Ok. On the other hand, a complete migration to EVs won't solve the climate crisis either, as they are not energy efficient enough. Combine this with the fact that car-oriented developments are energy-inefficient in other ways - single family homes are way worse with regards to energy efficiency, lack of walkability makes car travel mandatory, larger infrastructure requirements are again worse woth regards to energy efficiency, and so on.
Does this mean we should throw our hands up and not make an EVs? No, that would be a bad strategy, a complete non-option. We must halt the climate crisis, this is quite frankly mandatory.
So, how do we tackle this issue? If we want to deal with the problem in a timely manner, we have to work within the framework we already have today. This means some degree of replacing ICEs with EVs. Crucially though, we need to realize that the framework itself is bad, and requires replacement in the future. This means halting investments in non-sustainable built environments, building energy-efficient transportation infrastructure to connect existing places where it makes sense, and only building new places with appropriate transportation infrastructure.
No one is arguing that EVs will solve climate change. They are necessary but not sufficient, and their issue isn’t that they aren’t efficient enough, it’s that (1) our grid isn’t yet fully clean and (2) cars don’t account for a sufficiently large share of emissions (so 100% of clean power for cars doesn’t address emissions for other applications).
> single family homes are way worse with regards to energy efficiency,
We’re definitely not going to get everyone into small urban apartments in the next 50 years. We couldn’t build the necessary apartments fast enough, and the costs would be enormous for a relatively small reduction in emissions. The better value for money is building out our clean energy capacity as quickly as possible and disincentivizing waste via carbon pricing.
> Defeatism is not on the roadmap.
Cool, then let’s just terraform Mars and call it a day. Of course, we have to be realistic which means no terraforming Mars or building hundreds of millions of apartment units and equivalent rail infrastructure.
Does this mean we should throw our hands up and not make an EVs? No, that would be a bad strategy, a complete non-option. We must halt the climate crisis, this is quite frankly mandatory.
So, how do we tackle this issue? If we want to deal with the problem in a timely manner, we have to work within the framework we already have today. This means some degree of replacing ICEs with EVs. Crucially though, we need to realize that the framework itself is bad, and requires replacement in the future. This means halting investments in non-sustainable built environments, building energy-efficient transportation infrastructure to connect existing places where it makes sense, and only building new places with appropriate transportation infrastructure.
Defeatism is not on the roadmap.