Electric car panacea? Not exactly

Won't those tax-subsidized electric cars solve heaps of problems?

Not exactly.

There are two examples that run against the politically correct grain:

In China, there are reportedly 100 million electrically powered scooters and cars. That should be quite a blessing to the environment, eh? Not exactly.

In China, electricity to run those vehicles is generated in the most economical way: coal power plants. The problem is, the marginal environmental benefits of driving around in an electric vehicle are more than neutralized by the coal plant emissions of fine particles of metal, acid, allergens and dust.

"The emissions from the plants affect nearby humans almost four times as much as gas-operated cars," reports U.S. News.


In California, there's this report from the New York Times, which we've mentioned previously: A provision in California's new car-pollution rules to cut down smog and combat dreaded global warming allows manufacturers that exceed new federal fuel-efficiency standards to reduce the number of zero-emission vehicles they sell by up to 50 percent in 2018, a reduction that will drop to 30 percent by 2021.

In short, the Times sums up, the pollution rules will reduce the number of electric cars sold in California.

There's nothing like a well-oiled bureaucracy informed by dogmatic ideologues with myopia to bring about a bunch of unintended and unhappy consequences.

Why wouldn't we want much more government. They do so well doing what they already do.





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