Yesterday Is Not Soon Enough if We Are to Go with EVs by 2025

   It would almost be right to outlaw the sale of any new gasoline or diesel cars for as early as 2025.

   Almost, but not quite. While the urgency of getting rid of fossil-fuel cars is that great, our ability to switch over that fast to non-fossil fuel power plants would be difficult. In Utah, roughly 60 percent of our electricity comes from coal-fired power plants. We must put conversion to green power plants ahead of conversion to green cars. Here's why:

   1. Recharging batteries requires CO2 to be released into the air if the recharge is being supplied by a coal-fired power plant. Thus, it becomes important to get solar, wind, or whatever power plants in production before you switch to electric vehicles.

   2.) The switch to EVs is going to put a far greater burden on the power grid. People are not just plugging into the grid for their TVs and refrigerators and such, but now they are also plugging in for their EVs. That's a much larger draw. I do not know if studies have been done to determine how much more electricity will be needed, but it would not surprise me if the burden would increase as much as half again. Thus, it becomes important to get more power plants up, period, regardless if they are fossil fuel plants. 

   So, outlaw new gasoline cars come 2025? No, the first order of business is to get new, fossil fuel-free power plants online post haste. And, by poste haste I mean post haste. Don't dillydally; don't delay. New, not-already-in-the-works hydro power plants cannot be brought online by 2025, nor can they be brought online nearly fast enough to meet our quickly approaching needs. That leaves solar and wind, and perhaps other sources. We need to prioritize getting them online

   We should consult with the indigenous people for whatever power plants will be on their land, or land they use and land that has sacred history to them. If they say, 'no,' then we should move on to another site.

  But, we must expedite this. The approval process should be streamlined to allow the building of them to commence no later than a year from now. Then, all the fossil fuel-power plants can be decommissioned. While, in Utah, Rocky Mountain Power is phasing out carbon-creating power plants (including a notable reduction this year), the plan is to keep some of them in use as late as 2042. In my book, that's much too late. 

    The idea of outlawing gasoline and diesel vehicles by 2025 is not my own. I read it in a book in a statement by Seth Klein, team lead with the Climate Emergency Unit and author of A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency. But, if we want to convert to electric (and other green-sourced) cars by anything near to 2025, we have a lot of work to do. 

   We should do it, and do it ASAP. 

(Index -- Climate change info)