Please invest in Our Daily Planet today, by making a one time or monthly contribution.
We do not charge our readers a subscription fee for our content. We want to continue to grow our readership, particularly among millennials and public servants. Voluntary contributions from readers will help us employ interns and freelance journalists, expand our content, and reach a larger audience.
If you make a contribution of $150 or more, you will become an official “Friend of the Planet” and receive a Friend of the Planet T-shirt or water bottle.
Our Daily Planet is a daily morning email (M-F) to keep you informed of the stories shaping our environment. If these issues matter to you, we’d like to be the best ten minutes of your morning.
There’s a false rumor being spread around the internet by trolls, well-meaning people and…the likes of Politico and WSJ Editorial Board about the environmental benefit of electric vehicles. Essentially the claim is that since EVs have to be recharged largely through grid power, they end up emitting more greenhouse gases because our utilities are still reliant on fossil fuels for energy generation.Additionally, people are also falsely claiming that the manufacturing process of EVs is so carbon-intensive that it negates the vehicles’ emissions benefits. That could sound reasonable but as Greentech Media explained, these “Conclusions are reached through misrepresentation and reliance on projections that are known to be consistently inaccurate. The same substandard methods are applied to the economics of electric vehicles and to questions about the profitability of, and public investment in, EV charging infrastructure. Nonpartisan institutions, including the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Electric Power Research Institute, have published accurate and reliable studies” that have disproven this false claim.
“But, as always, the real purpose of an op-ed like this is always reserved for the kicker:
These subsidies and exemptions inevitably divert consumer euros and corporate investment toward electric vehicles no matter their true environmental impact. Better to heed the report’s authors, who suggest allowing room for a range of possible auto technologies to blossom and compete.
Ah, now I see. “Please stop subsidizing electric cars,” in other words, “lest they be able to compete with fossil fuels, which are incredibly, massively, hugely subsidized themselves, to the tune of $20 billion a year.””
Why This Matters: Sure, there is a lot of room for improvement to sustainably source and recycle the materials it takes to manufacture all cars but especially the batteries of EVs. But however you look at it, gasoline is a dirty, finite resource and we shouldn’t be envisioning our future transportation as being reliant on its use. Plus, the more we commit to utility-scale and residential renewable energy the cleaner EVs will become. So next time you hear this false claim, you have our permission to say “well, actually??”.
by Ashira Morris, ODP Staff Writer Right now, 95% of American public school buses run on diesel fuel, but that could soon change thanks to part of the Biden administration’s massive infrastructure proposal. The new Clean Buses for Kids Program would electrify at least 20% of the country’s iconic yellow school bus fleet. It would […]
by Amy Lupica, ODP Staff Writer In February, the governors of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware voted unanimously to ban fracking in the Delaware River Basin, but Republican-led lawsuits are seeking to stop this action. The ban prevented the natural gas industry from blasting up to 4,000 wells in the basin, serving a blow to the […]
Electric vehicles are an important part of meeting climate change action goals in addition to their potential to clean up air pollution, yet Americans have traditionally been apprehensive about purchasing them. That is until now. As Ben Geman wrote for Axios this week, “Even as gasoline-powered sales return from the pandemic, cars with plugs are […]
Subscribe to the email that top lawmakers, renowned scientists, and thousands of concerned citizens turn to each morning for the latest environmental news and analysis.
Want the lastest climate news summarized for you each morning?
Our Daily Planet is your daily dose of the stories shaping our world and the ways that you can take action. From the climate crisis to the protection of biodiversity, if these issues matter to you then please subscribe & stay informed!
Your privacy is Important! We promise never to use your email address to send you spam or advertisements.