Electric vehicles (EVs) are not as green as is often claimed. In my recent magazine piece, I noted this:
In terms of GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions, EVs are undoubtedly cleaner than conventional cars, but by less of a margin than is often understood. While an EV won’t release any tailpipe emissions (or indeed have a tailpipe), that should not be the end of the calculation. The fairest way to compare the two is to look at the emissions associated with each type of vehicle over its entire life cycle. That will include the emissions released to generate the electricity that powers an EV (which will vary from country to country; India is not the U.S.) and the emissions associated with the manufacture of the car and its components, including the mining of the metals used.
Add in all these factors and, according to the International Energy Agency, a midsize traditional car is responsible for a little over twice as many greenhouse-gas emissions as an EV.
In the piece, I argued that this was one reason among several to think that the current war on cars would not stop with internal-combustion-engine vehicles. After all, as I noted, cars have long been resented by a certain type of authoritarian for the untidiness they create, for the space they take up, and for the autonomy they offer.
And so to the Guardian:
The US’s transition to electric vehicles could require three times as much lithium as is currently produced for the entire global market, causing needless water shortages, Indigenous land grabs, and ecosystem destruction inside and outside its borders, new research finds.
It warns that unless the US’s dependence on cars in towns and cities falls drastically, the transition to lithium battery-powered electric vehicles by 2050 will deepen global environmental and social inequalities linked to mining — and may even jeopardize the 1.5C global heating target.
But ambitious policies investing in mass transit, walkable towns and cities, and robust battery recycling in the US would slash the amount of extra lithium required in 2050 by more than 90%.
The idea that the 1.5 degrees Celsius target will be met by 2050 is an interesting one, and the idea that the types of cars driven by Americans will make much of a difference to the outcome (or its consequences) is more interesting still. Oh, well.
The writer of the piece, Nina Lakhani, the Guardian’s “climate justice” reporter, makes some points worth considering about the problems associated with mining lithium on the scale required by the transition to EVs as currently envisaged: drivers’ switching from traditional cars to similar EVs and continuing to use them in roughly the same way. This, of course, assumes no radical improvements in battery technology. Whether that’s a reasonable assumption is a discussion for another time.
Read on through the piece, and it becomes clear that the switch from internal-combustion-engine vehicles to EVs may well end up being about social engineering as well as actual engineering, something that should not be a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention.
Lakhani quotes Thea Riofrancos, associate professor of political science at Providence College and lead author of the report that she referred to in the beginning of the article:
“We can either electrify the status quo to reach zero emissions, or the energy transition can be used as an opportunity to rethink our cities and the transportation sector so that it’s more environmentally and socially just, both in the US and globally.”
And what does that mean? Packing people into more-densely populated cities and moving them around in public transport, although the need for the latter will, of course, be reduced by the fact that these marvelous metropoles will be more “walkable.”
Don’t worry, it will be fun:
And despite the cultural attachment to driving, fewer cars on the roads would not mean a sacrifice in the quality of life, convenience or safety for Americans, according to coauthor Kira McDonald, an economist and urban policy researcher.
“If the policies, institutions, and spending patterns that shaped our existing car dependent infrastructure and built environment change, then alternative modes of transportation can be made far safer, far more convenient, and faster than cars – and immensely more pleasant and fun.”
Somehow I suspect that, in this vision of the future, people will not be left to decide what is “fun” for themselves. Read on some more to find this:
Lithium mining is, like all mining, environmentally and socially harmful.
“Like all mining.”
Just another reminder that climate fundamentalism is about a lot more than the climate.