Switching to electric vehicles would address the trouble with emissions but it fixes nothing else
Electric vehicles don’t emit exhaust but the topic sure had people fuming just before Christmas.
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Alberta Premier Danielle Smith was quick to jump on the federal government for its recently announced phaseout of gas-powered vehicle sales by 2035.
Ottawa’s targets for zero-emission vehicles led her to vow Alberta would “do everything within its legal jurisdiction to thwart implementation” of the new rules.
One of the main concerns voiced by Smith and some lobby groups has to do with Alberta’s capacity to accommodate a surge in electric vehicle ownership.
Those with such groups as the Alberta Motor Dealers Association and the Pembina Institute highlighted the lack of charging facilities in the province.
Meanwhile, Smith expressed concerns over the ability of the electrical grid to handle an uptick in electric vehicles needing to be charged.
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These varied voices have unwittingly raised a red flag for something else: our over-reliance on private vehicles to get us where we need to go.
For far too long, motor vehicles have been pitched as the only answer to all our transportation needs when in reality, cars and trucks should only be an occasional solution.
And it doesn’t matter if the vehicle burns fossil fuels or consumes energy from the electrical grid. It’s still energy — and all energy production and consumption requires the use of limited resources, eventually resulting in varying quantities of waste.
Renewable energy sources like solar and wind rely on finite materials to transform light and air into something useful to inject into our power grids.
Meanwhile, fossil fuel alternatives like hydro and nuclear have their own issues that need to be wrestled with.
All are still much better than burning coal, though, and while we really should switch to less-polluting sources of energy wherever possible, our primary goal should be to reduce energy consumption, whatever its source.
Coming back to cars and trucks, vehicle exhaust is one of the most vile substances around. The stuff you can smell is unpleasant at best and toxic at worst, while the stuff you can’t smell (odourless and colourless carbon monoxide) can kill you almost instantly under certain conditions.
If climate change is too big an issue for people to wrap their heads around, let’s think much smaller: We should be abandoning the internal combustion engine for the sake of our individual health and well-being.
Switching to electric vehicles would address the emissions problem but it fixes nothing else.
Rather, what’s missing from the federal zero-emission vehicle mandate is a comprehensive national, regional and local transportation strategy for short- and medium-distance travel.
Greyhound Canada exited Western Canada in 2018 and shut down its remaining Canadian services in 2021 — a void that was never fully filled by alternative service providers.
Via Rail has never recovered from deep budget cuts in the 1980s and 1990s — and now, what’s left of its service outside the Windsor-Quebec City corridor is hobbling along using dated rolling stock, forever forced to give way to money-making freight trains. On some quieter parts of Via’s network, the host railroad’s rails themselves are barely fit for passenger travel.
Meanwhile, many local authorities are struggling to provide useful public transit across their sprawling municipalities, built with cars in mind and spread out too thin for efficient, cost-effective public transport.
It would make more sense to ask people to use less energy by driving less if they actually had helpful alternative means to get around.
It’s relatively easier to continue doing things as we’ve always done by building more power plants and installing more car chargers to meet the energy demands of personal vehicles.
Much more helpful and critical — but also much more difficult — is a total rethink of how we travel and how our built environment is put together.
Ordering a massive switch away from gas-powered vehicles to electric ones, without doing anything else, won’t fix most of our problems.
rleong@postmedia.com
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