They’re also very heavy thanks to their batteries, so contribute more to tyre wear and thus plastic particulates in the air and marine environments. EVs use rare earths, which are currently mined and processed largely in countries without huge supplies of renewable energy to power the mining, without embedded circular economies, with plenty of single-use plastics and diesel generators for employee use, wasteful mining processes that dig too deep and with no thought for conservation, and with questionable human rights.ĮVs are manufactured in factories still powered in large part by fossil fuels, and transported around the world for sale by freight forwarders using diesel. ![]() We must acknowledge that electric cars are currently harmful for the planet (the fact that nobody in automotive talks about zero carbon production, but only net-zero carbon says it all - Polestar’s Project 0 is the one exception and even it doesn’t know if or when a zero-carbon production car is possible). This is relevant for our discussion of just how green electric cars are, because, of course, every form of manufacture to involve mining continues this disaster. In no way, therefore, could we currently be considered a species that has put the brakes our voracious greed for making, consuming and throwing away stuff, let alone limited the damage or started the healing process. In 2019, the human race unhelpfully dug out, scraped or mined more raw material from the earth than in all human history up to 1950, according to an episode of the excellent Start the Week on BBC Radio 4, called ‘Materials that Shape our World’. The grounding for the entire debate, however, is its backdrop, which surprisingly few people seem to inform themselves about before wading in, and the nature of which soon shows up the shrill voices as a thousand Neros, all fiddlers in a burning Rome.
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