Apparently, yes: they do: the relentless obsession with Carbon emissions (while important) has led us into a blind alley of thinking that electric vehicles are somehow “green”. A clue: they’re not, unless the energy used to propel them comes from a renewable resource. Otherwise, all you’re doing is swapping local pollution and emissions for those far away; you know what they say about “out of sight…”.
Carbon emissions are only one of the car’s many downsides. An electric car:
- will still get stuck in traffic,
- will still be driven at reckless speeds, even by the “otherwise law-abiding”
- will still kill people in crashes
- will still insulate people from their surroundings, sucking the life out of communities
- will still prevent occupants from getting any exercise
We need more cycling, not hare-brained schemes like this. In fact, paying people to cycle is a positive step that would be a net benefit in reduced health costs and road maintenance costs.
April 16th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Glad it wasn’t just me that was infuriated by this.
Green? Huh? NO!!!
Spend the £250m on getting people OUT of their cars please!
May 5th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Quite true. I think though that a lot of businesses and politiciens are in a desperate game of convincing people that it is 'business as usual': you can be more green and keep spending and doing the same old thing.
I suspect a lot of people know these things are at best unlikely, but they keep dangling the utopian future in the hope we keep falling for it.