How Sustainable are Electric Cars?

Robert Scribbler.has been pushing electric vehicles for some time. I get the distinct impression that he thinks that a complete switch to electric vehicles will somehow save the day, with regard to climate change. Even though that statement is probably a bit over the top (I'm sure he thinks other actions are needed), electric cars (as currently manufactured and powered) cannot get us to zero emissions, since there are emissions in the extraction and refining of raw materials, in the construction of factories, in the footprint of the factory's workers, in the production of batteries, in the servicing of vehicles and in the recycling of vehicles. There are embedded emissions equivalent to at least a few years of petrol powered vehicles. Of course, overall emissions will decrease; there is no doubt in my mind about this. But it is not a solution and not even part of a solution. For that, we'd have to do everything with renewable energies, and that includes the building, operation and maintenance of the renewable energy infrastructure. Even then, some aspects of renewable energy will emit greenhouse gases (e.g. in the manufacture of cement and solar panels).

Yes, there are ideas on how to avoid some of these emissions but there are some questions about whether renewables can power everything we do. But ideas don't always come to fruition; something I've noticed for decades. Today, there will be emissions involved in these so-called clean energy solutions.

Notice that there are rarely calls to alter our societies to become significantly closer to sustainable (absolute sustainability is impossible in the kinds of societies we now have and at the population levels we now have). When most of the environmental damage we've done has been done before climate change really started to kick in, a focus on reducing emissions, rather than altering our behaviours will never be a solution to the converging predicaments we face.

Forget trying to post critical comments on Scribbler's site; he's not interested in having a discussion about whether the actions he proposes (mostly switching to electric vehicles, particularly Tesla vehicles) are right, so your comments are unlikely to get published.