There’s been a lot of back and forth the past week in these digital pages regarding electric vehicles. I agree we can’t be blind to the environmental harm of EVs (for all the reasons Mr. Exum mentioned).
From my own reading it seems the jury is still out on whether the embedded costs of EVs are better or worse than a typical combustion vehicle. My money is on EVs in the long run. After all, even if the total amount of pollution is the same, EV production consolidates points of pollution, making regulation and remediation more streamlined (individuals may cheat an emissions test or dump some oil down a storm drain, but a coal power plant generally must stand up to more scrutiny). But if we’re going to be serious about environmental concerns this EVs vs ICE conversation is somewhat beside the point.
If we are sincerely going to consider environmental concerns, then we need to be thinking smaller. For thousands of years humans were served quite well by their own two feet, and we built our cities and towns to accommodate walking as the primary form of transportation. For longer distances the humble bicycle and its tech savvy child, the e-bike, serve quite well. Even beyond environmental concerns, walking and biking have innumerable private and public benefits to health (both physical and mental), safety, traffic, infrastructure costs, and personal finance.
Now I can already hear readers either laughing at me or cursing at me depending on their temperament, so let me just say I’m prepared to defend these claims at length. Let me also say that I’m not expecting anyone to give up their cars today, tomorrow, next year, or even in the next decade, but it’s time to treat walking and biking as serious forms of transportation and our public policy needs to reflect that.
Nathan Bird