In economics there's this theory, the "Environmental Kuznets Curve," that argues that environmental degradation is strongly correlated with 'less advanced' economies, where activity is primarily industrial. As the economy matures a greater portion of it is...1/
taken up with providing services, and the level of environmental degradation starts to decline. This graph is probably a better explanation than what I'm giving. Anyways... 2/
this theory has been pretty well debunked. It holds for some countries when measured in isolation from their energy and material throughput, but as soon as you account for total consumption it's trashed. The correlation that economists noticed... 3/
has far more to do with globalization and offshoring production, which was also offshoring pollution. Which brings me to the point of this thread - many strategies for reducing GHG emissions seem to rely on a significant uptick in modal share for electric vehicles. 4/
From what I've seen of #Barrie's draft strategy, for instance, this is a big part of it. The problem here is that it might reduce GHG emissions locally, and allow local politicians to claim the win, when in fact it's simply displacing pollutants elsewhere. 5/
The fact that pollutants are being displaced to parts of the world that are poorer compounds the concern. This is not simply an environmental issue, it's a social justice issue. Climate change, we already know, will disproportionately impact those... 6/
who are already less well-off, and, simultaneously, these are the very people who bear the least responsibility for it. It's profoundly unfair. Back to the electric vehicles and pollution. In Ontario we produce a fair bit of power with natural gas. Most of this comes from... 7/
through TransCanada's Canadian Mainline pipeline from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin in Alberta and BC. A large portion of the gas produced there is done with fracking, and methane emissions are huge. Batteries, the production of EVs, all carry significant... 8/
environmental impacts. Lithium for EV batteries comes largely from Bolivia, and there's speculation that recent political instability there is, in part, due to the value of that resource. Mining and refining it requires huge amounts of water and sulphuric acid. 9/
Lithium, it so happens, mostly occurs in extremely dry places, so the impact of water use isn't simply a one to one. It has to be shipped to the site, drawing the resource away from local communities. 10/
To sum up, if you're basing your GHG emissions reduction strategy on an increase in electric vehicles all you are doing is displacing the impacts to somewhere else, and it is likely this burden will be on the backs of those least able to carry it. 12/
It's both a profoundly poor grasp of the problem we're facing with emissions reductions (it's a global problem and, as such, must use an equity lens) and an incredibly unjust solution, so just don't do it. (But brace yourself because this is exactly what we're going to see... 13/
from politicians who've dithered so long they've backed themselves into a corner and are desperate to pretend they are taking action. Fin. //
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