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Robert Klose lives and writes in Orono. His latest book is “Trigger Warning.”
First of all, I am left-leaning, anti-Trump with Democratic Party tendencies and believe that global warming is real and that we landed on the moon.
Having said this, I have a confession to make: I am not yet “there” with electric cars.
I have been thinking about this for a long time. I understand the vision of EV (electric vehicle) proponents for “an all-electric future” as a means of reducing emissions and fighting climate change. And yet there seem to be reasons for doubt, or at least hesitation.
To begin, a principal argument against traditional, internal combustion engine vehicles is that they require extracting a filthy substance — oil — from the earth. But when I look into how lithium is mined for the production of massive e-car batteries, I find an equivalent horror.
Much of the world’s lithium is mined in arid areas of South America, where it is extracted from underground brine, which is pumped to the surface in vast pools for evaporation and concentration. The pumping process requires the utilization of millions of gallons of freshwater — in one of the driest regions on earth; regions which, nevertheless, support the lives of poor farmers, for whom freshwater is life’s blood.
And so, instead of oil, we now pump lithium out of the earth. In both cases, the environment, and human communities, are the victims.
But let’s say I purchase an EV. I must now contend with a new social phenomenon — “range anxiety”: the fear of running out of electrical charge while on the road. I think of all the times I have been stuck in traffic, even in Maine, due to a lane closure, an accident, or simply an unforeseen rush of vehicles. As one inches ahead, I presume the EV-driver’s only option is to stare at the charge readout on the dashboard, and pray, as the warp engine’s dilithium crystals slowly run out of antimatter. And should this happen? Well, I suppose that’s what tow trucks are for.
Not the least of my hesitations is tied to the source of electricity for EVs: most of the electrical juice in the United States is still generated by burning fossil fuels. So the replacement of internal combustion vehicles with EVs would require a massive ramping up of the burning of coal, oil, and gas, at least until renewables or — gulp — nuclear can take up the slack.
But above and beyond these considerations looms a broader issue. It can be argued that much of the devastation of the American landscape in the past 60 years is due to the prioritizing of the automobile and the deemphasizing of mass transportation. From leveling living, breathing neighborhoods, to running interstate highways through the hearts of our cities, to creating multi-acre parking lots for shopping malls, the result has been some of the ugliest, and inhumane, urban landscapes in the western world. Replacing internal combustion engines with EVs would simply allow such esthetic and social degradation to continue.
So what is the alternative? Maine offers little in the way of public mass transportation, because the state — in a fever of shortsightedness — dismantled its electric interurban trolleys and its extensive passenger rail system decades ago. I am therefore wholly dependent upon my personal vehicle or the mercy of family and friends. The increasing expense of buying, maintaining, and insuring motor vehicles in general will eventually become unfeasible, especially for the younger generation.
The step-by-step development of a clean, efficient, frequent, and affordable mass transportation system is a better answer than EVs. It would unclog the roads, allow the landscape to heal, and lift the financial burden of car ownership for many, many Americans. If Europe, Asia, and the Middle East can do this, it is not beyond the capabilities of the self-touted “greatest country on earth.”
