When you talk about “pollution” (compared to a shipping vessel) you are only talking about greenhouse gas emissions. This is the exact fallacy that the comic is addressing.
Localised particulate matter pollution will have a much more severe and direct impact on human health. Whether widespread individual car ownership is worth the cancer and microplastic pollution in our bodies is certainly still open for debate. However, this “environmentally friendly car” that you are imagining is a pipe dream.
Humans living fulfilling, individualised lives has been happening for more than just the last century.
Cargo ships also emit a shit ton of particulate, NOx, and SO2 since they aren’t required to have the same emissions controls as on road vehicles. It’s a serious problem for both climate change and immediate health impacts.
But those cargo ships exist whether we’re also driving a bunch of cars or not. It’s just totally orthogonal.
If anything, switching to heavy EVs will increase the amount of pollution caused by cargo ships. Bringing up cargo ships makes no sense as a defense of EVs
Plus, short of putting nuclear reactors on every ship, they can only really function on oil based fuels. Nothing compares in terms of energy density. If you somehow managed to put god knows how many battery packs on a ship without it sinking, it would probably take months to charge and suck tens of megawatts from the grid whilst doing it.
When you talk about “pollution” (compared to a shipping vessel) you are only talking about greenhouse gas emissions. This is the exact fallacy that the comic is addressing.
Localised particulate matter pollution will have a much more severe and direct impact on human health. Whether widespread individual car ownership is worth the cancer and microplastic pollution in our bodies is certainly still open for debate. However, this “environmentally friendly car” that you are imagining is a pipe dream.
Humans living fulfilling, individualised lives has been happening for more than just the last century.
Cargo ships also emit a shit ton of particulate, NOx, and SO2 since they aren’t required to have the same emissions controls as on road vehicles. It’s a serious problem for both climate change and immediate health impacts.
But those cargo ships exist whether we’re also driving a bunch of cars or not. It’s just totally orthogonal.
If anything, switching to heavy EVs will increase the amount of pollution caused by cargo ships. Bringing up cargo ships makes no sense as a defense of EVs
Plus, short of putting nuclear reactors on every ship, they can only really function on oil based fuels. Nothing compares in terms of energy density. If you somehow managed to put god knows how many battery packs on a ship without it sinking, it would probably take months to charge and suck tens of megawatts from the grid whilst doing it.