how US transition to electric cars threatens environmental havoc

I think some of the concerns might be valid.

I wonder if the perception of Americans switching to electric cars is overblown.

I drive a PHEV and am on the bandwagon. I do see electric cars in our area every once in a while - mainly a Tesla or two. However, most people in our area are as unlikely to buy an electric car as the sun is to fall out of the sky. This is in spite of our low electric cost which make it one of the few states that electric vehicles make economic sense in. Our state offers no economic incentives for electric vehicles nor do utilities offer any rebates for electric vehicle or charging hardware - there is just not enough interest from people.

 

And that is a bad thing.......why exactly ??

People these days don't seem to listen to calm, rational reasoning so some sensationalism is needed to get their attention.

This is really SAD because the evil forces in the world are better at "crying wolf" than the forces of truth and justice.

 

Just because the concerns, issues, and injustices existed before doesn't mean they can't be worse with the requirements needed to shift to EVs.

A new lithium mine in the US is already being fought over these issues. If the required reviews were rushed or skipped over, it shouldn't proceed. Past cases has shown such sloppy and/or incestous work from the government and business doesn't end well.

Native people rally outside federal courthouse against lithium mine
Nevada lithium mine gets conditional $700M government loan - ABC News

 

a lot of powerful people and fortunes are in danger of being lost in a future of electrification and renewable energy.
not to be a conspiracy theorist, but i don't think much of the american public understands the hidden fights that go on behind the scenes in many situations.

 

Have you been to Europe lately......or ever ??
THIS country also used to have railroad tracks "everywhere" until we started dismantling them back in the '60s.
I was in high school at the time and thought it might be a mistake.
NOW I am SURE it was.

 

People aren’t willing to accept any minor inconvenience/delay and worse our business model (JIT) reinforces terrible behavior because they don’t pay the true costs of transportation.

Things used to be a little more leasurely in years past and business was designed to cope with expected lead times and delays.

Some businesses even used local resources because of transportation costs and issues made the cheaper overseas source undesirable.

You would need to erase the last 40 years of bad decisions to get back to rail, sadly our government doesn’t have the political attention span, let alone willpower to rig things for our own long term benefit .

And good lord would there be a lot of wining

 

Tracks for Freight are not the same as tracks for high speed transportation. To build rail systems for moving people fast is a great idea - but with so many oppositional interests - look how seriously the most liberal of areas, california, have fought it's development tooth and nail. They can't even get a line between L.A. & Vegas.
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The trouble is that “liberal “ rich white individuals in a gated off area tend to also have a not in my backyard view of everything.

This dichotomy is what government is for, making hard decisions for the good of all even if unpopular with a bunch of folks in the middle to upper areas.

 

Not so much the NIMBY Factor as I was considering every linear mile requires Environmental Studies for every moth that pollinates, Hoot Owl that eats moths - plants that don't get pollinated because of insects that potentially results in larger or smaller quantities of them Etc
On an ironic note, UC Davis has - for so many decades now been on the forefront of pushing Electric cars. Now? what with this latest & greatest 'study' they want to sound cataclysmic if their decades long EV push goes forward? JEEZ! make up their minds already. How does one know that a high speed rail implementation might be the same disaster down the road when everyone is running on High-Speed Rail - as they now infer against EV's. When they apologize for being so very wrong about EVS then maybe we can put some stock in the latest revelation.
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Not many windmills are visible within upper middle areas either (regardless of political leaning)

Even though environmentally and economically a tunnel from ocean to the Salton area would be beneficial, a tunnel a quarter mile under rich peoples houses can’t happen for similar reasons.

A water tunnel to that area could reduce pollution, stabilize temperatures and would be a boon to the burgeoning lithium and sodium industries giving fresh feedstock for cheap extraction and would generate jobs.

The longer harder route is actually easier because it’s poor people and Mexico is actually more open to the idea than Californians

 

That depends on how high a speed you are talking about.
It doesn't take state of the art tracks to handle something like 80 MPH.

 

You have your "rose colored glasses" on backwards, Ray.

The folks in the middle to upper areas tend to be conservative, not liberal.
Or lately, fascist disciples of Satan.

 

Many times that is the case there certainly are conservative efforts to stop anything green anywhere
but there are portions of California that are both wealthy and liberal leaning and very protective of their neighborhoods “appearance “

So Not always, I can point to folks in my own family who are “well to do” international traveling folks
who consider themselves much more liberal than me, much more active in community movements, but have extreme prejudice to any, “it’s trashing up the neighborhood” concerns.

There are things / behaviors I know happen for folks surviving in poverty but with too much property tax. These days property rich but money poor is becoming rarer because folks in that position have an active set of government driven systemic efforts to remove their house from them, usually in the form of covenants, bylaws and zoning dirty tricks that can be used to sue them even if they are paid up on all bills.

A neighbor who was nearby my well to do relatives fell on hard times after owning a house several decades and to attempt to pay debts started selling off things in almost a weekly rummage like sale.
Good Lord did that make them fill with rage and they made complaints to the board who banned rummage sales outside a “community rummage sale” once a year.
The folks mentioned lost their home after that.

Many think I’m conservative but in terms of government taking it easy on the poor and disabled I am definitely more liberal than a lot of folks (even ones that are very green, very engaged and who vote liberal)

When it comes to “not in my backyard” that seems to be most everyone who owns a home and the political lean doesn’t do much to stop the passage of agressive and abusive zoning.

I have a live and let live approach as it used to be that you didn’t judge other peoples property and it’s none of your business how they live.

We all have our biases and wealth and property tend to increase those biases regardless of your political leaning.

Case in point the proposed path for the Salton sea tunnel splices mostly liberal areas and has very little support from anyone in the route.
It would be political suicide if anyone tried to start the process.

Obviously there are valid arguments both ways and a lot of cost but those on the route aren’t usually concerned with valid arguments.

 

Due to shapes of land, not all basins drain to an ocean. Some of those basins have a salt lake or lake bed at their bottoms. Some of those in South America have been developed already for lithium extraction, and are amenable to expansion. Others, like Great Salt Lake in Utah and Salton Sea in California have not yet been developed.

This is how most 'new' lithium will enter use. As much as I like copepods and similar critters in saline lakes, they are going to need to put up with sharing. Migratory birds deserve protection. But at the end of the day (as the saying goes) saline lakes are not among the most revered biodiversity hotspots. Lithium has been geo-concentrated in them, and that's the play.

Fossil-fuel FUD is not a new thing, and sometimes as here it seems so predictably cutty pastey. But it is expected. Fossil fuels had a good two (ish) century run, and it is far from over. But the time comes to move on to work more directly with dispatching electrons, and that by current technology means lithium. Ten fold higher than annual extraction might do it, for a while. Saline lakes - we got 'em.

Tamping down CO2 emissions, competition for fresh water, and other fossil externalities looks very attractive.

Ain't just EVs - stationary batteries are key to buffering time variation in photo and wind. In future there may be more lithium there than on the road. But, whichever battery use drives technological advance, because money and competition are there, thence it will diffuse more widely.

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Many centuries of wood energy. A blip of whales. Two by fossils, then ?? by batteries buffering the overwhelming sea of energy we live in. After that I could not predict. But, that things won't change? That is just the tiny sound of some profiteers' fingernails losing their purchase.