Support strong Canadian climate journalism for 2025
The rise and spread of electric vehicles is one of the biggest stories of our century, and it’s still unfolding. In time, and far less of it than its skeptics would like to admit, this story will transform the global auto industry, destroy millions of barrels per day of oil demand and force petrostates like Saudi Arabia (and Alberta) to reckon with a new economic reality. It is, in every sense of the term, a new industrial revolution.
Those skeptics aren’t giving up the fight just yet, though. On a recent episode of Bill Maher’s “Real Talk” the subject of electric vehicles was fodder for its “overtime” panel, one that included political scientist Bjorn Lomborg and New York Times columnist Bret Stephens. Lomborg and Stephens are well-documented climate slow-walkers, and they didn’t disappoint on that front. But what was most striking wasn’t their continued efforts to muddy the water on this issue but how impotent they are.
Lomborg started in on EVs by suggesting they’re “probably better” for the climate, which is a bit like conceding that a chicken breast is healthier than chocolate cake. There was a catch, of course: they’re only better if you actually drive them. “A lot of people buy them as second vehicles, just mostly to virtue signal and drive to the local store.” If you can’t already spot the straw man being built here, you’re not looking hard enough.
It’s true that EVs are driven slightly less frequently in America than gasoline-powered vehicles, although the difference isn’t nearly as stark as Lomborg pretends. According to the US Department of Energy’s 2022 National Household Travel Survey, EVs averaged 12,400 miles per year compared to 14,100 miles for gasoline vehicles. At this rate of usage it wouldn’t take long before the relatively higher GHG emissions associated with EV battery construction were clawed back by the far lower emissions attached to operating the vehicle. Indeed, as Eric Taub wrote in the New York Times in 2022, “erasing the difference does not appear to take very long. In a study conducted by the University of Michigan (with a grant from the Ford Motor Company), the pollution equation evens out between 1.4 to 1.5 years for sedans, 1.6 to 1.9 years for S.U.V.s and about 1.6 years for pickup trucks, based on the average number of vehicle miles traveled in the United States.”
Oh, and guess what? America’s usage pattern of electric vehicles is a global outlier. As Bloomberg New Energy Finance noted in a recent snapshot, EVs in countries like China, France, and the Netherlands actually get more annual mileage (kilometreage, I suppose). In China, the world’s biggest EV market, EVs travel 66 per cent more than gasoline vehicles, while in Norway they travel 40 per cent further. This is almost certainly due to their widespread use there as ride-hailing vehicles, a trend that could easily come to America in due course.
Lomborg’s biggest complaint about EVs, it turns out, is that they’re just too heavy. “The point here is that they’re about 700 pounds heavier,” he said. “That gives more air pollution from the brakes and tires, and it makes them more dangerous in traffic….they will probably end up killing more people.”
I’m all for a weight limit on vehicles, or a tax that’s scaled to the size and mass of a car. There’s no question that the growing demand for ever-larger trucks and cars is making roads less safe, especially for the passengers in other smaller vehicles. This is something that regulators can and should address. But are EVs really the problem here? The biggest cars on the road, after all, are the SUVs and trucks that American automakers can’t seem to quit making — and consumers keep buying. Yes, an electric drivetrain does add significant weight, but it seems like we’re missing the forest for the trees here — deliberately, I suspect.
Oh, and about the pollution being generated by the brakes and tires of electric vehicles? The very fact that EVs use something called “regenerative braking” makes the former a moot point, especially since gasoline powered vehicles don’t benefit from that technology or its beneficial impact on brake pad usage. As to the tires — something the Daily Mail has referred to as “the dirty secret of electric cars” — the Guardian found no meaningful difference between EVs and gasoline vehicles. “It is certainly the case that ever heavier cars almost certainly produce more tire particulates. Electric cars are – for now – heavier still than equivalents. But even so, tire pollution appears roughly comparable between petrol, diesel and electric cars.”
Stephens wasn’t about to miss out on the fun. “One question,” he said to Lomborg. “What about the mining lithium, mining cobalt, mining all the minerals that go into batteries. That’s dirty, right?” Lomborg didn’t miss the softball that the Times’s star columnist had just lobbed his way. “Very dirty.”
This has already been addressed in the life-cycle analysis of a given vehicle’s emissions. But it’s an especially tired and tedious talking point given the advances being made in battery chemistry , ones that will eliminate the need for rare earth minerals and things like lithium in favour of more common elements like sodium. Mercedes, for example, just announced a joint venture with an American firm that will produce a so-called “solid-state battery” it claims will nearly double EV range while significantly reducing its weight. Almost every major automaker, from Honda and Toyota to Volkswagen and China’s Nio, are working on their own solid-state batteries. All promise to extend range, improve performance in cold weather, and lower both weight and cost.
Folks like Lomborg and Stephens — and, sadly, Maher, a self-described environmentalist who did nothing to push back against any of their nonsense — are running out of excuses here. I have no doubt they’ll continue to throw up as many straw men and red herrings as they can find, but I have even less doubt that they’ll be proven as such almost immediately. The war here is over: everyone who’s still fighting is just engaged in a rearguard battle with their own dignity.
Comments
Mining associated with EVs has "already been addressed"? An "especially tired and tedious talking point"? The author's reliance on "advances being made in battery chemistry , ones that will [someday, maybe] eliminate the need for rare earth minerals and things like lithium", and Mercedes, which simply "claims" it will "nearly double EV range while significantly reducing its weight", and "promise to extend range, improve performance in cold weather, and lower both weight and cost"?
These are dreams for the future, not valid arguments for now. Car makers plans for the future do not address the very obvious adverse effects of mining now and for an indeterminate time to come. The author might be wise to read what is going on now with mining lithium in Argentina, Bolivia and elsewhere, Australian mining magnate Gina Rinehart's untiring demands to mine metallurgical coal on the eastern slopes of the Rockies where water quality and quantity is seriously at risk, the list goes on. A dream of the future does not address this very valid concern does not mean it has been addressed or that it is an invalid as a "tired and tedious talking point".
As with so many environmentalists who have bought into electrifying everything as a panacea, the author appears to have turned a blind eye to the unintended but obvious consequences, which risk simply compounding the ecological and social crises we are trying to solve. If a person knows and loves, or simply cares, about the integrity of land, water, biodiversity, it would be difficult to dismiss the catastrophic harm mining does.
Well said Jillian! Add to this the generalized reality - we are in overshoot on every front. Moreover, though we constantly hear of the exponential growth of solar and wind, marveling at their progress, according to the International Energy Agency, dependence on fossil fuels has remained around 82% over the last decade.
The entire EV discussion is a red herring. Psychologically, we are let off the hook. Virtue signaling maintains nothing but the status quo. If we were serious, we would be discussing how best to ration the use of fossil fuels. We are dreaming if we think EVs are a solution to planetary overshoot.
I don't know of one online EV advocate who said EVs are the only solution. All have continually said they are only part of fighting climate change, and most understand the limits.
Peak car on the planet has already happened. How? Electrified mass transit build out in Asia and Europe. The beauty of EVs is that they will quickly and directly eliminate liquid petroleum in transportation.
My favourute solution is to build walkable communities with decent transit, something I already experience because we don't live in the car dependent suburbs. But I also recognize we are in the minority with car dependency hovering around 10% instead of 90%, and that decreasing the suburban 90% will be terribly expensive to society and will take decades.
Regarding the IEA, their annual reports continuously document the growth in INVESTMENTS in renewables, which exceeded fossil fuels for the first time just last year. It also documents the continuously falling PRICE of renewables, solar now being the cheapest form of energy ever invented. Your 82% usage figure is cherry picked shamelessly from all the other data, and represents a snapshot in the obvious lag time it takes to replace fossil fuels.
Okay. Let's just continue on with the status quo. Mining metals and rare earths for the computer you wrote that comment on, and for transit buses and stainless steel cutlery for your table, not to mention the kettle for your morning cuppa. Oh wait, maybe we should include the metal in your gas furnace and the copper in your home wiring system.
Isn't there a saying for hypocrisy? Something about pots and kettles? Made of mined and smelted metal?
Better yet, let's just stop mining and pumping gas. There! Job done. We'll just look the other way when the heat goes off and stuff rusts out and food cannot be delivered to stores any more because there's no more diesel or spare parts for the delivery trucks. What a perfect scene for the Walking Dead without the zombie appocalypse.
The fact is, there ARE replacements for metallurgical coal, not to mention cobalt and nickel. They're already in the works. The most important replacement for mined steel making coal is ..... electricity and, yes, recycling existing metals.
But you don't care to have that discussion while offering no solutions or replacements of your own other than to stop mining.
That's not discourse. That's one-sided preaching.
The largest lithium deposit on the planet is in the US, not exactly a centre for child labour and an absense of environmental standards, though it, like every advanced nation, still has its share of corporate conservatives trying to do just that.
Lithium is being diluted in batteries mainly by hybriding it with silicon, sodium and manganese. And like scrap steel and aluminum pop cans, it is perfectly recyclable over and over forever. A nearly absolute recycled resource is possible and would be the best way to keep mined fresh lithium out of the supply stream.
But some absolutist critics are so far gone down the change nothing ban everything track that there is no discussion, just religious zealotry.
Mining and EVs has absolutely been addressed. The basic thing about ICE vehicles is they require ONGOING mining . . . it's just, we don't usually refer to the process of getting oil out of the ground as "mining". But it is, and carbon aside it creates massive pollution and environmental destruction. So where an EV requires the mining for one battery pack every maybe 7-10 years, an ICE vehicle requires the mining for a full tank of refined fossil fuels every week or two. So even present day EVs require far, far less non-CO2 environmental destruction.
Not only that, it seems pretty clear that the batteries for EVs are mostly going to be recycled or re-used, much like the batteries of ICE cars, if only because they're too valuable not to. Good luck recycling a tank of gasoline after you burn it.
Perfect? No, certainly not. We need less car culture generally. Much better than ICE vehicles? Absolutely, in pretty much every way. If we are going to have cars, they should be battery EVs. Also buses, trucks, mining vehicles, golf carts, leaf blowers . . .
Re: recycling gasoline after burning it. Direct carbon capture from the air is supposed to do just that. And what do they do with the collected carbon? Make more carbon fuel! Carbon neutral operations, of course.
But that requires an astronomical amount of suction to be viable because there's an astronomical amount of carbon being blown off everywhere. It's hard to believe it's actually a thing, taken seriously by certain media and nerds who read too many comics. I suppose investment bankers find it a useful thing to hype to give them a cosmetic tint of spray on green.
Surprised to learn that Bill Maher is still on the air.
Yes, Bill Maher is still on the air and has become fairly pointless to watch these past 3-4 years. It seems Bill has become overly opinionated and jaded in his comments to the point he is a waste of time to watch.
Some of the other tactics the skeptics spew on social media is to keep pushing EV fires, while ignoring the fact that fossil fuel vehicles catch fire everyday on our roadways due to poor maintenance. Then they push the false narrative that with EVs plugged into the grid, we will all be sitting in the dark soon, due to an overloaded grid.
Overall, the skeptics are grasping at straws to discourage EVs these days anyway they can, but it is clear, they are fighting a losing battle. Who knows, maybe some of these more outspoken skeptics are enumerated in some way by the fossil fuel industry. It isn't the first time that social media influencers have been caught with their fingers in a till somewhere. Most social media influencers are a joke with the garbage they spew everyday.
Other claims by skeptics are charging problems, range, tires & brakes where they claim they wear out quicker, and the most laughable claim that EVs have performance problems. They even point out that EV owners are main problem why they are so bad, that EVs are not fun to drive, they won't work in cold climates and reliability is a problem. The list of excuses just goes on ...
I have yet to hear anything negative about EVs from people I know who own them, drive to & from work everyday or travel. In fact, they all say how much they love them and no longer being held hostage by the price at the pump. The only point ever made is they are still pricey, but so are a lot of other fossil fuel vehicles.
I read a report recently that documented fires in Land Rovers. It's not pretty because their rate of fires far exceeds EVs in general. LRs are also very heavy, often exceeding EVs in the same luxury price and vehicle size range.
Then you've got Expeditions, Yukons, F150s, Pilots and so many more gas burning SUVs and trucjs posing as household fashion necessities that the knock against EVs about fire and weight and cost is completely laughable.
Once again, we are presented with a false choice between EVs and ICE cars as our main transportation vehicle. Public transit, cycling, walking, and a halt to sprawl are all left out of the equation. The revolution we actually need.
On the environmental, climate, health, and social front, the main issues revolve not around ELECTRIC cars, but electric CARS and car culture.
Environmentalist critiques of cars, car dependency, and car culture go back many decades — long before the advent of EVs and professional climate liars like Lomborg and the Fraser Institute.
Environmentalists have never embraced cars, car culture, and sprawl. Why would they start now? EV promoters have yet to reckon with the environmental issues around cars.
It is idle to pretend that the car is a sustainable transportation option. EVs are not even a band-aid solution —more cars make our sprawl problem worse and ultimately irremediable.
Sprawl is a transportation nightmare EVs contribute to, but will never solve. Advocate for EVs, and you advocate for sprawl.
Nationally, sprawl and car dependency are increasing. We have not even begun to bend the curve away from sprawl, more commutes by car, longer commutes by car, and more single-passenger traffic. People are buying larger and heavier vehicles (SUVs and pickups). Nationally, all these metrics are going in the wrong direction.
When you're in a hole, stop digging.
It is also idle to argue that necessary improvements in public transit will take too long. It is like arguing that cancer treatment will take too long. The longer you wait, the worse the problem gets and the more difficult to overcome. Meanwhile, cars continue to fuel sprawl, putting real solutions out of reach. How and when would these trends ever be reversed?
We can put 60 car drivers on a bus tomorrow. For less money than it takes to buy 60 cars. The buses are there, waiting. All they require is the funds to operate them.
Just because urban redesign and efficient public transit will take decades to achieve is not reason for delay. Every transition on the table takes decades. The energy shift from fossil fuels to renewables. The shift from ICE cars to electric also takes decades.
We have no time for delay. No time for going in the wrong direction. No time for filling our super-sprawled cities with EVs. No time for wishful thinking and empty prophecies.
EVs are a detour from sustainability. There is no evolution from more private cars and more sprawl to efficient public transit. More private cars and more sprawl do not enable efficient public transit at some future date — they make it impossible. The dream of EV promoters and car makers is to make a monumental challenge impossible. EV dreams only prolong our urban nightmare.
If people are not willing to give up their cars today, why would they do so decades down the road, when sprawl is even worse? Once new generations of middle- and upper-class consumers are happily ensconced in their automobiles, there is no shifting them. There is no incentive for governments to invest in and improve transit if the vast majority vote for cars and EV subsidies.
EV subsidies are terrible transportation and climate policy.
We can cut far more emissions far faster and cheaper with public transit.
A bus can carry far more people. Cars are parked most of the time. Typically, the only passenger is the driver.
EV subsidies cut fewer emissions at a higher price per tonne of carbon. One of the least cost-effective, least efficient ways to spend public transportation and climate dollars.
Cars and car culture are the bane of urban life. Massive externalized environmental, health, and social costs. We do not need more cars clogging our city streets. EVs and EV subsidies promote sprawl, which spells the death of public transit.
Sinking public dollars into private cars just slows public transit down — and puts the only sustainable solution out of reach.
Climate/EV subsidies for households are regressive, because they largely flow to affluent homeowners, who do not require subsidies. Meanwhile, non-drivers — the poor, the young, and the old — remain marginalized.
We have a choice: the public good — or private benefits for the few, while perpetuating the same ills that car culture has inflicted on society for decades.
Feel free to buy an EV if you want one. Just don't ask me to help pay for it.
Living the dream in a great walkable neighbourhood in Vancouver. Don't need an EV becayse we don't need to drive much, but there a a few times it can't be avoided. We also have a subway and three major bus routes framing the neighbourhood.
But that doesn't mean my circumstanes apply to suburban car commuters who will have to wait a couple of generations for viable transit alternatives to appear. I'm confident they will be built mai ly becayse Metro Vancouver has a fundamental challenge that needs a transportarion solution far more efficient than cars and freeways: Ain't a lot of land left for sprawl, mainly because of mountainous and oceanic geography, and the very wise decision to create the Agrucultural Land Reserve 50 years ago.
Metro Vancouver's urban development area envelops only about 820 km2 out of its total 2,800 km2 area. The majority of the undeveloped area is protected forested watersheds in the North Shore mountains.
About 40-45% of the urban land is paved over for cars, which make up about 70% of the vehicle fleet. Yep, we cab do better. Having said that, MV has akready made huge progress in urban efficacy already by geographical necessity. It enacted rhe Livable Regions Strategic Plan that promoted seven regional "town centres" (what boring terminology!) linked by rapid transit. That has been a roaring success, though no one back then foresaw the 80-storey towers proposed today, with the average height limit in some individual cities being 55.
Not many other western North American cities have these challenges or have been literally forced to make better urban decisions. Thus, there will be a long period of time before the majority of cities move away from car dependency.
In MV, the decision to act against car dependency was made in 1992, but ir's still a thing until the raw land runs out, which is foreseeable. Transit and compact urban design are following incrementally. Land use and economics are forced into smaller spaces naturally.
In provinces and states with abundant, cheap farm land at the urban periphery, it's still too easy and cheap to consume multiple km2 at a time for suburban sprawl and monster freeways and mass addiction to gasoline.
I don't see EVs as a huge issue where I live because car dependency in general is slowly eroding, not fast enough in my view, but rapid transit is now actively sought out by MV cities. It's far easier for us to lace up our walking shoes and carry groceries in a back pack from one of a half dozen food stores just a 10 minute walk away than to fire up the econobox. But as we age our priorities nar chang
...may change.
Are there Edit Buttons somewhere in CNO's future?
Brilliant comments Alex. We have to try to get there from where we are, not from where we wish we were.
AB wrote: "But that doesn't mean my circumstances apply to suburban car commuters who will have to wait a couple of generations for viable transit alternatives to appear."
A new bus can show up at your nearest bus stop tomorrow.
A viable transit system does not appear magically one day. It is the product of an incremental revolution: ongoing continuous efforts. Build it today, tomorrow, next week, next year … and do not stop.
As transit capacity expands, discourage car use by incrementally pricing in the real, true, full costs of driving. We need to end the market failure both in fossil fuels and car culture.
Mr. Botta never explains how and why "viable transit alternatives" will appear a couple of generations down the road. Kicking the can down the road. Magical thinking and delayism.
If EV enthusiasts make us wait for "viable transit alternatives to appear" before investing our public resources in it, we will wait forever.
Build it and they will come.
Metro Vancouver's transit system saw about 450 million boardings a year just before the pandemic hit. Moreover, the demand from riders and a good chunk of the Metro's 21 cities for new SkyTrain lines and an expanded rapid bus network was loud and clear. SkyTrain became popular with the people because it's fast, convenient and affordable.
Developers jumped on the bandwagon because they saw SkyTrain as a Golden Goose to make profit from condo towers looming over stations. But they also introduced a powerful speculative frenzy that helped kill housing affordability in linked arms with zoning restrictions on the other end of the spectrum that protected vast single family subdivisions elsewhere, creating a labd supply shortage. Then there is the tough regional geography, as mentioned previously.
TransLink's ridership figures now show a recovery of about 90% of its pre-COVID ridership. Transit infrastructure funding can't keep up with demand and is subject to political ideology. But there is progress.
Building bus routes is easy, as Geoffrey points out. Marrying them with better land use is the hard, time consuming part mainly because funding and rezoning approvals are still too often in the hands of politicians who love their cars and who haven't done the economic and climate math on which one, cars/massive freways or transit-oriented communities is sustainable.
It took Vancouver over 35 years to achieve a titch more that 50% transit-walk-bike commuting mode share. I've cited this several times before. This is your evidence that efficacious communities based on low carbon transport take generations to build out. And Vancouver's example stems from several terms of willing civic leadership backstopped by a province that has been frustratingly stop and go on funding transit for decades.
Looking at it purely from urban economics, low density sprawl cannot be financially sustained without huge subsidies, so running transit into very low ridership neighbourhoods is futile. But bring in even modest density increases with multi-use zoning (e.g. continuous sidewalk retail with residential above) and decent transit service is quickly viable mainly because tax revenue goes up by orders of magnitude and allows for utility and service upgrades along with better transit.
Frequent, fast transit networks create their own critical mass of ridership in land use efficient and low carbon mobility. Pre-pandemic TransLink stats indicate that fares alone covered half of all transit operating costs. Car loving politicos need to be challenged to show us one road that does the same.
The BC NDP under Horgan was elected not long after Trudeau was elected federally. Within months we had a federal-provincial-municipal pro-transit alignment and the Broadway Subway was suddenly funded. Accounting for pandemic, construction supply chain and labour action delays, it won't be completed until 2027, a solid decade after approval. Moreover, it's only a partial line that will require a second phase --another decade? -- to extend to the UBC campus just five km further. This is another example of why it takes generations to wean Canadians off of cars -- even in a city where all parties are on board with transit.
Before the early Horgan-Trudeau nexus we had Christy Clark whose one term as premier was marred by her wining and dining of often corrupt international real estate speculators, an automatic approval of TMX after wining and dining Petroleum Club members in Calgary seeking political donations, and sheer petty disdain for Metro Vancouver to the point of forcing only the Big City into a controversial referendum on desperately needed transit funding. She dissed the Big City which contaibs half the popularion of the province and paid the price when nine of her Metro Vancouver MLAs were defeated in the next election.
At that time there was a call on several online forums on urbanism for the Metro to becone a city state with its own powers of taxation. In Canada senior governments take 92% of all tax revenue generated in our cities, and some givernments do not deliver the equivalent in services and infrastructure. If the Metro was able to wrestle the power to claim a fair share of public revenues, we'd be well on the way to European levels of transit-walk-bike mode share by now, and BC would go bankrupt as half of the provincial GDP disappeared.
Long story short, low carbon transport is needed ASAP. If trabsit and ridership support takes decades as illustrated above -- even when there is local support -- then EVs have a place if only temporary. They will also incentivise the electrification of the entire domestic economy.
AB wrote: "This is your evidence that efficacious communities based on low carbon transport take generations to build out."
Entitled EV boosters want their EV subsidy— and they want it now. Sorry, but the rest of you will have to wait sixty years for a bus.
Even in urban core communities, people drive because there is no bus to take them in a reasonable time to their destination at the time they wish to travel. These people could get on a bus tomorrow. Internalize the costs of driving, offer citizens efficient transit service instead, and they'll take it. No need to wait for generations.
We do not arrive at our public-transit centred transportation system, sustainable communities, and smartcities by waiting for sixty years. We get there by building the future we want today.
Car-enabled sprawl takes us in the wrong direction. Further decades of sprawl only make it harder to build "efficacious communities based on low carbon transport". Indefinite sprawl makes efficient transit impossible.
The decisions we make now about urban design set the blueprint for generations to come. Cars drive sprawl, and sprawl forces people to drive. Sprawl is difficult, if not impossible, to undo.
Doubling down on cars (EVs) makes already difficult problems intractable and puts solutions out of reach. Forever.
Cities need to hit the brakes on sprawl yesterday. In addition to zoning regulations, we must end the market failure that encourages sprawl. Starting today, not 60 years from now. Internalize the environmental, health, and social costs of sprawl. Make developers and homebuyers pay the full costs of their bad choices — including the full costs of driving. Price sprawl and car culture out of existence.
Society cannot get sprawl and car dependency under control by subsidizing cars, including EVs, and car infrastructure. Contradictory policy.
2) AB wrote: "Marrying [bus routes] with better land use is the hard, time consuming part mainly because funding and rezoning approvals are still too often in the hands of politicians who love their cars and who haven't done the economic and climate math on which one, cars/massive freways or transit-oriented communities is sustainable."
Car-centric politicians captured by developers and the construction industry have no incentive to change their policies as long as the majority of affluent voters are happy to zoom around in their (electric) cars; happy to receive EV subsidies they do not actually need; who look down on public transit as the default option for the poor; and who have not a care in the world for the marginalized.
We get the urban future we vote for. If the majority of voters vote for cars, a car-centric world it will be. As long as drivers and carmakers push for cars — and EV boosters push for EVs — public transit does not have a hope.
Mr. Botta fails to explain why and how this dynamic would magically change two generations down the road. When would we ever reverse course, if that were even possible?
AB wrote: "Looking at it purely from urban economics, low density sprawl cannot be financially sustained without huge subsidies, so running transit into very low ridership neighbourhoods is futile."
Non sequitur.
Stop the subsidies. End the market failure. Price sprawl, endless freeways, and car culture out of existence. As transit improves and the costs to drivers rise, low-ridership neighbourhoods turn into high-ridership neighbourhoods. That transition needs to start now, not 60 years from now.
As AB states: "Frequent, fast transit networks create their own critical mass of ridership in land use efficient and low carbon mobility."
AB wrote: "But bring in even modest density increases with multi-use zoning (e.g. continuous sidewalk retail with residential above) and decent transit service is quickly viable"
And why would that happen? You just said that "funding and rezoning approvals are still too often in the hands of politicians who love their cars and who haven't done the economic and climate math…". And the province "has been frustratingly stop and go on funding transit for decades." Why would that change?
You propose a destination, but provide no roadmap to get there. Plans powered by wishful thinking go nowhere. Without a push from voters, there is no incentive for change. As long as voters demand EVs and EV infrastructure, there is no incentive for rezoning and funding — no challenge to the status quo.
3) "EVs have a place if only temporary"
Across Canada and around the world, cars, roads, freeways, and sprawled cities continue to multiply and expand. Empty assurances — cars have a place if only temporary — have not slowed these trends. In Canada, the metrics are all going in the wrong direction.
Meanwhile, transit is starved for funds. In cities like Edmonton, public transit has entered a death spiral with reduced service, fewer routes, higher fares, poor security, long waits in bitter winter weather, etc. People cannot take a bus that does not run from bus stops that do not exist.
Make life difficult for car drivers, not transit users, and watch things change.
AB wrote: "It took Vancouver over 35 years to achieve a titch more that 50% transit-walk-bike commuting mode share."
According to StatsCan's latest figures, 69% of commuters in Vancouver drive. 20% take transit. 9% bike or walk.
Main mode of commuting for the 10 largest census metropolitan areas, May 2016, May 2022, May 2023 and May 2024
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/240826/t002a-eng.htm
Chart 2: Proportion of commuters mainly taking public transit in the 10 largest CMAs, May 2016 and May 2024
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/240826/cg-a002-eng.htm
Across your province (B.C.), 78% of commuters drive. 13% take transit. 8% bike or walk. Just 22% of commuters are not in cars.
"Census of Environment: Measuring settled area expansion, 2010 to 2020" (StatsCan, 2023)
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/231027/dq231027c-eng.htm
"In 2020, contiguously settled areas covered roughly 18,000 km2 of Canada.
"Built-up area within two kilometres outside the boundary of all Contiguously settled areas (CSAs) in Canada grew by over 370 km2 from 2010 to 2020, a 2% increase over the 2010 CSA footprints. This area is comparable to the size of 45,000 Canadian football fields.
"Over one-third (36%) of the land converted to built-up area on the outskirts of CSAs from 2010 to 2020 was in Ontario. Quebec had the next highest proportion (21%), followed by Alberta (16%) and British Columbia (13%).
"From 2010 to 2020, built-up area growth was highest in the agglomerated CSAs of Toronto (+29 km2), Calgary (+21 km2) and Montréal (+16 km2). In addition, Edmonton (+12 km2), Winnipeg (+10 km2) and Vancouver (+10 km2) had more than 9 km2 of built-up growth on their outskirts. These six CSAs all fell within the top 10 most populated municipalities in 2021."
Note Vancouver on StatsCan's list.
AB wrote: "They will also incentivise the electrification of the entire domestic economy."
In regard to electrification, anything an electric car can do, an electric bus, train, LRT, or tram can do better for the masses at lower cost.
No need to wait 60 years for regional (inter-city) transit service either.
"More trains, bridges and buses promised in B.C. election pledges" (CBC, Oct 03, 2024)
"All three parties want to expand transit, rail and bus service across B.C."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/trains-bridge-buses-hig…
Not in reply to Mr. Botta, but as an addendum to my own comment:
Any dollar — or million dollars — society has to invest in transportation will transport more passengers and reduce more emissions when spent on public transit instead of cars.
That holds true today, tomorrow, next week, next year, or a decade from now. It will always be the case.
Another bus can join the fleet tomorrow. Another one the day after. Keep adding buses. Reduce or eliminate fares. Make car drivers pay the full costs of driving. Waiting for a tomorrow that never comes is folly.
Same principle when it comes to investment in renewable energy vs. carbon removal — in particular, direct air capture (DAC) — a topic visited earlier in the week.
"Carbon removal and emissions reduction must go hand in hand" (National Observer, 24-Sep-24)
Rather than use our limited renewable energy resources to power DAC, we can reduce more emissions at lower cost in everyday renewable energy applications that displace fossil fuel energy. I.e., use renewables to power our homes and industry, not DAC.
I watched that Bill Maher episode last Friday but fast-forwarded past Lomborg as I do ANYONE still "slow-walking climate change" as you said, and am close to doing the same with the whole program because Bill Maher definitely HAS become more conservative the last while, a criticism he's quite defensive about because I suspect he knows it's valid.
What is interesting is that in the "overtime" part you speak of, Bill's other guest Stephanie Ruhle from MSNBC was absent, probably because she was the most reasonable. I saw her expression, and shared it, when she mentioned Project 2025 and Bill dismissed the importance of that. But she went on to skewer both persistent, stupid "bothsidesism" AND Bret Stephens (and Maher) admirably regarding the petty waffling about Kamala Harris' "policy" credentials, and she did this by citing an apparently popular game I don't know of called "Would You Rather?" Her point was of course that the very PRESENCE of Trump as the other option is ALL, a truly spectacular example of missing the forest for the trees.
Several commenters here are predictably doing this on the topic of EV's with their usual lack of perspective as they proudly trump everyone, AGAIN, with a textbook example of the perfect being the enemy of the good. It's truly inarguable when evil incarnate prances in the wings.
Hi Max,
I happened to have seen that Maher segment, and was naturally
appalled. You seem to have kicked the tires real good here.
Best license plate on a Tesla: EWW GAS
EV'S are a distraction. Fossil fuel elimination is a must if there is to be any hope.
And every EV is an automatic shut off valve for fossil fuels.
As is every electric bus, train, LRT, bike, or pedestrian.
Transporting more people at lower cost with a lower footprint and less emissions.
It's been several decades since the climate crisis has been urgent, and in that time, Canadians continued to choose the most polluting form of transportation possible (even increasing vehicle size), even though they clearly couldn't afford it while funding the things we need and being financially prepared for global economic turbulence. If people are going to persist in the failed car-centric experiment, the very least they can do is buy less polluting vehicles. If they can't afford that, maybe take the train. It's a sad commentary on the state of Canadian culture that insignificant consumer preferences seem to win out over morality, health, and responsibility for so many.
Like a snowball rolling downhill, the EV transition is underway and soon it will be an avalanche