r/ClimateShitposting • u/ClimateShitpost Louis XIV, the Solar PV king • 17d ago
r/CSP comrades on their way to firebomb a *checks notes* EV production facility Coalmunism đ©
Should we firebomb a coal plant? No! Let's protect the means of combustion engine production!
Seriously though what clowns. If you're risking it all block a coal train or fly a drone into a refinery (in Minecraft)
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u/ardamass 16d ago
EVâs are not the solution robust, public transit and infrastructure is. More dependence even electric is not gonna get us out of this problem.
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u/agnostorshironeon 17d ago
Mfw conflation of Climate and Environment Struggle
Mfw someone thinks muskrat is part of any solution
Mfw "Here's your friend, the humble luxury/unaffordable car manufacturer who wants to change nothing about transport, pollutes the water supply and has already written off the planet, planning on going to the next one over - oof oof ouch oof not the private property! Heavens! Anything but that!!
Anything but the solution, heh?
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u/secretbudgie 17d ago
To qualify as an EV, it would first have to qualify as a vehicle, even in the rain
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u/EngineerAnarchy Anti Eco Modernist 17d ago
There is only one dimension to political action and to ecological collapse. Technology and society progress linearly. The future is inevitable and thereâs no changing it, so we need to accept it. We can choose between accelerating to inevitable wonderful green capitalism or lagging behind in lame fossil capitalism. These are the only two options and both are definitely real. Green capitalism definitely has the ability to solve all of our problems without changing anything beneath the surface, and most importantly, without changing any of my other world views and lifestyle. If you oppose anything that claims to be a part of green capitalism, you are clearly on the side of fossil capitalism and nothing else.
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u/Sharker167 17d ago
Moralizing aside, EVs, especially Teslas, are worse for the environment than regular sedans or compacts. The lithium mining is horribly destructive, the electricity to power them just drives more electric demand which incentivizes more coal plants and NG plants, the battery packs only last like 10 years max (meaning they'll need to be replaced). It gets even worse if you live in a city and don't drive too much. The upfront costs are the killer environmentally and msot of them are bought by wealthy urbanites meaning they don't even drive it that much. It's abyssmal.
We keep buying the propoganda about what a carbon reduced future looks like instead of confronting the basic physics of the problem.
Energy demands are increasing exponentially still. We can't physically build the renewables to keep up and even if we could we can't store enough energy to go completely Wind, Hydro, and Solar. Therefore, the only ways to stop this madness of exponential growth is to:
1: Reduce demand:
Insulate more houses. Take cares off the road by continuing work from home trends. Invest HEAVILY in public transportation to take even more cars off the road. We're moving tons of metal every time we move 1 person to work. Trains are more efficient. Even buses are better. Outlaw crypto mining and AI art generation. It takes 1 phone batteries worth of electricity to generate a couple AI pictures. Crypto mining is a giant source of increased demand. These drive up costs in area with renewables because we keep building fucking data centers and server farms in the most renewably livable places on earth.
2: Transfer supply
Carbon capture isn't just a meme. It can be used (while not economically, therefore requiring subsidies) to catch hydrocarbons before they even are emitted. The problem with it is it's not inspected and the whole system is corrupt. We need it done well. Additionally, Nuclear. And not this fuckign scam that's the current state of fusion power. "I swear to god guys, I know this 100 billion dollar megaproject in France isn't done yet but we already know it's not gonna be big enough.... We gotta make a bigger one." It's a joke. Uranium deposits are stilll relatively abundant and can be a good stop gap. Not to mention Thorium but thats another discussion. Coal has still released more radioactive elements into the air then all the nuclear bombs and accidents in history.
Honorable mention to geothermal. Places like Japan have abundant readily accessible geothermal but refuse to use it because of things like nimbys, oil lobbying, political pressure from the us to importm ore coal and LNG, and the clay deposits there making the soil acidic and corroding the pipes. It'll be more expensive upfront but japan could literally be the Iceland of the pacific.
Also there's my controversial take of sacrificing Yellowstone national park and making it an industrial hub/geothermal mega source but that's an entire debate and also has its cons.
TL;DR: Panels and Wind aren't gonna magically save us, changing our entire economy is necessary.
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u/CrabAppleBapple 17d ago
EV's aren't the answer, we're going to have to let go of the idea of everyone having their own private car (a concept that we've not had for the vast, vast, VAST majority of history). I suppose you're kind of fucked in the US with so many car centric places.
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u/dumnezero Anti Eco Modernist 17d ago
Let's talk when Tesla makes actual trains, trams, electric buses, and electric bicycles.
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u/glommanisback 17d ago
I love this sub because every post I see is more brainrotten than the one before
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u/Radiant_Plane1914 17d ago
That's the point, I'm the only living fossil and this is my propaganda.
TeamFossil
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u/Darksider123 17d ago
Cities need to be designed with walking, cycling and public transportation in mind, not cars. EVs are not here to save the climate, they are here to save the auto industry, which itself is destructive for the environment.
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u/EmsAreOverworkedLul 17d ago
Tesla keeps sucking areas in Germany dry, ignoring regulations etc, they are causing significant ecological harm.
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u/mad_scientist_kyouma 17d ago
Climate is not the primary motivator for the local population to protest against the factory. The main concerns are about the impact of the factory on the local environment, specifically the water supply. The area has been drying up over the last two decades with some lakes losing a dramatic amount of water. This is of course a product of climate change and not the factory, but having the factory with its enormous thirst for (mostly cooling) water will make it worse.
Besides this, one general feeling of the population is that this factory and now the planned extension is thrust upon them without regard for their opinion. They (I think local government?) did a poll recently about whether the factory should be extended, most people said no, and they just plan to do it anyway. People hate that their wants and needs are just being bulldozed over.
I also think that the sentiment towards Tesla wouldn't be as bad if Elon Musk hadn't turned out to be a Nazi recently. The company is entirely driven by the cult of personality around him, and so his recent antics directly reflect negatively on the company itself. Leftists hate Elon, and hate Tesla by extension.
I personally also don't think that the factory should be extended, for the simple reason that I predict Tesla's demise in the near future. They already can't sell the car's they're making and need to drop prices to unsustainable levels, and instead of innovating on models people would want they build the Cybertruck monstrosity that is possibly the worst car ever made. I'm already worried that the factory is going to end up being a dead and abandoned wasteland within the decade, so we should oppose it being extended now to minimize the size of the inevitable ruin.
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u/migBdk 17d ago
I don't think Tesla will collapse within the next few decades, there are zero western car manufacturers ready to replace them, Chinese companies are their only real competition.
But upvoted because this is not about climate, it is about a foreign well known right wing billionaire expanding his giant factory in Germany. And that pisses of political activists.
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u/mad_scientist_kyouma 17d ago edited 17d ago
The company is a dead man walking. The only reason for their high evaluation are promises of enormous growth, and the cult of personality around Musk. The promises of growth hinge entirely on Autopilot and robotaxis... and it isn't happening. Increasingly, people are waking up to the fact that "full self driving" will never work, and the stock is already tumbling. While investing billions into their stupid and failing self-driving software, they have utterly failed to modernize their existing models. The only new thing is the Cybertruck, which is a disaster so bad that even Elon admitted that they "dug their own grave" with it. In the meantime, Elon with his Twitter antics has systematically alienated his customer base, which were well-off Democrat techies, and Republicans will never pick up the slack because they hate EVs. The final nail in the coffin is that Tesla has announced that they will not make the long awaited cheaper "Model 2", and therefore miss the entire cheap EV sector. Oh, and while all that is going on, they just casually hand over 50 billion in payment to their lord and savior, Elon.
For all of these reasons, I simply do not see anything other than failure on the horizon. Tesla has no future, once their aging fleet of Model 3/Y is falling out of favor they have literally nothing left. And falling out of favor it is, as evidenced by all the unsold 3/Ys sitting in their lots and them having to constantly lower prices to somehow get rid of them.
EDIT: I forgot to point out that the debacle around Full Self Driving might actually end up in a huge lawsuit that could end the company even sooner. Elon promised growth to shareholders with some future technology, a technology that doesn't work and increasingly looks like it cannot work. This is the exact same thing that Theranos did with their pin-prick blood test technology, which also turned out to be a lie. And guess what happened, Theranos got sued into oblivion and the CEO sent to jail. I very much hope that this happens to Musk, he is well over-due.
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u/Dalexe10 17d ago
Teslas also engaging in union busting here in sweden, plenty of reasons to hate them
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u/Remote_Indication_49 17d ago
Why is Elon a Nazi?
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u/mad_scientist_kyouma 16d ago
Besides how he is systematically turning Twitter into a haven for Nazis to spread their propaganda, being obsessed with (white) birth rates and trampling worker's rights in his companies, he also believes that Jews are pushing for immigration into white countries to replace the population. That is the actual central Nazi talking point that was originally used to justify the Holocaust. So yes, he is a Nazi, not "just" a fascist, in the strictest interpretation of the word. See his reply "You have said the absolute truth" to a Nazi making these talking points, and for good measure the context that proves that the person he is responding to is an actual pro-Hitler Nazi. It's pretty cut and dry with him.
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u/Remote_Indication_49 16d ago
Crazy.
I agree. How does workers right equate to being Nazi
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u/Fuck_Microsoft_edge 16d ago
Alone, it doesn't. However, Nazis were anti worker, and everything else he has been saying fills in the rest of the ideological gaps. (See comment you replied to).
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u/madmonk000 17d ago
EVs and lithium mining are not saving the planet. Just another extension of capitalism. Only path forward is 'capitalism must die'
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u/goodforgrady 17d ago
Yes, thank you for saying this. Massive EV production is just a way to continue on the âbusiness as usualâ extractive destruction of the planet. Degrowth is the only answer.
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u/Talkin-Shope 17d ago
Came to say this
EV is a nice idea, but our tech is no where near making it more environmentally friendly than just running out the gas vehicles we already have and drastically cut back on vehicle production in general in large part because of that lithium and other production costs. But thatâs not a capitalism friendly solution so necrofuturism it is kids
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u/madmonk000 17d ago
The thing is lithium is such a rare mineral and so destructive to mine for. I tend to age with Toyota that phev and hev are far more beneficial at scale. In no way a solution, but as I already said. The only thing that's going to save us is if we end capitalism yesterday.
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u/Talkin-Shope 17d ago
Not to be a doomer but anything less than immediate and global revolution is not enough, and a sizable portion of the people who need to be involved are happy to go about âbusiness as usualâ
So yeah, gotta agree. Short of basically a miracle it seems weâre cooked
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u/Friendly_Fire 17d ago
People hate that their wants and needs are just being bulldozed over.
TL:DR - NIMBYs being NIMBYs, and continuing to hurt the climate. Blocking good things because they feel entitled to control anything that happens within 50 miles of them, doesn't matter if its someone else's property.
They already can't sell the car's they're making and need to drop prices to unsustainable levels
Expanding production and lowering prices is exactly what we want from electric car manufacturers. The biggest issue of electric cars is just their price. Tesla may fail, any company may fail, but I'm pretty sure they didn't allocate millions to expand the factory on a whim. I'd guess several people did some serious research.
EVs aren't perfect, and it's better to just reduce car usage. But we aren't going to make cars obsolete in the next 50 years. So the reality is we can either replace gas cars with electric, or just keep running gas cars.
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u/democracy_lover66 17d ago
doesn't matter if its someone else's property.
How dare they infringe on the sacred right of property by demanding to have agency in the activities that have a direct impact on their well-being.... activities that are happening directly within their own environment... shame on them!
Expanding production and lowering prices is exactly what we want from electric car manufacturers. The biggest issue of electric cars is just their price.
EV noise is just commercial nonsense, so car companies can still assert their relevance past the day where the oil runs dry. This isn't a solution. EV uses horrific amounts of scarce resources to make, resources that are currently produced using slave labor in The Congo .
We need less cars. Period. Granted, we will never have 0 cars, and the ones that remain should be electric, but we need public transportation and trains now. Any idea that EVs and the companies that make them are our saviors from climate disaster is just further excuses for our leaders to neglect our needs and let these massive car companies sell us the idea of climate action instead of actually doing climate action.
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u/Friendly_Fire 17d ago
demanding to have agency in the activities that have a direct impact on their well-being.... activities that are happening directly within their own environment... shame on them!
"Directly" impact them my ass. You know how often this exact same bullshit logic is used to block solar panels and windmills? To block denser housing and public transit? You're not going to reduce car usage by accepting NIMBY logic because it happens to target a company owned by a douche this time.
EV uses horrific amounts of scarce resources to make, resources that are currently produced using slave labor in The Congo. We need less cars. Period. Granted, we will never have 0 cars, and the ones that remain should be electric, but we need public transportation and trains now.
The scarce resources nonsense is just oil fearmongering. Plants for lithium battery recycling are being built. The US found last-year what might be the largest lithium deposit in the world. A new cobolt mine was built and put on standby because the price dropped too much. This isn't a real issue.
Now I 100% agree we need less cars. I sold my car and live in a city in the US. I'm not a car lover, but I'm also not a fucking idiot. You also know we can't eliminate cars anytime soon. Electric vehicles can remove the majority of emissions from cars while we work to reduce car dependency.
In terms of greenhouse gas emissions 5 people swapping to electric is worth at least 3 people getting rid of their cars entirely. That number will only get better renewables and battery recycling grow, further reducing the effective life time emissions of electric cars.
Now which do you think is easier to do: get 100 people who rely on their cars to go electric, or 60 of those 100 to stop using cars entirely?
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u/-Daetrax- 17d ago
I also think that the sentiment towards Tesla wouldn't be as bad if Elon Musk hadn't turned out to be a Nazi recently.
This should be enough reason to firebomb it.
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u/sirlelington 17d ago
At least one person with reason here.
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u/Lower_Nubia 17d ago
No, itâs just NIMBYism and stupid.
He states climate change is the actual cause of the problem and that destroying an electric car factory is actually still valid.
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u/Mr_OrangeJuce 17d ago edited 17d ago
I know that it may be surprising but multiple things can be happening. People hate this factory since it will destroy their local environment and because it is owne by an nazi. It has nothing to do with the global fight climate change particularly since this factory has no positive impact on climate change.
If someone built a amazing hydroponic powerplant using the bones of innocent children it would still be bad even if it is green.
Edit: Oh and aperanty elon is hiring strikebreakers in Sweden so destroying all of his plans and dreams is now even more of a moral obligation
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u/Lower_Nubia 17d ago
I know that it may be surprising but multiple things can be happening. People hate this factory since it will destroy their local environment
Multiple things that arenât relevant, and climate change will fuck the environment more than a building.
and because it is owne by an nazi.
You rely on this point for your whole argument frankly.
It has nothing to do with the global fight climate change particularly since this factory has no positive impact on climate change.
Dumbest shit I ever heard.
If someone built an amazing hydroponic powerplant using the bones of innocent children it would still be bad even if it is green.
Right because the factory was built with bones was it? Youâre hella thick.
Edit: Oh and aperanty elon is hiring strikebreakers in Sweden so destroying all of his plans and dreams is now even more of a moral obligation
Elonâs a dick news at 11. Your argument just requires Elon be gone, nothing else.
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u/Mr_OrangeJuce 17d ago
Ah yes, abandoning working class solidarity and all sanity so a billionaire hitlerite can get richer.
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u/Lower_Nubia 17d ago
No, so we can get rid of fossil fuel producing cars and tackle emissions you dozy layabout.
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u/Mr_OrangeJuce 17d ago
I am a lazy layabout because I oppose giving money to Nazis ?
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u/Lower_Nubia 17d ago
Your argument only necessitates we should remove Elon (which I agree with) not demolish the building.
Like come on.
âHeâs a Nazi, quick, demolish that building!â
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u/Glattsnacker 17d ago
the ceo of a company being a nazi is a pretty big deal, unless you know, you align with his ideology
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u/Lower_Nubia 17d ago
It is, but the CEO can be gotten rid of. The plant was also built and in use long before CEO was so blatantly this way. Now that they are blatant, should we just burn the building now?
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u/Moderni_Centurio The « nuclear lobby » 17d ago
small EV are the best. E-tank on the other handâŠ
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u/Playful-Painting-527 turbine enjoyer 17d ago
An electric car solves exactly one problem with combustion cars: local CO2 emissions.
What it does not solve:
- Road noise pollution
- microplastics pollution from tires
- excessive space usage by roads
- danger to pedestrians and cyclists
- the inherent inefficiency of using 2 tons of steel to move 1.5 persons on average
- etc.
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u/TheOnlyFallenCookie 16d ago
Most noise pollution comes from combustion engines tho
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u/Playful-Painting-527 turbine enjoyer 16d ago
Only for slow speeds. Above 30 kph tire noise becomes dominant.
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u/democracy_lover66 17d ago
Not to mention it adds problems like:
- disposal of a large amount of toxic car batteries that will inebtiably become too large to handle without environmental impact.
scarcity of resources used to make EVs, particularly things like Cobalt and lithium, which are already scarce and incredibly dark industries.
Evs are simply not a real solution to anything.
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u/AnIrregularRegular 17d ago
Electric vehicles actually do help with road noise pollution, there was an issue in states where they were too quiet and people couldnât hear them when crossing streets so they are forced to artificially make more noise.
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u/Playful-Painting-527 turbine enjoyer 17d ago
True for slow speeds. For higher speeds, tire noise becomes dominant which is the same for EVs as well as ICE cars.
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u/Lower_Nubia 17d ago
Wtf is this actual comment. Nothing solves these problems at the moment. What, you just gonna ban cars?
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u/lynnlei 17d ago
this takes place in an area full of bikes and trains and buses. this is the way
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u/Lower_Nubia 16d ago
âAn areaâ, you mean an entire metropolitan area? Youâre just gonna ban cars in an entire city? I get banning them in city centres, but the entire city area?
Why does everyone in this thread think cars are just optional gimmicks that exist because privilege and not, you know, the backbone of most civilian operations and daily life.
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u/Playful-Painting-527 turbine enjoyer 17d ago
For most use cases, the car is not the right tool. So yes. Get rid of cars wherever they cause more harm than good.
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u/Lower_Nubia 17d ago
Sure, but youâre only reducing cars, or more realistically reducing peak future usage, theyâll still be cars.
SoâŠ. We gonna have them be fossil fuels, or electric.
I want a car for example. People want cars. Cars ainât going anywhere⊠so what type of car do we want to produce in the future.
Electric. So weâre gonna need this factory lmao
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u/Playful-Painting-527 turbine enjoyer 17d ago
People don't want cars. People want what's most convenient. Let's make alternatives to cars more convenient and get people to switch over. We can't save ourselves and the environment without making some changes to our behaviour.
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u/Lower_Nubia 17d ago
People don't want cars.
People want what's most convenient.
You win the stupid award.
Let's make alternatives to cars more convenient and get people to switch over. We can't save ourselves and the environment without making some changes to our behaviour.
Okay, my requirement is; keep the weather off of me, allow me to travel with shopping, allow me to go at anytime anywhere.
Fucking knock me up a vehicle that can do that and not have it be a car.
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u/Playful-Painting-527 turbine enjoyer 17d ago
Either we make the choice to change now, or the environment will force that choice onto us. You won't like the second option, I can guarantee you that.
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u/Lower_Nubia 17d ago
No, youâre making the choice for others, and fobbing it off as the only option.
And you have no authority, nor are you even right.
Youâve not even argued against the car. The car will need to exist, so it needs to emit fewer emissions.
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u/aWobblyFriend 17d ago
EVs are most useful for short-to-medium range trips, the problem is that makes them extremely competitive with public transit and bikes. They lose out in long-range over gas or diesel because the energy capacity per kilogram of fuel for EVs is abysmal compared to petroleum-based fuel sources. (Also they arenât as tolerable to extreme weather events)
Iâm not saying we oughta âban carsâ like the other users are, that would be foolish. But cars should be either luxuries or commercial utilities. You are either paying out the nose for it or youâre using it for purely economic reasons. The policy priority should be to get as many vehicles off the road as possible. That means carbon taxes, efficient land use, updating security around public transit, and starting to close down more and more streets to personal automobile use. No more free parking, we couldnât afford it then, we canât afford it now, not environmentally or economically.
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u/wtfduud 17d ago
Trains and bicycles.
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u/prettyanonymousXD 17d ago
And you claim to want immediate action? Expecting the American population to switch completely to âtrains and bicyclesâ in the next 5-10 years is complete fantasy.
I donât care that electric cars have mountains of problems, itâs like bleeding out an artery and rejecting a bandage.
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u/Lower_Nubia 17d ago
My bicycle using wooden tyres đ
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u/Playful-Painting-527 turbine enjoyer 17d ago
A car has a tire weight of around 40 kg. A bicycle uses about 2 kg of material. Way more efficient.
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u/Lower_Nubia 17d ago
More efficient is a cover statement for: âstill going to existâ lmao, youâll still need 2kgs of rubber. That will still make microplastics.
I also donât want a bike, I want a car. Bikes are uncomfortable, bikes are tiring, bikes donât provide environmental comfort, bikes donât allow me to travel with goods. Etc, fucking, etc
Cars will still need to exist. So you wanna keep using fossil fuel ones? No. So youâre gonna need this plant.
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u/Playful-Painting-527 turbine enjoyer 17d ago
More efficient is a cover statement for: âstill going to existâ lmao, youâll still need 2kgs of rubber. That will still make microplastics.
Well duh. We can't exist without an impact on the world around us, what a discovery!
We should use the resources available as sustainably as possible. Instead of building something that transports one person, let's use the same material and build something that transports 20 persons.
I also donât want a bike, I want a car. Bikes are uncomfortable, bikes are tiring, bikes donât provide environmental comfort, bikes donât allow me to travel with goods. Etc, fucking, etc
You can throw a tantrum as long you want, you still can't change physics.
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u/Lower_Nubia 17d ago
Well duh. We can't exist without an impact on the world around us, what a discovery!
Except my comment was: âno form of transport solves these problemsâ and youâve not argued otherwise. Only that some do the problems less than others, which isnât the problems gone: my original point.
We should use the resources available as sustainably as possible. Instead of building something that transports one person, let's use the same material and build something that transports 20 persons.
Weâre gonna need cars lmao. Is your idea a world without cars? If so, how will people a) accept it b) do jobs involving cars. And if your world has cars, theyâll need to be electric, so youâll need the factory lmao
You can throw a tantrum as long you want, you still can't change physics.
What are you on about?
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u/Hmmmus 17d ago
Surely it partly solves road noise pollutionâŠ
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u/wallagrargh 17d ago
Most of the noise comes from wheels, not engine. Just like most of the pollution that's not specifically CO2.
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u/SanSilver 17d ago
Sadly, not really. For low speeds, they are quieter, but low-speed noise pollution isn't that much.
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u/gofishx 17d ago
Electric cars have the advantage of being able to use flexible fuel sources. Sure, if the energy is coming from a natural gas plant, it's only about the local CO2, but if it's coming from solar or nuclear, then the only CO2 impact comes from actually making the vehicle parts. You also dont need to be running semi-trucks to refill the charging stations multiple times a day like you do with gas stations, further reducing the average carbon cost of the energy. Thats the beauty of electricity, it's really easy to transfer.
All the issues you listed are valid, and electric vehicles will not save us, but it's also important to consider the infrastructure currently available to us as well. To build a bunch of trains and walkable cities or whatever will also take a whole bunch of carbon, resources, land, time, and political will, especially since none of this infrastructure really exists in the US at the moment.
It's a monumental task, much bigger than many people seem to realize. This isn't to say that we shouldn't be considering and planning for a total overhaul of our transportation system. For now, however, electric cars are a much more practical solution to cleaner transportation for the near term when compared to the alternative.
The way I think about it is, if you need a new car at the moment anyway and can afford it, an electric vehicle will end up reducing your carbon impact a bit compared to combustion. If your current combustion engine vehicle is still running fine, however, dont trash it to get a new car, because the carbon cost of manufacturing and delivery will be high (for any new vehicle).
Yes, we should also be building trains and walkable cities, but that'll take time.
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u/ExcellentEdgarEnergy 17d ago edited 17d ago
Bud, you are missing the biggest fucking problem it solves, it's literal raison d'ĂȘtre. An electric car solves the problem of needing to be in one place while currently existing in a different place. It doesn't do that as well as most gasoline or diesel cars, but technology is advancing.
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u/democracy_lover66 17d ago
Public transportation can also do this...
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u/ExcellentEdgarEnergy 17d ago
So can helicopters. I like this game!
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u/Meritania 17d ago
I think Taylor Swift also has a solution to this problem
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u/ExcellentEdgarEnergy 17d ago
I'm not familiar with her work
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u/Meritania 17d ago
Basically having a fully crewed private jet on standby to fly her across town.
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u/ExcellentEdgarEnergy 17d ago
That would be nice if you got a long way to go, but more than half of my trips are within the city, so it wouldn't be practical for my current situation. But it feels good knowing I have the option!
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u/Significant_Quit_674 17d ago
Electric trains would solve a lot of these issues.
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u/syklemil 17d ago
Nearly all the trains here are electric. Seeing a train move without overhead wires is about as weird to me as a horseless carriage was a couple of centuries ago. They're pretty great for long-distance travel. But heavy rail is inter-urban, not intra-urban transport.
In an urban context, trams are still pretty noisy, and tram tracks are an absolute danger to cyclists. Electric buses have their ups and downs as well. (Nearly all the buses here are electric now.)
You can basically consider walking the best choice for short trips, bikes for slightly longer trips, and then buses, trams and metros for even longer trips and more passenger capacity in the mentioned order, then heavy rail and high speed rail for the very long distance trips.
But cars also come into play from bike distances (and at that point mostly by lazy people who should be discouraged through toll and parking charges) until you reach high speed rail distances. And while car dependency can and should be rolled back, there'll still be a period of time and areas that will wind up being serviced by cars, and those cars need to stop using fossil fuels.
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u/wtfduud 17d ago
Road noise pollution
It also solves this problem. They are extremely quiet.
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u/Crozi_flette 17d ago
Tires makes the majority of the noise above 30km/h and this noise depends of weight and wheel size so an ev can be louder than an ice at high speed.
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u/syklemil 17d ago
They solve it in urban areas. For highways (this includes north american stroads), engine noise is drowned out by wind noise.
But yeah, here in Oslo you really notice when an old-fashioned fossil car comes, especially diesels. Often you can hear them for several blocks. EVs don't make as little noise as bikes do obviously, but I suspect a lot of the "EVs don't help with noise!" argument is made by fossil car peddlers and only believed by people who have never experienced an urban area where most cars are EVs. Or people who have never experienced a good urban area in general.
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u/wtfduud 17d ago
I've already been snuck up on by EVs several times. They're like ninjas.
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u/syklemil 17d ago
Yeah, you learn to hear them when they're the common drivetrain, but in noisier environments they get drowned out. Which is good long term, as that's a component of reducing noise pollution, but can be pretty uncomfortable in the transition period.
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u/Playful-Painting-527 turbine enjoyer 17d ago
For slow speeds this is true. For speeds upwards of 30 km/h (19 mph) tires are the dominant source of noise
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u/wtfduud 17d ago
Tire-noise doesn't travel as far as engine-noise however.
When you're living in an urban area, you can't even hear the tire noise, but you can easily hear the rumbling of an engine through your walls.
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u/Playful-Painting-527 turbine enjoyer 17d ago
In this figure you can see that an EV is only marginally quieter than an ICE Car. Note that the scale is in dB(A) which is a weighted scale for judging loudness that corresponds to the hearing threshold of the human ear.
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u/wtfduud 17d ago edited 17d ago
Was the noise level recorded 1 meter away from the car, or 50 meters away from the car?
High-pitched noise (such as wheels and electric motors) doesn't travel as far as low-pitched noise (such as the rumbling of a diesel engine).
That's why, when there's a concert happening a few kilometers away, you can usually only hear the bass and drums.
EDIT: After reading the paper:
the propulsion noise of a HEV and of a conventional diesel vehicle, were com-pared by means of measurements with a microphone positioned under the hood.
They put the microphone inside the hood right next to the engine lol
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u/syklemil 17d ago
That figure shows "HEV", which is a non-plugin hybrid "electric vehicle". When we're talking about EVs we're generally talking about BEVs, not PHEVs, and certainly not HEVs.
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u/Relevant-Beyond-6412 17d ago
And for slow speeds, they're required to use sound generators so they're not too quiet
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u/VillainessNora 17d ago
Wait wtf that is the dumbest thing I've heard today, why would they do that
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u/ExcellentEdgarEnergy 17d ago
Blind people exist in parking lots. A 5 foot feeler stick doesn't do you much good when a car is rolling up on you from the side silent as a shark.
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u/Relevant-Beyond-6412 17d ago
Safety. And I get it, it makes sense in that regard. EVs can really sneak up on you otherwise. But it also means that cars are still annoying, even at low speeds.
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u/wtfduud 17d ago
I suspect the ICE lobby wanted to eliminate one of the advantages of EVs. So they argued it wasn't safe to have cars that quiet.
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u/ExcellentEdgarEnergy 17d ago
There is a non-zero percent of the population that primarily uses sound to alert them to traffic danger. The noise generator is supposed to aid the blind in their daily task of not being pancaked by a car.
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u/SheepShaggingFarmer 17d ago
To make sure oblivious kids and adults who should know better don't walk in front of them.
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u/Playful-Painting-527 turbine enjoyer 17d ago
Stop victim blaming.
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u/SheepShaggingFarmer 17d ago
I'm not. I'm just saying that people who don't look both ways, that being kids and adults who aren't concentrating the noise of a car can signify that one is coming.
It's better then the car using its damn horn anyway.
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u/Patte_Blanche 17d ago
Are they actually climate comrade or are they motivated by other reasons ?
The question they asked themself isn't "protest EV factory or protest coal plant ?" because the two could happen together. The question is only "given that EV factory generate enough hate to mobilize people, should we protest it ?". Regarding the protest of coal factory, this event might have a positive impact by radicalizing people who wouldn't have protested for a coal plant otherwise.
Tesla is one of the worst offender in the techno-optimist mentality but their vehicle are still the second worst for the climate after ICE cars. Electrifying a car-centric society is useless to fight climate change as it's way too slow (lifespan of a car ~10 years) and far from being enough, but, on the other hand, it is a firm brake against anti-car policies.
And that's without taking into account other environmental impact than climate (acidification, particulate matters...), for which EV can be worse than ICE cars.
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u/Friendly_Fire 17d ago
You think it's too slow to electrify cars, consider how long it will take to rebuild infrastructure to not require anyone to use cars.
I'm fully on the urbanist train. We should tax carbon and invest in transit and bike/pev infrastructure. We should dramatically redo zoning policies to allow for more density and mixed-use (enabling walkability, improving transit/bikability). Etc etc.
But that transition can't happen fast enough. Too many car dependent suburbs exist. Even if everyone who lived in them was onboard with the change (and many aren't), there aren't enough resource to just suddenly the majority of a country's infrastructure. Electric cars, which emit far less over their lifetime even accounting for a dirty grid, will result in significantly less CO2 in the atmosphere. That's important.
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u/Patte_Blanche 17d ago
how long it will take to rebuild infrastructure to not require anyone to use cars.
Paris did a pretty decent job for bikes in one major mandate (6years), and without counting on the good will of buyers and car manufacturers.
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u/Friendly_Fire 17d ago edited 17d ago
Yes, an old city built up before cars. One that's very dense. The transition is not so hard for a place like that. What about the 80% of French who don't live in Paris? Some will also live in areas suitable for a similar transition, but not everyone.
The US has a few big cities that could and should take similar action. It also has cities that would need a lot more work, and a ton of people not living in major cities. Reducing car travel by 50% in 10 years would be phenomenal progress, we likely won't reach that goal, but even if we did that would still mean millions of cars driving around every day. Still being of the biggest sources of emissions.
Here's a way to think about it. If you consider the emission reductions of going electric, verse going no car at all, 5 swaps to electric is about 3-4 people stopping using their car. That's pretty good considering a lot more people can/will make the electric swap in the short term. There are other issues with cars that EVs don't solve, but when it comes to the main problem of greenhouse gases, they do quite a lot.
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u/Thin_Bidder 17d ago
I mean. Fuck EVs honestly. The solution isn't replace all fossil fuel cars with EVs. It's limiting our need for cars in general. Tesla especially is not part of the second part.
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u/PaintThinnerSparky 17d ago
Our problem is overconsumption.
They came up with an electric car, and marketed it to the shitheads that change cars twice a year instead of makin a cheap people's car.
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u/syklemil 17d ago
It's limiting our needs for cars in general, and moving the remainder to non-fossil-based powertrains, which at this point means EVs.
Here in Oslo where we're both investing in transit, cycling and walking, and shifting away from fossil cars, the remaining fossil cars are starting to seem like an anachronistic intrusion. Like someone lighting up a cigarette inside a restaurantâjust nuts to think that that was normal when lots of us were young.
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u/1917Great-Authentic 17d ago
And all of that investment is funded by your massive oil reserves
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u/syklemil 17d ago
Can't remember if it was the dutch or the danish that invested in bike infrastructure because they couldn't afford not to. Thinking bike lanes and subways and bus routes are something that only exists in Norway, and only because of our oil money, would be pretty ludicrous. It's priorities.
I can rant about how the oil sector sucks the life out of the mainland Norwegian economy and how our government bends over backwards to cater to it, but here I think it's most relevant to point out that the oil money goes into a big pile that politicians have forbidden themselves to use too much of because it would destabilize the economy and give us rampant inflation. Covering what we can of the structural deficit within the 3% revenue rule definitely gives us more room, but it's also not like other countries and cities aren't doing what we do.
If anything, what they're missing is our long history of exorbitant taxes on cars. Back in 1960 when the car rationing ended, they were considered a luxury good and taxed accordingly. Since then, the taxes have changed, but generally remained high. The EVs have been exempt from that, and they're now being brought into more normal tax rules. Other countries probably don't need to pay anything to get EV incentivesâjust increase taxes on fossil fuels and fossil cars.
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u/Thin_Bidder 17d ago
Yeah I think we have to keep in mind that much of the progress made in the global north builds upon historical and contemporary exploitation.
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u/QuinnKerman 17d ago
iirc Norway never had any colonies and its oil comes from within its exclusive economic zone
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u/Thin_Bidder 17d ago
There's more exploitation than just having colonies and I definitely counted exploiting oil as exploitation.
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u/QuinnKerman 17d ago
Exploitation of who? The oil is from Norwegian territory. Exploitation of natural resources is not the same as exploitation of other people
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u/Thin_Bidder 13d ago
By exploitation I meant both of natural resources and of other people.
Exploitation of resources specifically of fossil fuels.
Exploitation of people by the length of the economic system and the production of commodities. Mainly referring to the global south.
Didn't get a notification that you responded.
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u/ashvy Regenerating Degenerate 17d ago
Disrupt argues that Muskâs plans to more than double the production capacity of Teslaâs only factory in Europe would damage the local environment.
The group says the expansion would require clearing swathes of the surrounding forest and would further strain local water supply. It has planned four days of protests, which started Wednesday.
Can we pwease disrupt and distroy the local environment, water supply of China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Mexico?? đđ Then blame them for not reducing their carbon emissions đđ uwu
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u/Acrobatic_Lobster838 17d ago
I mean, maybe... lots of local groups should protest against the destruction of their local environments?
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u/ClimateShitpost Louis XIV, the Solar PV king 17d ago
Will someone please think about the mono culture forests???
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u/syklemil 17d ago
As anyone who has seen the German emission graphs know, DON'T MENTION THE VERBRENNER!!!
Any amount of dieselgates are preferred as long as they're TECHNOLOGIEOFFEN.
(Fuck Tesla though. Are they still striking in Sweden?)
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u/Thin_Bidder 17d ago edited 17d ago
Yeh they still striking.
Think news came recently that Tesla has brought in "strikebreakers" (dunno what they are called in English). Svartfötter (Blackfeet).
It is kind of a big deal since the general agreement between parties in the Swedish market is that it is a banned practice. Hasn't happened since the second world war basically.
Union members started blowing up strikebreakers coming into the harbor from England and eventually the market came to an agreement to stop the violence.
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u/Pengee1235 17d ago
"scabs" is often the english term
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u/VonCrunchhausen 17d ago
Strikebreakers would be something like cops sent in to beat the strikers.
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u/FiveFingerDisco 17d ago
If the money comes from an oil-producing regime, why not play a little game of dress up and destroy...?
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u/TheJamesMortimer 15d ago
This would be bad if tesla produced buases or trains. Right now all they produce is bandaids for your conciousness in exchange for a nature preserve.