Letters / Plain green bunkum
Whilst in no way demeaning the marvellous efforts of the Fetlar folk in acquiring a battery powered community vehicle, the misconception that renewable energy and in this case battery vehicles are clean green alternatives to petrol or diesel vehicles, needs addressing as it is plain bunkum.
By using the process called “life cycle analysis” the mining of raw materials, energy used smelting, moulding, processing, pollution to air, land and water involved in all the raw materials needed to make a vehicle, along with the transporting of all the materials and components to the assembly plant is, by a massive factor, the most environmental and carbon damaging part of the vehicle’s life cycle.
Second to this is its disposal cost in environmental terms.
The fuel used in a vehicle’s lifetime, be it liquid fossil fuel, gas or electricity, is almost insignificant in environmental damage/carbon footprint terms.
In fact with the designed shorter life expectancy of a modern vehicle along with the more complex component electronic systems make the creation of a modern motor vehicle far more polluting/carbon heavy than cars of the past.
Ditto pretty much anything else manufactured in this disposable, wasteful society.
In environmental/lower carbon footprint terms the only way to reduce a vehicle’s massive impact on the environment is to make it simpler, with less processed, less complicated components and systems, much longer life expectancy (ie. 20 – 30 years), simpler to maintain, repair and with spare parts designed to fit all models as they invariably improve over the 20 – 30 year design life.
The icing on the cake would be if the vehicle could use post-consumer materials (recycled) in its creation and it would be better still if reuse/recycling of the materials took place close to the site where most of the materials can be used.
Life cycle analysis is the only way to view the impacts of anything as it looks holistically at every part of a product, from start to finish including its running costs/effects.
Yes we do need to find alternative fuels for all our needs, but we also need to change our ways and stop wasting so much finite resources.
Planners need to allow folk to do things more simply, local and national governments need to stop centralising, stop interfering and bring back common sense.
Most folk may find this difficult to believe, but by studying all this in great depth some years ago, I discovered the little fiberglass two stroke car from behind the former Iron Curtain, the Trabant, turned out to be (at the time) the world’s most environmentally car despite the likes of BMW, Audi, Volkswagen and Mercedes Benz claiming when Germany was reunified that its polluting little engine was an environmental disaster.
Nothing could be further away from the truth!
So – do not be taken in by glossy sales claims and fraudulent sales people who tell you that you are helping the environment by buying an electric vehicle, a wind turbine or anything else.
Do your homework and buy one if you want one.
Vic Thomas
Clousta
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