EVs and climate change deception. We're trashing the benefit
If you think buying an EV is going to save you money and the planet, then you've been properly tricked by extremely well-funded vested interests both here in Australia and overseas. They want to keep exploiting hydrocarbon resources while you look the other way…
It’s difficult to imagine a more polarizing pair of influencers than Jordan Peterson and Bjorn Lomborg, but it’s important to discuss ideas more openly than we do people and their personalities.
When I pointed to a jointly presented video of theirs about the economics versus the achievement of CO2 reduction >> and things of this nature, the feedback was emblematic of the widespread miscommunication happening at a population level on this subject.
From the outset, I have to say I don't agree with everything that Jordan Peterson has ever said. In fact we disagree on fundamentals like religion - I'm an atheist, he's a God botherer, for example. But he does make some good points about where religion fits into society and I have to acknowledge him for that. Frankly I had never really followed much of Mr Lomborg's work because there's a lot of negativity about him online and I kind of dismissed him as being a climate crackpot.
But having watched their video I thought these guys were actually making some worthwhile points that at the very least need to be thought about. So let’s do exactly that.
You might not like Jordan Peterson for whatever reason, but listen to the argument, not your own prejudices.
This avalanche of comments was extraordinary because they point to a cult of personality that is operating in society, where you've got to like someone before you can agree with them. The inverse of that proposition is, of course, if you don't like him or her therefore they're wrong right.
This is absolutely ridiculous because to me, the idea is more important than the person saying it. For example, I had very little respect for former prime minister Scott Morrison. But when he said that EVs are going to “end the weekend” and I looked at the composition of EVs versus the vehicles that traditionally are associated with outdoor recreation in Australia, there is - and wasn’t in early 2019 when he said it - not an EV available that can do that .
Even 3.5 years later, no EV on sale right now can tow your boat from Melbourne to Mallacoota or your caravan from Sydney to Coffs Harbour. Nor is there currently an EV that will do a significant amount of off-road, all-terrain type driving - no desert trekking, no arduous High Country mountain rock-climbing or Top End river crossing in an EV.
Where would you charge it? You're not going to tow a diesel generator across the Simpson Desert just to say you've done it, are you? Scott Morrison was right - and it pains me to say that because I really don't like him. See here >>
We’re all subjected to this personality cult to some extent, but try to put it to one side when evaluating ideas. Just dismissing people's ideas based on who they are is ridiculous and also ineffective, because if you want to argue with someone effectively, the debate needs to be had about their ideas. This is really important, and you've got to dismiss what you think about a person from an emotional point of view.
Continually shooting down Ev's saying "it only solves 8% of the problem" is very shortsighted. It would mean the problem is now only 92%. By any metric, that's a success. A suggestion: instead of incessantly shooting down the current EV trend, use it as an opportunity to show where greater improvements can be made.
- Justo Herd
I don't shoot down EVs continually, I am a broken record of advocacy saying electric vehicles are excellent for clean air in our cities, which is a really important consideration given the number of premature deaths attributable to exhaust pollution.
EVs are also excellent for national energy security because even if we only had coal-fired electricity as I understand Australia's coal reserves based on our rate of consumption of coal currently we've got about 1200 years worth of supplies so if we could plug in we would be divorced from foreign oil is essentially what I'm saying there okay so in terms of energy security EVS big winner not so sure how effective that would be on the climate front.
I spent a year driving an electric Hyundai Kona: your questions answered >>
Secondly, that 92 percent thing is a complete catastrophic failure of non-logic, because many problems, like irreversible climate change, are a pass or fail problem. This is binary. The first fleet setting out and exploring the new world, sailing all the way to Australia, if you only get 92 percent of the way there and sink, you fail by eight percent.
Binary problems demand 100 per cent success and it is an absolute fact that cars - meaning light vehicles, utes, vans, SUVs - they emit eight per cent of our total greenhouse emissions. If we only resolve those transport emissions, we fail. Everything has to be fundamentally changed, challenged and adapted. So when the fossil fuel retailers like AGL and Origin Energy try to push electric vehicles to distract you into thinking about transport emissions, they win because you’re not taking aim at their filthy brown coal, black coal, oil and gas emissions. Hence the plan for 1 million EVs by 2027 is bullshit >>
Not to mention, the ‘EV trend’ is very small, because EVs are currently not even three per cent yet. It's certainly not 10 or something of that nature.
As for suggesting where greater improvements can be made, we need better mass transit because nobody enjoys being stuck in congestion and congestion in an EV, having driven one for a year in the same way as in a combustion car - it's the same hateful rat race.
We need to do something about congestion because cars are a totally crap way of getting everyone from the suburb to the city in the morning and then all turning around and leaving the city in the evening. Cars are terrible in the way that a really good mass transit system would rock.
The problem is that mass transit in Australia sucks.
The truth about how much our cars really emit: taking real climate action >>
We're embarrassingly unprepared against climate-based bushfire threats >>
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WHEN CLIMATE AND COMBUSTION FACTS COLLIDE
Internal combustion cars on the road for the next three decades, whether you like it or not. The sort of city commuting five times a week is the least efficient system, meaning most emissions happen from cars that kind of excessive driving.
We need better mass transit as a means of combating climate change, and no politicians are talking about that, possibly because they're all washed up lawyers (at least there's a preponderance of them in politics) and they don't get the fundamental physics of the problem they’re trying to fix.
We also need public education about the more efficient use of the car you've got.
People shouldn’t mock the folks that grandstand or have passion for EVs. Evs are great for the same reason electric trains and trams are great, and no one criticised the move from coal/steam trains or diesel trains to electric type, even though everyone knew full well that the electricity would come from coal fired plants.
- Peter Gibson
Diesel trains were not replaced by electric trains. Electric trains replaced steam trains in cities, when electricity could be distributed widely in a reliable way, overhead. Diesel locomotives replaced steam because they were bigger, more powerful and more reliable (and didn't need to stop frequently for water).
We’re all in this shit together, so let’s agree on the facts and debate the best solutions - not each other.
There's never been more dodgy information right but I think we can trust the CSIRO. The flip side of which is, if you can't trust the CSIRO, who the hell can you trust?
According to the CSIRO, confirm for yourself by looking it up here >>:
Burning fossil fuel for electricity 34 of the total emissions of this country okay that is four times bigger than the car problem I'm going to jump around a bit on their list okay and we're going to go to a thing that is obtusely named fugitive emissions.
What are fugitive emissions? They’re emissions created when you dig a big hole in the ground to liberate coal from its subterranean repository then you fracture up the ground and methane and propane just leech out of it, essentially.
Images: Whitehaven Coal.
Now, fugitive emissions are 10 per cent of our national total. There's a couple of points on this:
The first one is that if you add the 10 per cent to the 34 per cent that we already emit by burning what is mined, you get 44 per cent, which is 5.5 times the magnitude of the car problem. If cars are eight per cent and fugitive emissions plus burning coal to make electricity is 44 per cent, then coal is 5.5 times bigger and I'm not seeing 5.5 times more rhetoric and debate in the public domain about coal and mining it I'm just not the other
Fugitive emissions take place in discrete locations at coal mines, where as the emissions from vehicles take place in a fully distributed way. It would be easier to deal with fugitive emissions from a capture point-of-view than it is to deal with the car problem.
So why are we not having one and a quarter times the debate about fugitive emissions from coal mines, as we are about moving to EVs? Answer: it's because none of us can relate to coal mines, even though just the gases leaching out of them are 1.25 times a bigger problem than cars, collectively.
Why using brown coal to make hydrogen is the dumbest idea ever >>
Stationary energy, which is energy that you use turning on the stove at home, or turning on even bigger burners to keep the literal fires of industry burning. That's 20 percent of the total, according to the CSIRO. That's 2.5 times bigger than emissions from cars.
Transport is 18 per cent, and of the 18 per cent, 8 per cent is cars. The other 10 per cent (of the 18) is trucks, buses, trains, domestic boats and domestic aviation. We don't talk about that - again. We talk about cars. It's insane.
Agriculture is 15 per cent, which is roughly double the emissions output of cars. Where is the debate about cutting the emissions from agriculture? Effectively, it doesn't exist.
Cars are being unfairly demonised; they bear a disproportionate amount of accountability in the public debate about climate change and emissions. It’s bullshit.
You don’t exactly need to look hard under Australia’s hood to see where our emissions are coming from. (Image: Whitehaven Coal)
If you want to solve the problem, coal is even worse than I just described because we export more than double what we use. We burn about 170 million tonnes of coal in Australia, but we export about 400 million tonnes of it, and it's roughly 60:40 in terms of the export.
Thermal and metallurgical coal are two different types. Thermal coal is burned for heat to use in furnaces; that's about 60 per cent of our export. Metallurgical coal is about 40 per cent of what we export, which is a real problem because there's essentially no alternative to that.
I know there's this rhetoric about ‘green steel’ in various publications, but the problem with green steel is it doesn't scale: here’s why >>. You can build a green steel plant, but you can't make all of the steel that we need to build our skyscrapers, our bridges and our ships. We can't make all of it in that way; it just won't work.
We need metallurgical coal - and that is a real problem. We've got about 1200 years worth of supply for our own consumption, but I'd suggest it might be a really good idea to maintain that in the ground, rather than just burn it, because it'll fuck the planet if we do.
Humanity need to figure out a way to get itself out of this mess - starting with acknowledging the facts.
The big problem for us with coal is that the 400 million tonnes we export is a major earner. It makes 55 billion dollars worth of export income for the country. If you take coal and iron ore out of Australia's balance sheet, we turn rapidly into a mediocre first-world economy. That's just how it is.
We don't have a manufacturing base, we don't really do anything other than dig holes in the ground, put it on ships and dispose of it profitably. But we export enough coal to essentially double the emissions that we make by burning everything that we burn, inclusive of agriculture, fugitive emissions and stationary energy. We double our emissions by exporting coal to be burned elsewhere in the world.
Part of the problem originates here in Australia.
Finally, I want to leave you to look-up something called the Burrup Hub. Chances are you’ve never heard of it, just like I hadn’t until I was made aware of it, thanks to, of all things, an ‘honest government ad’ by The Juice Media. It’s some really clever work, it's also funny and it's equally depressing.
The all-new Kia Tasman 4X4 dual-cab ute is finally coming to Australia in mid-2025. The covers are off, too. Here’s everything we know so far