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.

The Right Thing To Do

I read an article recently (http://www.mtu.edu/news/files/abandon-hope.pdf) that talked about hope and how that tends to act against any moves toward sustainability. As an example, it mentioned that the message of recycling is that you should do it because the hope is that if others do the same it will make a real difference but when others don't do the same it demotivates you. But you should reject hope and do it because it's the right thing to do.


I sympathise with the sentiments, though I don't think things like recycling and changing light bulbs is much of an effort towards living sustainably. These sorts of actions, to my mind, always hide the hope that life can go on pretty much as normal (or what people have come to regard as normal) simply by being a bit less wasteful. It's pretty clear that such a thing is a fallacy, when you start to consider what sustainability actually entails.


Richard Heinberg stated the axioms for sustainability pretty well. I characterise them this way: consuming resources beyond their renewal rates, or degrading our environment, is unsustainable. That pretty much tells us that our way of life (or that of developed nations and increasing numbers of people in developing nations) is unsustainable, no matter what we try to do to keep it going. I often hear the term "more sustainable", even by greenies. What the users of that term don't seem to realise is that it still means "unsustainable".


So the question is: "should humans try to live sustainably?" Well, I personally think the answer to that is "yes". Look at what "unsustainably" means. It means things like degrading the soils, killing ocean life, poisoning our water and turning livable land into deserts. It means enabling the next great extinction, with extinctions now running at 100 to 1000 times the average rate. It means making the very habitat that currently support the lives of us humans unable to continue to do that. In other words, an aim of sustainable living seems not only rational but the right thing to do.


But how many of us are actually trying to move to a truly sustainable life-style? I would suggest very few. I don't think the much lauded Transition Towns movement is even trying to do that. It is hard, though, it is damned hard. I don't think many people could do it alone (though some could), especially if it means a complete change to what they have previously done. I think it takes a mind-set change of a bunch of people living close to each other, to enable them to support each other as they all pull in the same direction. It doesn't mean living sustainably from day 1 but it does mean that the direction of all of your group is focused on that target with an evolving plan to get there. Once you have that in place, I'm sure it makes it much easier to gradually make the changes that are necessary.

Closing the Circle

John Michael Greer is always worth a read. His blog posts come out every week (Wednesday in the US) and this week's was particularly good, so I thought I'd post a link:

Closing the Circle

Deniers Expand

Well, with the polls showing that less and less people appear to "believe" in climate change or the human factor, despite overwhelming science, I guess I should not be surprised that Tim Gamble has joined those ranks, good and proper.

Having dropped his sustainable futures blog (a brand that covered many years) for a future forward blog that lasted a couple of months, if that. It's now gone, though he still runs the modern victory movement blog and a silverleaf strategies blog. In the short lived future forward blog, he seemed to be jettisoning the notion of sustainability, in favour of a rosy high tech future (if that blog's raison d'etre is anything to go by). On the future forward blog, he also posted an entry about a Phil Jones interview (who is at the centre of the so-called climategate situation); an entry that could have come directly from the Daily Mail (UK newspaper) and badly misrepresents what Phil Jones said. Someone with a modicum of critical thinking might have checked whether the Daily Mail story was a fair representation of the interview. See here and here for more considered thoughts on the interview.

The sustainable future brand lives on through facebook, though there are no wall entries since before Christmas. He also has his own, personal facebook page, but there's not much there that is public, concerning his thoughts on sustainability and environmental issues. There's not much at his MVM ans SS blogs, either, though he posts more frequently there (but to a very sparse audience and without a comment facility).

It's a shame. Tim did, at least, do research but it was all geared to what he either already believed or what he wanted to believe. Tim wants a sustainable high tech society, with people growing their own food in a forest garden, with a personal space port in the corner. As he's now almost a fully fledged climate denier, despite what he has occasionally claimed (I don't recall his ever posting a rebuff of the the various "optimistic" stories he's ran over the last couple of years), there seems little hope that he will fare any better than the majority of the population in seeing the converging environmental and resource problems that will likely result in collapse, without such awareness.

Sustainable Future becomes non-Sustainable

Well, Tim Gamble's blog has, apparently, "evolved" to Future Forward. There is no explanation for the change and, indeed, why all of the posts of the previous blog are now inaccessible (though it looks like many will eventually be reposted, in some form, on the new blog). I've asked a question about this in the comments of one of his first few posts on the new blog.

I wonder if he is now not focusing on sustainable solutions.

There may be some hints in his guiding principles.

"Nature and people" implies that people are separate from nature. This is not a trivial point because a lot of the problems we face derive from the notion that humans are, somehow, the pinnacle of evolution or that the earth is here purely for humans or that humans have the innate right to dominate all other life on the planet, in whatever way they see fit. Until we see ourselves as just another species, we're unlikely to solve our problems or reach sustainability. Tim still appears to champion permaculture principles but maybe that will be jettisoned too, in time.

"Facts and reason" is a good principle but we need to look at all the facts, not just the ones we like. For example, his posts on the leaked UEA emails suggests a biased view, when none of the emails disproves the climate science that goes on across the globe by hard working and, mostly, honest climate and environmental scientists. And none of the few dubious actions suggested in any of the emails were actually carried out or resulted in any cover up. But this side wasn't seen in his posts. Another example is the post on SBSP, which completely ignores any potential environmental impacts (perhaps because the impact assessments haven't been done) or the likely mult-decadal time-scale of the project.

"Optimism is preferable to negativity". Consequently, I expect only to find optimistic posts from him. This guideline can give what William Catton Jr refers to as inaccurate word maps (in his book Bottleneck). We need accurate descriptions of our situation, in order to come up with meaningful strategies. Consequently, negative views are just as important as the optimistic ones.

"Human Civilization is worth saving". This is a huge assumption and deserves a considered analysis. Books like William Catton's "Bottleneck" or John Zerzan's "Against Civilization" can provide a different perspective that open minds should be willing to take on board. If it turns out that civilization isn't worth saving, then that would make his blog less than useful. So big assumptions need to be verified rather than just taken for granted. He refers to himself as a researcher, so that should be his next research project - validate the assumptions used as his guiding principles.

The Denials Continue

Tim Gamble, on his so-called Sustainable Future blog has just published snippets of articles or blog posts that comment on the recent hacked e-mails incident. What has become increasingly more usual is Tim's uneven-handed approach. Here is a comment I made to that article, though, as yet, it has not been approved:

I'm not sure why this particular set of comments was put up here but there are some very odd beliefs.

Shikha Dalmia's thinks the email theft was from the Hadley Centre when it was from a department at the University of East Anglia. An early report did, erroneously, give the Hadley Centre, and maybe that simply stuck in Shikha's mind. It's a shame Shikha didn't attempt to check the story.

Neal Boortz claims that "much of the information they've been fed about a warming world has been manufactured and faked". This is pure fantasy. He gives no detail about what he has surmised from one email from one climate science group that gives cause for concern but actually resulted in no false data.

I find it remarkable, Tim, that you have hardened your line considerably as a climate change denier, from merely appearing to have some doubt about the severity. Otherwise, why not print comments about the other side of the story? About how 3 of the 4 emails (out of about a thousand) had quite reasonable explanations and about how only 1 gave rise to some concern and at least 2 inquiries but which, so far, do not show that the science is wrong.

So, in a area where it is very difficult to find a peer reviewed scientific report that counters the IPCC assessment (though others suggest the situation is likely worse than those projections), you choose to continue promoting the idea that climate change is a big scam and absolutely nothing to worry about. For someone who supposedly supports sustainable approaches, I find this remarkable.

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Climategate?

From what I've read on the matter, it looks like only about 4 or 5 emails out of nearly a thousand got the denial lobby all worked up. Of these, only one appeared to give genuine cause for concern (the others having, at least for now, plausible explanations). That one was about a request to delete emails. It looks like, as it turns out, the request was not actioned (as the existence of the email will attest) and other potential dubious actions turned out to cause no information to be hidden (like the apparent attempt to keep a couple of papers out of the IPCC report, which weren't left out).

So, all in all, it's looking like a storm in a teacup (though the outcomes of those inquiries could alter than interim conclusion), except for there being a case for Chris Jones to resign.

It's unfortunate that even some who claim not to deny AGW have jumped on board to claim this might show that the climate science isn't settled.