Electric vehicles remains a tiny sliver of the overal U.S. vehicle fleet. But even mass EV adoption is no magic fix for transportation-related carbon emissions. Richard Vogel/AP

The Problem With Switching to Electric Cars

Earlier this month, in their seven-hour climate town hall, CNN had its anchors put the same incredulous question to the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates: Are we all going to have to drive electric cars now?

CityLab - continues

 

Smoke game to distract the peons from realizing most pollution comes from industry, including trucking marine shipping heating etc. Seriously, go look up emissions by sector. Squeezing personal car emissions is pointless once a single semi trailer “glider” with a 1974 diesel heart pulls out into traffic.

 

Do we follow the EPA? Granted this administration is trying desperately to minimize their influence, but I took your suggestion and searched "emissions by sector" and the 2nd hit* was report by the EPA - https://www.epa.gov/ghgemidssions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions

It reads in part;
The largest sources of transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions include passenger cars and light-duty trucks, including sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks, and minivans.

Now should I limit my search results to Fox News or something?

* first hit was good too - https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/glo...emissions-data
can I add a 3rd too? - https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/glo...ns-data#Sector

 

No no start with EPA. Don’t even look at fox.

EPA says transportation is 29% of ghg emissions, of which roughly half is light duty vehicles. So already down to 15% of national emissions, which seems sufficiently minor vs industry electricity heating etc (actually it’s a bit larger than I thought) ... but click on.

Proposed regulations will reduce light vehicle emissions by 6b tons. Which sounds amazing !!! Study Ok now how much for heavy duty? 270m. A lot less. Now ... which group of transport is being asked to sacrifice more here? Any coincidence one set supports big business by moving goods to market and the other one is just average ppl trying to get to their jobs? And marine transport, airlines ... you know, the rest of transport .. no mention at all.

And that’s just (mostly?) carbon. Do this by particulates, which cause illness directly (data is too hard to get I think) and it’ll look way worse.

I’m not trying to get anyone convinced that car emissions are irrelevant, but ... the biggest polluters lie elsewhere.

 

Getting back to the article,

It reads in part; With 46 percent of vehicle trips under three miles, reducing VMT could be sped by infrastructure and public transit improvements that encourage more people to take trips without a car.

In other words just buying and using an electric car doesn't mean "you'll be saving the world". Kinda like the same feeling many Prius owners had. What the article states is that people have to work at changing their driving habits and not use it for little trips that can be handled with something other than a car. They can do something to change the carbon footprint of the US, and they can do it today.

And me personally, I think agriculture takes a big percentage of that pie in their industry. Again people can make a change with that one too. Buying local produce and growing their own.