The impact of oil-based transport

This one is firmly in Off-Topic territory as it's about transport and environmentalism rather than directly about travel.

Because I've switched to an electric car I see a lot of social media discussions on the relative merits of electric vs oil. There's also a lot of misinformation which appears to be seeded by big oil, pretending that burning fossil fuels isn't harmful. I'm amazed when seemingly smart people lap up this nonsense. The attached video makes a good stab at debunking these myths.

I guess this is relevant to us all because we use transport and we use our biosphere. To me travel and concern for our planet go hand in hand.

YouTube - The Dirty Truth About Combustion Engine Vehicles

Quoting AndyF

There's... misinformation which appears to be seeded by big oil, pretending that burning fossil fuels isn't harmful.

I found this article about a clever bit of marketing by BP very interesting. This PR spin and what it accomplished continues to be used as a sort of gauge almost twenty years later; it was wildly successful on many fronts. In reality, this campaign is another example of a strategy to confuse the public and, ultimately, undermine any real action.

https://mashable.com/feature/carbon-footprint-pr-campaign-sham/

Australia is so far behind when it comes to electric vehicles. With all the car companies going electric and our infrastructure so minuscule I feel like we will end up like Cuba having to keep our old combustion engines alive for as long as possible. Only our cars won't look as nice

Quoting Teoni

Australia is so far behind when it comes to electric vehicles.

You do have the advantage that homes tend to have off-street parking, making home charging easy. In the UK only 65% of homes have this, and in Europe only around 30%.

Public rapid chargers are a seldom needed thing, but a quick google suggests you do have a network and it's growing.

Quoting AndyF

You do have the advantage that homes tend to have off-street parking, making home charging easy. In the UK only 65% of homes have this, and in Europe only around 30%.

We have a lot of apartment blocks and they are growing faster than houses being built. And there are no electrical outlets in those garages On top of that the government wants electric vehicle owners to pay special taxes as if electric cars aren't expensive enough. I had been hoping for my next car it would be electric but along with having limited options of charging where I live (I'm in one of those no outlet apartment blocks) I love road trips into the country side and there is no way ATM to achieve this with an electric vehicle unless I limit my itinerary to very few places.

[ Edit: Edited on 5 Mar 2021, 10:06 GMT by Teoni ]

Quoting Teoni

We have a lot of apartment blocks and they are growing faster than houses being built. And there are no electrical outlets in those garages On top of that the government wants electric vehicle owners to pay special taxes as if electric cars aren't expensive enough. I had been hoping for my next car it would be electric but along with having limited options of charging where I live (I'm in one of those no outlet apartment blocks) I love road trips into the country side and there is no way ATM to achieve this with an electric vehicle unless I limit my itinerary to very few places.

That's a shame. The little I've seen of Australia has been mainly houses. Yes with apartments you do need the government to be helpful, as the ability to home charge is 99% of the battle.

Re road trips, you describe a common fear but you'd be surprised at how little problem it is - you can generally charge wherever there's electricity. There seem to be 8 companies offering public rapid charging in Australia, so I expect they will keep pace as the market develops. Looking at the charging map I'd absolutely have an EV in Australia today, if I could charge at home, and I too love road trips in the countryside. I've been amazed at the places I could charge - a lot of places offering free charging to be supportive because they are eco-minded.

My time is limited and I have to live in the present. To make all of these fancy electric cars requires electricity that is coming mostly from coal, natural gas and petroleum. Even making the batteries and disposing of them has problems no matter what you read.

My part of the world gets pretty cold in the winter. Windmills producing electricity freeze up like in Texas and people suffer. And solar grids get covered with snow and people suffer like in Germany. There will always be a need for petroleum for a long time.

Right now in my part of the US, because of politics, the cost of gasoline is at least 60 cents higher per gallon since the first of January. (And I buy from cheaper discount gas stations.) And the oil I use to heat my home has a similar increase and I buy from cheaper independent providers. But oil is still being pumped but it will be sold to China and India and other countries where they can use it with fewer restrictions on air quality than my country. So, air pollution will simply be coming from another part of the world!
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-which-countries-have-the-worst-air-pollution/

I am waiting for people who are frequent world travelers to switch to sailing ships again to save the world from the evils of fossil fuels.

• One thing we can do now is clean up the ocean! Too much trash, a lot of it plastic, floating on or just under the surface. This is something we can actually do and see tangible results. But for my country they will spend trillions of dollars to prevent Global Warming that will be useless because if every human on earth was dead and gone Global Warming will still occur, just like the past millions of years! (And these corrupt politicians will get lots of money under the table in donations and outright cash payments in the form of "No Show Jobs" for family and friends!)