He suggested solutions like drivers keeping the same car for longer periods of time
That's what i have been doing... Is that wrong, or just too much anti-consumerism to be presented as a good thing in our society?
this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024
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He's right honestly, cars, especially electric cars, produce a large portion of their CO2 emissions when they are manufactured.
We would all be better off if people kept their "gas guzzlers" but only used them rarely. A car in a garage has zero co2 emissions.
Which is one reason this anti WFH campaign pisses me off so much. We could cut emissions quite a bit just from that but we can't even do that little because: greedy assholes.
Was I the only one who, during covid lockdowns, was amazed at how fucking clear the air was? Did everyone just forget? Idk why most humans can't look at that and go "we all need to make this permanent" and then do it. But we evolved to prefer the worst of us in charge.
Anyway. Yeah. I WFH and drive about 5000 miles a year. And we tend to keep our cars 10-15 years. It's way more affordable than a new car every few years, assuming you get a car that has low maintenance costs. More people oughta do that.
Seriously.... Covid was an eye opener me as well.
It was so much quieter outside. The air was cleaner. Animals were returning to previously deserted areas at remarkable rates.
Everyone was itching to get back to "normal," but normal was what was causing all of the destruction on the first place.
The government should literally be paying people to stay home and do nothing. I remember reading somewhere that it is more cost effective in the long run. Rather than fixing damage and rebuilding cities after increasingly severe natural disasters.
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Anti-WFH is because companies know workers have so much mobility and a virtual workforce can leave to work for any company in the world. It’s a form of lock-in. People don’t like disruption or change, so they are less likely to leave for a higher paycheck. To be honest I’m surprised more American companies haven’t leveraged work from home to shift non customer-facing white collar jobs to Eastern Europe.
Anti wfh I think is run by business office real estate owners. I could be wrong, but wfh fucks them the most. Their investments gotta pay off and real estate is never supposed to go down in price, I'll fucking stab you bitch or something like that, the conversations I have heard at charity galas.
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Yeah, this is the industry blaming a famous person for making sense.
Replacing the gas guzzlers with EVs would be great, but the cost/benefit ratio isn't there. If you need a new car and can afford an EV, get one.
Car manufacturers need to do more to make EVs more affordable. They need to do a better job making their argument that they are good cars with significant environmental benefits.
They won't, because they still want to sell gasoline cars.
Conversions are another option that just aren't being used because of red tape. The paperwork takes nearly as much work as the actual conversion.
Admittedly the last time I looked into a conversion was like 20 years ago, but back then it would have cost as much as a new car. Has the price come down at least?
I live in a car city but I only use it to go groceries or maybe an event. I go twice a week tops.
All my friends told me I should have gotten a Tesla and that because I'm a tech guy that I'd buy a Tesla. I'm like, I don't drive enough, so I bought a used Civic.
By the time this Civic needs to be retired, there should be plenty of affordable options for me? Or maybe I can move to a place that doesn't require one.
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They offset all those emissions by the time they've reached like 80k km in places where electricity is produced using coal (compared to a gas vehicle that increases its total emissions as time goes) so no, he's not right actually.
That's not even taking into consideration the wear on emission equipment and cars age.
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It depends on how much you drive, and what you drive. If you have a Prius and drive 2000 miles a year the emissions payoff for getting an EV would probably be longer than you’d even want to keep the car. If you’re in a diesel F350 and do 20,000 miles a year, mostly city, then yeah an EV will be net zero in like 5 years or less.
As I’m sure someone will mention inevitably, not using a car in the first place is the best option. Public transit, walking, biking, are all much better solutions.
A portion of the public thinks that anything saying that you shouldn't immediately hop on the electric car bandwagon this moment is saying that electric cars are failures entirely. Drive your internal combustion car til it's dead, it's already here and will be phased out itself over time. No sense in making significantly higher artificial demand, leading to further pumping out cars that, no matter how you look at it, are expensive to the environment to build. Let the adoption come as cars start dying, let the EV industry keep advancing, and get one as your next car whenever that is.
It's sky news, a far right media outfit with questionable factual credibility. Notice they didn't say that this what they attacked him on, only that it was in the piece that they were criticizing. It's intentionally misleading to make you think their position is ridiculous.
Don't fall for this propaganda.
Anti-consumerism is bad because it would expose the fact that our economy is overproducing shit we don't need, so we would need a massive reorganization of society. You can tell who that is bad for.
No it's not wrong. Hell, I drive EV and lots of people ask me about it, And of course I'd love if more people did it, to cut down on fossils, but realistically it's always a financial decision, so I honestly tell them "If you already have a car, and don't need a new car, then it's a bad financial decision to buy a new car."
However, when you do need a new car, then it's likely a good decision to buy an EV, but you need to run the numbers if you want to know for sure. There are a lot of factors in this, some of which are dependent on your own personal milage and finances and others on where you live and what is available.
If you do run all the numbers for the duration of ownership, it's likely always a good decision to buy a new EV in comparison to ICE cars, and the thing that made my decision was that in my case, it wouldn't even make sense to buy the cheapest beater car, because over the years that I expect to drive this car, it's cheaper to buy a new EV than to exchange and/or repair older ICE cars. But I'm sure it varies. You gotta have some idea of how much you need to drive for the next 5 years, and most people probably don't.
Atkinson is sort of right in advising people to hold out a while. The prices are dropping and in just a few years, it won't even be a question. However I also understand the criticism, because as a public figure he should not be passing out blanket statements like that. There are likely people who will not buy an EV now because of his statement, even if it's against their own self interest.
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Seymour Skinner 'Am I out of touch?' meme:
- top panel caption: are EVs too expensive and not practical enough yet?
- bottom panel caption: No, it's Mr Bean's fault
The rule of thumb is: if your ICE car is still in working order, it's less damaging to the environment to just keep driving it. If you absolutely must buy a new car, get an electric. That being said, I don't trust that Rowan won't be "Mr. Car Guy" and promote his bias towards ICE cars due to his extreme wealth and love of exotic whips.
The thing is that cars have a huge secondhand market.
So if you buy a new car, you sell your old one to someone else, who sells their car to someone else, who sell their car to someone else, ... all the way until one of the horrible gas guzzlers at the bottom gets finally replaced.
So in a way it is improving the environment if you look at the whole picture.
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Reduce - Reuse - Recycle. In that order.
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Similar to the theory that The Simpsons made a generation not trust nuclear power.
I think 3 mile Island and Chernobyl and Fukushima and Sosnovy Bor and Ibaraki and Forsmark were probably more influential in terrifying the general public about nuclear power.
Yeah it's also people using those incidents for fear mongering. Especially when coal and oil have killed way more people than every nuclear incident combined, including nuclear weapons.
The psychological impact of a meltdown versus slow poisoning is important. Similar to how fire bombings were more deadly and destructive than the nuclear bombs were, but the nukes have a bigger impact on us mentally
Familiarity also. People are more afraid of dying in a very rare plane crash than dying in a car accident. Same with terrorism vs regular crime.
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I've heard people say shit like "after Chernobyl, two fishermen were instantly vaporized and only boots left on the bank!" Like, no, that never happened since it wasn't an atomic bomb.
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The cost of building them and waste storage issues were a major factor
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On what the article touches, he is not wrong. Buying a new car, even if it's an electric one, will have more impact than a lot of time using a gasoline one, especially if the country doesn't produce electricity in a sustainable way.
Also, if you want to help the environment, you shouldn't be replacing cars, but removing them, public transportation, and walkable cities are so much better in this regard.
Yes, thank you for mentioning the real solution - less cars of any kind. Public transport, cities where you can walk around, and bikes are pretty great too.
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Sadly, electric cars isn't about saving the environment and the planet. Is is about saving the car industry
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Here’s Rowan’s original article since I couldn’t find a link in the actual article.
All of the points he makes are good ones, IMHO. The one about three year leases is especially good, and something the government could act on right now. There’s no reason to ditch a car after three years. Both of my cars are almost a decade old and will probably keep running for another decade with good maintenance.
And here's the rebuttal about he's mostly spouting FUD or down right lies.
I imagine most of us here read his article with a positive outlook saying "yes, yes, these are concerns we acknowledge and are being handled, so this is more of a cautionary price than a true argument against it" while the other side is saying "see? See? They don't work at all!".
I read the Guardian rebuttal before his actual article. Interesting that they had to make multiple amendments to address some of what the Guardian called out. Of course, nobody really sees the amendments because the majority of readers have already passed through. I definitely agree that the 3-year turnaround is a massive misdirection though. First off, people are going to buy new cars regardless. It's required to create a sustainable used car market. Second off, selling/returning a 3-year lease car means there must be someone buying/accepting that return. It's a lease return, not a scrap disposal. Obviously marketing and sales wants you to get a new car sooner, but it's still necessary. Cars all eventually die.
This article was amended on 5 June 2023 to describe lithium-ion batteries as lasting “upwards of 10 years”, rather than “about 10 years”; and to clarify that the figures released by Volvo claimed that greenhouse gas emissions during production of an electric car are “nearly 70% higher”, not “70% higher”. It was further amended on 7 June 2023 to remove an incorrect reference to the production of lithium-ion batteries needing “many rare earth metals”; to clarify that a reference to “trucks” should instead have been to “heavy trucks for long distance haulage”; and to more accurately refer to the use of such batteries in these trucks as being a “concern”, due to weight issues, rather than a “non-starter”.
Just paid £650 out to get my 2007 Astra hatchback through an MOT.
It doesn't get driven much so it makes zero sense to replace it. Even if I'm spending double that in a year to keep it on the road it's still waaaaay cheaper than me paying for a "new" one. It's got bodywork rust now though and it's apparently really hard to find a place that'll do repairs like that :(
The biggest reason to get a newer car is the safety features (back up cameras, audible warnings, brake assist, etc.). I had my previous car for over 15 years and the new features were a huge upgrade.
Going on ten years on my current one, and seeing how much safety and tech has improved since then gets me wanting a new one.
But yeah, if you don't drive often, then it might not matter much.
Call it a hunch, but I think it's got less to do with the opinions of a celebrity and more to do with the fact that a large portion of the population can't afford the high price of an electric car.
Well, Mr. Atkinsons stance is not really off. EVs are still in their infancies, and need to get out of puberty before they are really useful and affordable.
Charging infrastructure is another huge bottle neck. I don’t have a charging station anywhere near my home, so even if I had an EV, I wouldn’t be able to charge it anywhere.
Then there’s also the grid. If everyone were to plug in their EVs in the afternoon, that would overload the grid beyond its capacity.
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Well they don't make anything even remotely like my R55 Mini Clubman anymore so I'll probably be keeping it forever. That's my effort to save the environment!
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