After talking to folks in my town, I doubt electric cars are the quick fix we want

I hear all the time that electric cars will save us. But where I live, the power comes mostly from coal plants. So charging an electric car here just burns more coal. Also, building new cars, electric or not, uses a lot of energy and creates waste. We'd be better off keeping our current cars longer and driving less. Improving buses and trains would help more people for less money. I know this goes against the popular push, but it's what makes sense to me.

3 comments

3 Comments

alice9001mo ago

The coal power issue you brought up is huge. It's like how a lot of new fixes just end up making a different mess.

riley_miller401mo ago

Wait, is it really that huge of a problem now though @alice900? Honestly, a lot of those older plants have been getting way cleaner with scrubbers and stuff over the last 20 years. Tbh, the whole energy switch seems to cause more panic than the actual slow progress we're making. Sometimes feels like we're just trading one set of worried headlines for another.

the_jade1mo ago

Yeah, the "different mess" part is so true. We had a local plant that added all those scrubbers, and then they had to deal with this crazy amount of toxic sludge from cleaning the smoke. They just piled it up near the river. So they fixed the air a little maybe, but now we're worried about the water. It feels like we never actually solve the whole problem, just push it somewhere else. Does your area have anything like that?