• EvolvedTurtle@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I think electric cars address climate change Once we stop using coal and gas powerplants

    Cause then all we are doing is shifting it

    • baggachipz@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Not true. Large-scale power plants are WAY more efficient at turning fossil fuels into work than internal combustion engines. Even if all electric car power was generated by coal (it’s not, almost half of electricity generation now is nuclear + renewables), electric cars would still have net emissions that are half of gas cars.

    • Meowoem@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      It’s a process that is absolutely underway and making great progress, even the USA now generatea more from solar than from coal, many countries like Scotland are already producing over 90% of their electrical use from renewables with only 2% from fossil fuels.

      It’s worth noting too that these numbers are only grid based usage and a lot of solar is direct use, often being stored in an electric car rather than sold to the grid - with rooftop solar at home and at work it would be possible to use a car without requiring any of the oil extraction, transport and refining faculties. I don’t know how many people it would take using solar cars before a single oil well goes untapped but I do know if we get to a point where no one is using gas stations then that’ll be an awfull lot of horrible polluting infrastructure we don’t need, just carrying the fuel through wires instead of in tanker lorries is a huge saving alone.

      • Crashumbc@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Looks at state of world…

        Oh we’re going balls deep in Nuclear my friend. Just not the kind you’re talking about.

      • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        That’s not a huge problem. Chernobyl and Five Kilometer Island were old reactor designs, and Fukushima mostly sustained an earthquake+tsunami (it would fully succeed under better corporation oversight)