hex_m_hell

You're going to trust the exact same industry that grifted away 10 years and billions of dollars on hydrogen fuel cells only to switch to the promise of EVs when the grift ran out? Good luck with that.

How much power would be needed to switch to EVs everywhere? Where does that power come from? Recognizing that manufacturing and transportation are also extremely carbon intensive, would we actually be better off switching or is this just another opportunity to dump money in to the auto industry?

The US had massive rail infrastructure in the past. We know that's possible. I don't have any evidence that electric vehicles would actually improve things even if they can be rolled out. Why would I believe an industry that has lied before and has every incentive to lie again? Why would anyone?

I used to go backpacking a lot, but I haven't been since I got shot. I'm looking forward to bike camping now that I'm no longer in the US.

Biden shouldn't give money to the auto industry or anyone who supports them. He should spend money on things that actually solve the problem: huge grants to build bike lanes and super blocks in cities, national high speed rail, and local rail networks.

He could literal give away eBikes to people who can't afford them. Manufacturing infrastructure for those already exists and there's actually enough lithium available to make that happen.

The problem isn't that work takes time and money, it's that this is a huge subsidy to the auto industry who are the absolute last people who should ever be involved in any kind of climate solution.

Edit: this isn't even a new thing. The auto industry sold hydrogen fuel cells as the solution last time and it turned out to just be a giant grift to buy more time to sell cars and take a bunch of money from the government. Why are you letting the same people fool you again?

There are trains that go to forests in Europe. That's not really a far fetched thing at all. There are busses that can take you to national forests in the US of all places.

Yeah, that's totally a thing and it could be more of a thing if we stopped spending so much money on absolutely the wrong things.

This money is going to the auto industry. The same auto industry that lobbies against mass transit and bike infrastructure, the same auto industry that ripped out all the light rail and destroyed American cities. The auto industry that is selling everyone SUVs and trucks in order to evade environmental regulations. This is a massive subsidy to some of the worst people, instead of funding things that make the auto industry basically obsolete.

Those are the same people who sell electric cars. This is money for them, instead of bike lanes and mass transit. That's the problem. Work takes time, but what work you choose to do and who benefits from it actually matters.

The work that's chosen is funneling money away.

How does this refute the message you replied to?

That money could be building infrastructure to make cars less relevant instead of wasting time on a fake solution.

Well that's great, but we solved the problem of efficiently moving people around 100 years ago and the auto industry destroyed it. EVs do not exist to save the climate, they exist to save the auto industry. That's always been the game.

Even if we do manage to actually get the electricity, where will the lithium come from? How will the charging infrastructure actually get built? None of these were ever meant to be solved, because the point of EVs has always been to push off the real changes just a little bit more.

EVs also make a lot of things worse. They're deadlier, they produce more tire microplastics, they do more damage to car infrastructure (which, uh, is HUGELY carbon intensive), and they're also hugely carbon intensive to build and ship. In terms of carbon today you're better off getting a small older ICE than a new EV.

They just make rich liberals feel better about themselves without actually needing to change their behaviour.

Hope isn't lost at all. A future that's still full of cars isn't hopeful. The hopeful thing is that we can solve all this today without any new technology simply by abolishing free parking, ending parking minimums, creating super blocks, and investing in mass transit, bike, and pedestrian Infrastructure instead of car infrastructure.

The thing that makes it hard to keep that hope going is that there are people who subscribe to /c/climate who think there will be a magic solution to climate change that lets everything go on exactly as it is without changing anything at all.

It was always completely impossible. Transportation was the biggest impediment, but it was just full of unsolvable problems. At the end of the day, the easiest way to crack hydrogen was from oil anyway. It was never intended to work. It was intended to buy time for the auto and oil industry by selling the people a fake solution.

The infrastructure investment needed to support EVs, when the electricity would come from natural gas anyway, is pretty transparently the exact same grift.

Isn't that what they said with hydrogen fuel cells as they grifted away a decade continuing to invest in car infrastructure instead of pedestrian, bike, and rail?

EVs are the new hydrogen fuel cells. They're not about saving the environment, they're about saving the auto industry.

I wonder how many of them just got badges.