The electric car will not save the world: we need cities other than the current ones

At the COP26 climate summit, world politicians patted themselves on the back for reaching a last-minute agreement, which was already short on time. If the rest of our climate progress mirrors transportation policies, we have a challenging future ahead.

COP26 may have been one of the last chances to avert devastating climate change. And yet, it was the best and boldest action our leaders could imagine for transportation the universal adoption of the electric car, with a vague nod to public and active transport. And who knows if they will succeed by 2035: otherwise it would be madness.

Is an electric car enough?

The electric car excites me, I admit it. And there is no doubt that it also excites politicians and many companies. It gives us the impression (the illusion?) that we are drastically reducing our environmental impact without having to change practically anything about our lifestyles. Beautiful, is not it?

Building endlessly by bringing concrete into green areas, and exchanging forests or farmland for residential neighborhoods (even when low-density) burns exorbitant amounts of limited resources. The bigger our cities get, the less interest there is in efficiently building infrastructure like water, sewer, electricity and public transportation. What's the point of wasting time improving what we have? Something new is built further down the road. Further and further. You can get there by car anyway: petrol or electric, the function is the same.

Because the electric car is still a car.

Electric cars, like petrol cars, make our cities less attractive and less efficient for more sustainable modes of transport. Regardless of the type of propulsion, car drivers kill 1,35 million people worldwide. In Italy one death every 14 hours.

More cars in cities mean more parking space, less space and less efficient public transport. Plugging a car into an electrical outlet doesn't stop it from being a lethal machine or causing traffic. Again: There is still no clear and sustainable path to manage e-waste generated by electric vehicles. Electric cars are not “green”, at least not entirely. They still use (at the moment) tires that create huge waste streams. Tire wear produces microplastics that end up in our waterways and oceans.

Although electric vehicles use regenerative braking, which is better than traditional internal combustion cars, they still use brake pads when the brakes are applied. Braking generates toxic dust composed of heavy metals such as mercury, lead, cadmium and chromium. These heavy metals make their way into our streams and rivers, forever embedding themselves in these waterways.

Drive less, switch to active transport

Even if electric vehicles were great for the planet, we may not reach a level of use in New Zealand to significantly reduce transport emissions to deserve our climate goals. Do cars have to disappear completely?

Neither. They help in the ecological transition, even if around 80% of vehicles in this decade are still likely to be combustion-based. Let's face it, the current rate of electric car adoption reflects adoption by the wealthiest in our society: only Once those with the greatest disposable income purchase an electric car, we can expect the adoption curve to flatten .

It is not reasonable, for example, to expect low- and middle-income people to replace their current vehicles with a more expensive electric car. Mitigating emissions through consumerism is highly inequitable. We are placing the most significant burden on the most vulnerable groups.

We reason

Those pushing the electric car make big promises that lull us into a lie. The lie is that we can live our lives pretty much the same way, without worrying about the planet. In fact, our lifestyles they must undergo significant changes to have a significant impact.

We need more equitable cities. On the example of Ljubljana (no car), in the direction desired by the Veil plan of Paris (cycle city) or from Seattle (streets transformed into dehors), or from the city of Barcelona e Madrid (superblocks and city of 15 minutes).

Don't be afraid: this is good news. The changes needed to move us closer to a sustainable future cover many of the things we love about living in a community. It is about bringing together the different uses of the land to make it possible to live, work and shop in our neighborhood. It is about connecting communities with cycling and public transport infrastructure for longer journeys.

Life as we know it will have to change, but that change may be for the better.

We don't need to ditch millions of fossil fuel cars and get into millions of electric cars. We need to drive less, in different cities. While it sounds nice, buying a new electric car won't save the planet.