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Having a positive attitude is essential for achieving success. cities don’t have enough charging stations to make them a viable option for everyone and the ones that do exist are often hard to find or expensive to use another issue is cost electric vehicles can be pricey to buy and maintain and the batteries that power them don’t last forever so it’s important to consider the cost of the car and the cost of the electricity to charge it when you’re making your decision
Our ability to get to faraway places quickly is a marvel. Transportation allows us to share ideas, see loved ones, seek out all the cool cat cafes and glacier museums, and even swap our best inventions. So, let’s say I’m on an expedition to my favorite glacier in Iceland and I forget my favorite jacket–in just a few days I can have it shipped to me and I’ll finally feel complete again.
But for as magical as that is, transportation is also one of the most visible personal ways we’re transforming the Earth’s climate. Cars, ships, and planes release heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every day, which means that to decarbonize transportation, we’ll have to take to the road, the air, and the sea.
Almost half of the emissions from transportation comes from personal vehicles–the cars, vans, motorcycles, and SUVs we drive in our daily lives. The other half comes from all the other vehicles–cargo ships, semi-trucks, planes, buses, and more–transporting lots of stuff or people.
Decarbonizing both realms will mean fewer greenhouse emissions and less pollution for the entire planet, but decarbonizing transportation also has a second major benefit beyond helping slow the global effects of climate change–it could also be a step towards correcting environmental inequities, such as air, water, and noise pollution that disproportionately affects some more than others.
The first step to tackling decarbonization is clear and underway: to decarbonize our rides, we must first electrify them. And what we can electrify, we’ll have to make as efficient as possible and supply with alternative fuels.
When it comes to personal transportation, you’ve probably seen electric vehicles in the wild by this point. Instead of having to fuel up at a gas station, they can plug in at homes, grocery stores, or cat cafes and zoom from point A to point B on rechargeable batteries. Because they run on electricity, these vehicles release fewer emissions and air pollutants than gas-powered cars, no matter where they’re driven.
But an electric car is only as sustainable as the electricity it’s plugged into. That means a car charged on renewable electricity comes closer to zero emissions than one driven off of a coal-burning power plant.
The main barrier to electric vehicles is not carbon-free electricity–there are bunches of reasons they’re still not everywhere. One is charging station access–most cities don’t have enough charging stations to make them a viable option for everyone, and the ones that do exist are often hard to find or expensive to use. Another issue is cost–electric vehicles can be pricey to buy and maintain, and the batteries that power them don’t last forever. So it’s important to consider the cost of the car and the cost of the electricity to charge it when you’re making your decision.