I Want a New Car

I want to buy a new car. More specifically, I want to buy an electric car. Please note I said I want to buy a new car not that I need to buy a new car. There a number of reasons why I want to buy one including the fact that it seems to be the environmentally right thing to do. If I got one a bit bigger it would mean packing up to go to the market would be a lot easier, the thought of never buying gas unless I got a hybrid) ever again is attractive and it would be fun to have something that smelt brand new and had all of the bells and whistles. As well there would be that little bit of ego boost that would come from driving something that was slightly ahead of the curve. I am not sure if I can afford one but there are some rebates available that might make an electric or a hybrid vehicle more affordable.

Except - I am not sure if electric cars are better for the environment. Everyone says they are. It makes sense to spew less carbon into the air but how much do I spew over a year? I only drive about 12,000 kilometres a year in a small four-cylinder car. How much carbon can I possibly be spewing? More importantly what is the real cost to the environment when one buys a new battery-operated vehicle?

In an article in the November issue of the Walrus, an article by Vivane Fairbank (Greener and Cleaner) discusses (amongst other things) whether or not the building techniques that are used in passive homes are all that environmentally friendly. The article discussed embodied carbon - that is the carbon emissions that are either created when a product is built or dispersed when that item has exceeded its life span and must be disposed of. The article argues that we need to analyze the life-cycle of a product before we consider it to be carbon neutral or not.

Fairbank cites a number of articles that suggested that not all of our attempts to be carbon neutral are useful. For example, using reusable bags made of organic cotton (an especially polluting industry )might reduce the number of plastic bags in the environment but that bag needs to be used 20,000 times before it will use less carbon than a single-use plastic bag. While all of our present attempts to put less carbon into the environment are a good thing, it does the world little good if we pollute the world in other ways by using rare earth minerals and polluting manufacturing processes. They do even less good if we will increase the amount of carbon put into the atmosphere when we dispose of those things 20 years from now.

When one considers such things as the energy required to mine and process the lithium for the batteries or the quantity of plastic that is used plus the cost of disposing of all of those items that are not recyclable when they are no longer needed, perhaps amount of embodied carbons will exceed the amount of carbon that I would have put into the atmosphere if I just drove my present car. If I buy an electric vehicle I may reduce, in the short term, the amount of carbon I put into the air by not using a petroleum product to power my car, but - am I just downloading the problem for the future to deal with?

Yes, I want a more efficient car. I am just not sure if my grandchildren can afford