the problem, education is. So, let's the 0.2% of them buy electric cars. And let's find a way to get rid of all large (fossil fuel powered) ships/planes and coal/gas power plants polluting way more than all cars combined. All that hair splitting about electric cars is just noise.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    Nonono, I think you still misunderstand a bit. Electric cars are good. It is a step in the right direction. The problem is the perception that many people have that gasoline cars are the main problem and switching to electric is what's needed. The argument by the author is against the rhetoric of electric cars, not against electric cars themselves. All of what you said is what needs to be done (and more), so we should use rhetoric that acknowledges that cars are only a part of the problem.

swagasaurus-rex 7y ago

The bigger problems is industry. People have plenty of attention for the things they care about. What they don't have is the ability to change much at all about the bigger problems

WorldMaker 7y ago

But all of that is built on the false premise that this is solely and directly a individual level consumption-based problem (which the article ends with, and is wrong about). Most carbon problems are industrial or only indirectly affected by an individual's consumption patterns. In terms of individual consumption habits that make a noticeable difference on the scale of climate change: - Energy saving appliances (LED lights) [Mostly a checkmark; done] - Vegetarianism / local, sustainable, slow food [Growing trend] - Electric vehicle [Current fight] That's mostly it from an average individual's day to day carbon footprint. After that you might argue over things like flight patterns and cruise ship carbon, but those are less day-to-day and more infrequent and start to get into "nice to have" easily interchangeable work/vacation/models. The article is correct that there are greater systemic issues to solve. Sure, it would be great to bring back more public transportation, (re-)build better more walkable cities, better deal with the environmental externalities of our many industries, etc. But we aren't going to push the scales on those without collective effort, real political policy decisions, and probably regulation and taxes. We aren't going to correct these things on "many people's urge to do something" at an individual level, and focusing on it heavily isn't what's exhausting or will exhaust individuals from bigger problems, focusing on it only being an individual effort crisis is distracting us from dealing with bigger problems. This isn't a problem solvable from consumption alone and it is well past time we stopped pretending it is. It's a political problem we keep pretending the markets will solve because the markets own the politicians and that's what they want the politicians to tell the people.