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Originally Posted by DGthe3
Upon which you get into the issue of source vs tail pipe emissions. Whats worse for the environment: multiple refineries turning ore into batteries, or multiple refineries turning crude into gasoline. The overall equation changes based on where you live, and even then it probably borders on impossible to get reliable data on what is really going on. For myself, I know that I live area near a massive hydro-electric plant (Niagara Falls), with a smaller coal plant (Nanticoke -single largest coal plant in NA, I think), and numerous wind turbines being proposed (with strong opposition), with nuclear nearby to take up the slack. Going the EV route, for CO2 emissions is a pretty easy choice -if thats what I was concerned about. But I'm not.
Personally, I usually go back to my days of Scouting. Among other things, a good Scout is "wise in the use of his resources". Spending a lot more for a marginal gain is silly. Spending a little more for a large gain is easy. Question is, what is a little, what is a lot, and what do we have to gain?
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Personally, I don't care much about CO2 emissions, either, as I think the "danger" of it is grossly exaggerated. I just bring it up, because that is usually what people mean when they say "pollution" or "emissions" nowadays, and that's what I was responding to.
Honestly, I think electric cars are pretty pointless. The type of pollution that results from producing those batteries, at least in my opinion, is the type that we should really be worried about, not CO2, which I find to be rather benign. They still have a very long way to go to be economically viable enough to sell, at least to people who don't shop entirely based on a cause, which is most of us. And if electric cars are ever going to be anything but a very, very tiny niche, they are going to have to be made out of materials that actually exist in the quantities required to build cars on a large scale.
I generally shake my head at how concerned people get over "carbon emissions," but that is probably at least partly a symptom of a good thing. Nowadays, for most of the US and Canada, the types of truly nasty pollutants that really do cause serious, direct problems, have been so minimized that people have the luxury of being able to focus so much attention what really isn't "pollution" at all in any conventional or traditional sense.
Downside to that is too much free time combined with an overly active, yet under occupied mind tends to promote the taking leave of reality.