ARE ELECTRIC CARS ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY?
Max Wilbert, co-author of Bright Green Lies, talks about the environmental impact of cars, including electric cars, and how we have been infantilized and neutralized by the rich and powerful.
From a conversation with Max Wilbert, founder of Protect Thacker Pass, a nonprofit that opposes the destruction of the natural habitat that is Thacker Pass, Nevada, home of myriad wild species, such as cougars, bobcats, pronghorn antelopes, Pacific tree frogs, horned lizards, ferruginous hawks, golden eagles and spotted skunks.
For the entire interview, please click on the link to the YouTube video.
HART HAGAN: Talk about electric cars. I've heard that by 2030, the lithium that is mined will be 80% for electric cars. So, if you take electric cars out of the equation, then the need for lithium is reduced by about 80%, but what do you think about electric cars? Are they environmentally friendly?
MAX WILBERT: No, they're not. A car of any sort is ultimately an industrial product. It emerges from a factory. It's built out of raw materials. And we can start by talking about what actually goes into the car itself, things like the steel in the frame, the plastics in the interior of the car and the lights, all the different types of metals that are in the engine, in the motors, in the braking system, the artificial rubbers and the other petroleum compounds in the tires and other parts of the vehicle … a car is a very complex, industrial product.
As we've seen the rise of car culture in this country over the last 100 years, we've seen a skyrocketing environmental impact associated with that. That impact includes the carbon emissions from burning gasoline and diesel. It also includes the impacts of mining, which requires a lot of fossil fuels. It includes the impacts on communities who are facing the pollution from factories.
The impacts of cars include the economic impacts on the communities, who face these commodity cycles, these boom and bust cycles of having great jobs come into the community and then having the rug pulled out from underneath them because they choose to outsource to a cheaper jurisdiction, where labor regulations aren't as strong, and they can exploit the workers more to make more profit.
So there's a host of problems associated with cars themselves. That's without even getting into the issues with roads and car culture itself. I actually think the most destructive impact of cars may not be the car itself. It may not be the fuel that the car is burning. It may be the roads that are built to service a car culture to make it possible to drive anywhere.
Roads are one of the main drivers of habitat destruction and habitat fragmentation around the world. In the United States the area that is paved is something like the size of Washington state. It's a massive amount of land that has been destroyed by habitat fragmentation and being paved in one way or another. That's not even to account for all the logging roads and the dirt roads that have been built.
The whole culture of speed that cars enable is a big problem ecologically. We're very used to it.
I was born into a car culture. My parents had a car when I was growing up. It was beater. We didn't have much money, but they had a car, and they had to use it to go to work and take me to school.
So I grew up in the car. I'm just completely used to it. But you go back a couple generations and our grandparents likely didn't grow up with cars. They were a rare thing. Later in their lives they likely had cars.
So we've seen this very rapid shift happen in our culture driven by technology, and we become so used to it because it's nice to be able to go wherever you want whenever you want.
HART HAGAN: We have this narrative that says if we want to maintain this culture of speed then we have to have (so-called) renewable energy and the name of the game becomes to maintain the culture of speed, as you call it.
MAX WILBERT: That is one of those areas where there are unseen trade-offs.
It's been said that the real authorities in any culture are unquestioned beliefs.
We have the unquestioned belief that we have the right to cars and to very fast mobility whenever we want it. And we have built a culture around that. As long as we maintain those unquestioned beliefs then we're going to continue down this path of ecological crisis, drawdown, overshoot, and then eventual collapse. That's what societies do. They destroy their own ecological foundation.
It's not a mystery, the direction we're headed in. It's pretty straightforward to see what's happening. It's happened many times before in history. Unfortunately most people seem to be either resigned to it or cheering it on.
I'm interested in reaching both of those groups. As for the people who are resigned, I think so much of this culture is built around making us feel disempowered, making us lack a sense of responsibility and ability to act.
Infantilization or learned helplessness is a big hallmark of the culture we live in. Those in power rely on it a lot. The corporations and the people who are making the most of the situation rely on people's learned helplessness.
So a big thing for me is trying to empower myself and other people to take action on these things because the truth is, we're not powerless. We do have control over how things are going to play out. We don't have control over everything. A lot of things are outside of our control.
I’m not an all-powerful person by any means, but we do have power and especially when we work together and collaborate, think critically, move in new directions and try to shed some of that outdated thinking that subconsciously guides us to believe that things cannot change. That’s the first step in the right direction.
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For the entire interview with author and activist Max Wilbert, please click on the link.