This comic seems to imply that the outcome of climate change will be dependent on individuals’ choice of personal vehicle, and not on the cars themselves or the systems that keep people reliant on them. EVs will not save us from climate change. They are an attempt to prolong the life of the auto industry as we move into a future that must move past motornormativity.
I don’t see how this comic talks about climate change at all. It’s basically a long winded way to say “haha some people won’t be ready to adopt new tech until the literal apocalypse”
While I absolutely support the death of the car by replacing it with mass transit and walkable cities, there’s no way in hell that’s going to happen on a large scale within my lifetime if ever. EV’s may be an attempt to prolong the life of the auto industry, but it is a very successful attempt.
I did a quick googling to get some numbers, and it looks like in 2022, 28% of US emissions were from transportation. Another 25% was from electricity generation. Fix those two things alone and you’ve more than cut your emissions in half.
Getting people to switch to electric cars will go a long way towards slowing down/stopping climate change, and is actually doable. In North America, getting everyone to change their lifestyles, redesigning city layouts, and actually building the public transportation to support it is a process that will take generations to complete. We don’t have that kind of time. Better to get people into electric cars now, while we work towards the long term goal of not needing them.
An EV still produces about 30% of the lifetime CO2 emissions of an equivalent ICE, assuming a 100% clean grid [1]. So unless we change the systems that are putting more and more cars on the road, and increasing vehicle miles traveled each year, emissions will continue to rise.
Cars only really became available to the public in the 20s or 30s. I bet your city was overrun by cars by the 50s. Cities drastically changed over just a few decades. Why should it take significantly longer to go in the reverse direction? Other than a lack of political will.
edit: I’m not against EVs overall. I know there will always be a need for cars/trucks to some extent, and I think they should all be EVs. But don’t let that be a distraction from actual meaningful climate action.
So that source specifically states that the production emissions are a best estimate, and not thoroughly examined in the scope of that study. In the not-so-theoretical case where the grid is carbon free (there are locations in North America where this is very close to true) that completely changes the math on the production emissions. That study chose not to look at that, and instead choose a flat rate that reflected the current average.
Also, I’m not saying that electric cars are the proper solution; I’m saying they are the fastest solution. They are a stop-gap because the proper solutions are going to take too long to implement.
I think a bigger part of the production emissions come from further up the supply chain than the factory. Such as extraction, refinement and shipping of the lithium and cobalt required for batteries. That is also what makes it hard to estimate.
My point was that switching to EVs will not make transportation emissions disappear.
I interpreted the meteors/city on fire as short hand for general armageddon because it is probably pretty hard to draw; in a single comic panel: droughts, crop failure, wild fires, floods, severe storms, wars over fresh water, etc. You know, the actual things that will kill people from climate change.
But if you interpret the meteors as literal, then what is the point of the comic? A swarm of meteors is not influenced at all by someones choice to drive an EV or not. So this comic is no longer a critique of that choice.
The point is that some people won’t even take the smaller steps towards a sustainable future with flimsy excuses, and then might do it when everything is going to shit.
In this case it’s someone opposed to those positive changes.
The point of the comic to is to show how futile and silly these excuses are, using hyperbole at the end, to show how foolish and stubborn these people are.
I’m sorry that you’re not the type of person to get jokes, and hopefully you can learn to recognize the mechanics of humor at some point so you understand why and how jokes work for other people.
This comic seems to imply that the outcome of climate change will be dependent on individuals’ choice of personal vehicle, and not on the cars themselves or the systems that keep people reliant on them. EVs will not save us from climate change. They are an attempt to prolong the life of the auto industry as we move into a future that must move past motornormativity.
I think the bigger issue is that this comic seems to imply climate change will summon meteors.
I don’t see how this comic talks about climate change at all. It’s basically a long winded way to say “haha some people won’t be ready to adopt new tech until the literal apocalypse”
While I absolutely support the death of the car by replacing it with mass transit and walkable cities, there’s no way in hell that’s going to happen on a large scale within my lifetime if ever. EV’s may be an attempt to prolong the life of the auto industry, but it is a very successful attempt.
I did a quick googling to get some numbers, and it looks like in 2022, 28% of US emissions were from transportation. Another 25% was from electricity generation. Fix those two things alone and you’ve more than cut your emissions in half.
Getting people to switch to electric cars will go a long way towards slowing down/stopping climate change, and is actually doable. In North America, getting everyone to change their lifestyles, redesigning city layouts, and actually building the public transportation to support it is a process that will take generations to complete. We don’t have that kind of time. Better to get people into electric cars now, while we work towards the long term goal of not needing them.
An EV still produces about 30% of the lifetime CO2 emissions of an equivalent ICE, assuming a 100% clean grid [1]. So unless we change the systems that are putting more and more cars on the road, and increasing vehicle miles traveled each year, emissions will continue to rise.
Cars only really became available to the public in the 20s or 30s. I bet your city was overrun by cars by the 50s. Cities drastically changed over just a few decades. Why should it take significantly longer to go in the reverse direction? Other than a lack of political will.
edit: I’m not against EVs overall. I know there will always be a need for cars/trucks to some extent, and I think they should all be EVs. But don’t let that be a distraction from actual meaningful climate action.
So that source specifically states that the production emissions are a best estimate, and not thoroughly examined in the scope of that study. In the not-so-theoretical case where the grid is carbon free (there are locations in North America where this is very close to true) that completely changes the math on the production emissions. That study chose not to look at that, and instead choose a flat rate that reflected the current average.
Also, I’m not saying that electric cars are the proper solution; I’m saying they are the fastest solution. They are a stop-gap because the proper solutions are going to take too long to implement.
I think a bigger part of the production emissions come from further up the supply chain than the factory. Such as extraction, refinement and shipping of the lithium and cobalt required for batteries. That is also what makes it hard to estimate.
My point was that switching to EVs will not make transportation emissions disappear.
Cities should be carless (only renting cars should be allowed), rural areas should be EVs only, and only if you have photovoltaics on your roof.
Bro are you saying meteors are part of climate change?
I interpreted the meteors/city on fire as short hand for general armageddon because it is probably pretty hard to draw; in a single comic panel: droughts, crop failure, wild fires, floods, severe storms, wars over fresh water, etc. You know, the actual things that will kill people from climate change.
But if you interpret the meteors as literal, then what is the point of the comic? A swarm of meteors is not influenced at all by someones choice to drive an EV or not. So this comic is no longer a critique of that choice.
The point is that some people won’t even take the smaller steps towards a sustainable future with flimsy excuses, and then might do it when everything is going to shit.
In this case it’s someone opposed to those positive changes.
The point of the comic to is to show how futile and silly these excuses are, using hyperbole at the end, to show how foolish and stubborn these people are.
I’m sorry that you’re not the type of person to get jokes, and hopefully you can learn to recognize the mechanics of humor at some point so you understand why and how jokes work for other people.
I think the actual joke is that there isn’t any more future so it’s finally future proof cause it’s not getting any better and only worse.
Yeah that too probably
!fuckcars@lemmy.world !fuckcars@lemmy.ca