Screw You, Smug Planet Killers

I've long suspected that electric cars would turn out to be more polluting in their life cycle. Depending on how your electricity is generated and how many miles you drive your car, your electric car can easily be more polluting than a conventional car.

I enjoyed this article a lot, since I've been waiting for this kind of analysis for many years:

If a typical electric car is driven 50,000 miles over its lifetime, the huge initial emissions from its manufacture means the car will actually have put more carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere than a similar-size gasoline-powered car driven the same number of miles. Similarly, if the energy used to recharge the electric car comes mostly from coal-fired power plants, it will be responsible for the emission of almost 15 ounces of carbon-dioxide for every one of the 50,000 miles it is driven—three ounces more than a similar gas-powered car.

Even if the electric car is driven for 90,000 miles and the owner stays away from coal-powered electricity, the car will cause just 24% less carbon-dioxide emission than its gas-powered cousin. This is a far cry from "zero emissions." Over its entire lifetime, the electric car will be responsible for 8.7 tons of carbon dioxide less than the average conventional car.

Those 8.7 tons may sound like a considerable amount, but it's not. The current best estimate of the global warming damage of an extra ton of carbon-dioxide is about $5. This means an optimistic assessment of the avoided carbon-dioxide associated with an electric car will allow the owner to spare the world about $44 in climate damage. On the European emissions market, credit for 8.7 tons of carbon-dioxide costs $48.

That doesn't even mention the carbon expenditures to replace the battery during the life of the car. If you hope to have even a chance to spare the planet, you'd best drive that electric car until a full charge on your battery that will hold less and less of a charge over the years gets you to the end of your driveway.

And for the fun of it, my federal tax dollars subsidize wealthy people who can afford the more expensive electrics to the tune of a $7,500.00 maximum subsidy to buyers per vehicle--not including direct aid to the electric car industry.

So those smug jerks who are "saving the planet" are actually killing the planet (by their beliefs), adding to the federal budget deficit, and screwing the 99% they probably think they are part of.