A Shocking Revelation

More eco-car follies abound...

ZAP! (which apparently stands for 'Zero Air Pollution') A new electric car company based in Santa Rosa, CA (where else) has begun promoting it's line of electric "zero-emissions" vehicles. Wouldn't it be great to get one of these instead of driving around in your awful fossil fuel powered polluter? Think about how great you'll feel about yourself! How everyone will adore you because you're such a wonderful person who obviously cares about the environment!

Now after that feeling has passed, you may want to have a look at this...

Sources of Electricity Generation in the U.S. (2005)

Question: Where did the electricity that you used to charge your new Zap come from? Did the place it came from produce any carbon emissions while generating that electricity?

Now, I'm not sure how accurate this graph is (after all it is 2005), but from what I see just about half of the electricity in the U.S. in 2005 was generated using coal (52.3% if you include petroleum). I'm no expert, but if I remember, the only way to extract energy to generate electricity from coal is to burn it. And if I'm not mistaken when you burn coal it emits bad stuff into the air. Now, if everyone in the U.S. suddenly switched over to driving an electric car, what would that do for overall electricity demand? That's right, demand would skyrocket and the only way to meet this increased demand quickly and in a cost-effective way would be to build more coal-fired generation plants. And just for starters, building these new plants requires huge amounts of energy. How is all of that required energy produced and do those sources pollute?

And don't forget, your car is polluting only when it's running, a coal-fired generator is most likely on 24/7.

I think the real question boils down to this: what is more "polluting," a modern gasoline engine or a modern coal-fired generating station? I'm not really sure, but here's the moral of this story: You're really not as wonderful as you originally thought. It's true, you may genuinely have the greatest intentions by picking up one of these high-voltage beauties, but you know what they say about the road to Hell... in the end, no one will give a rat's ass about what kind of car you were driving.

So, can we please refrain from promoting this absurd emotionally-laced idea that if there's no smoke coming out of your tail-pipe you're somehow not polluting? If you truly believe that to be the case however, please do me a favor and enroll in the next physics class at your local high-school.