He suggested solutions like drivers keeping the same car for longer periods of time
That’s what i have been doing… Is that wrong, or just too much anti-consumerism to be presented as a good thing in our society?
He’s right honestly, cars, especially electric cars, produce a large portion of their CO2 emissions when they are manufactured.
We would all be better off if people kept their “gas guzzlers” but only used them rarely. A car in a garage has zero co2 emissions.
Which is one reason this anti WFH campaign pisses me off so much. We could cut emissions quite a bit just from that but we can’t even do that little because: greedy assholes.
Was I the only one who, during covid lockdowns, was amazed at how fucking clear the air was? Did everyone just forget? Idk why most humans can’t look at that and go “we all need to make this permanent” and then do it. But we evolved to prefer the worst of us in charge.
Anyway. Yeah. I WFH and drive about 5000 miles a year. And we tend to keep our cars 10-15 years. It’s way more affordable than a new car every few years, assuming you get a car that has low maintenance costs. More people oughta do that.
Anti-WFH is because companies know workers have so much mobility and a virtual workforce can leave to work for any company in the world. It’s a form of lock-in. People don’t like disruption or change, so they are less likely to leave for a higher paycheck. To be honest I’m surprised more American companies haven’t leveraged work from home to shift non customer-facing white collar jobs to Eastern Europe.
Anti wfh I think is run by business office real estate owners. I could be wrong, but wfh fucks them the most. Their investments gotta pay off and real estate is never supposed to go down in price, I’ll fucking stab you bitch or something like that, the conversations I have heard at charity galas.
I dont think so because businesses love shedding fixed overhead so it’s more likely they are trying to get a return on their investment or they think it’s worth the trade off. I’m convinced half the company’s moving to southern states are doing so just to reduce overhead but using the current red state/blue state zeitgeist as cover.
It depends on how much you drive, and what you drive. If you have a Prius and drive 2000 miles a year the emissions payoff for getting an EV would probably be longer than you’d even want to keep the car. If you’re in a diesel F350 and do 20,000 miles a year, mostly city, then yeah an EV will be net zero in like 5 years or less.
As I’m sure someone will mention inevitably, not using a car in the first place is the best option. Public transit, walking, biking, are all much better solutions.
Call it a hunch, but I think it’s got less to do with the opinions of a celebrity and more to do with the fact that a large portion of the population can’t afford the high price of an electric car.
Seymour Skinner ‘Am I out of touch?’ meme:
- top panel caption: are EVs too expensive and not practical enough yet?
- bottom panel caption: No, it’s Mr Bean’s fault
On what the article touches, he is not wrong. Buying a new car, even if it’s an electric one, will have more impact than a lot of time using a gasoline one, especially if the country doesn’t produce electricity in a sustainable way.
Also, if you want to help the environment, you shouldn’t be replacing cars, but removing them, public transportation, and walkable cities are so much better in this regard.
Many people I know actually are back on fossil fuel cars, just because no one has the time to wait for hours till they’re loaded again, sadly there’s no battery quick change system around. And till then, I haven’t got the time either. That’s just the reality, I cannot afford to lose any more customers just because we’re not there on time.
Don’t know why it should be so downvoted - the problem is real. Battery swaps, if properly implemented, could be an amazing solution. Or we have to better figure out fuel cell technology to improve conversion efficiency.
I understand the general policy is “it’s a worthy sacrifice”, but many people just really won’t be able to accept such drawback, either due to packed schedule combined with requirement for personal transportation or yes, simply because it’s heavily inconvenient.
It’s cute how they blame Rowan Atkinson, when we all know who’s fault this really is… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkrcxLgHn-w
The rule of thumb is: if your ICE car is still in working order, it’s less damaging to the environment to just keep driving it. If you absolutely must buy a new car, get an electric. That being said, I don’t trust that Rowan won’t be “Mr. Car Guy” and promote his bias towards ICE cars due to his extreme wealth and love of exotic whips.
Not true. Watch this https://youtu.be/L2IKCdnzl5k?si=yVCXvZw00SQlwI7Y
There are a lot of issues with his calculations.
For people driving 12,000 miles a year their mpg will be higher, more highway miles.
The 10mpg difference in new car vs old for similarly sized cars is over 20 years. The 2001 impala I used to have got 25 mpg.
People that buy new cars typically have cars less than 10 years old that they are replacing. People typically don’t go from a clapped out 20 year old car to a brand new one. The “old” car most people are trading in is getting 30-35 mpg.
I’d put the number at 5-7 years for a car that’s less than 5 years old.
Similar to the theory that The Simpsons made a generation not trust nuclear power.
I think 3 mile Island and Chernobyl and Fukushima and Sosnovy Bor and Ibaraki and Forsmark were probably more influential in terrifying the general public about nuclear power.
Yeah it’s also people using those incidents for fear mongering. Especially when coal and oil have killed way more people than every nuclear incident combined, including nuclear weapons.
I’ve heard people say shit like “after Chernobyl, two fishermen were instantly vaporized and only boots left on the bank!” Like, no, that never happened since it wasn’t an atomic bomb.
The closest to that were the people on the bridge who were looking at the radiation that died a couple of days after.
The psychological impact of a meltdown versus slow poisoning is important. Similar to how fire bombings were more deadly and destructive than the nuclear bombs were, but the nukes have a bigger impact on us mentally
Yeah we firebomed Tokyo to cinders. Hardly any of the original buildings remain and the ones that did are all landmarks.
And you’re proud of that? Because the way you phrase that sure sounds like you are
Public figures should be held accountable for false statements.
You see what an absolute shit show that would be? Banning people for opinions the government decide are false historically doesn’t go well
Here’s Rowan’s original article since I couldn’t find a link in the actual article.
All of the points he makes are good ones, IMHO. The one about three year leases is especially good, and something the government could act on right now. There’s no reason to ditch a car after three years. Both of my cars are almost a decade old and will probably keep running for another decade with good maintenance.
And here’s the rebuttal about he’s mostly spouting FUD or down right lies.
I imagine most of us here read his article with a positive outlook saying “yes, yes, these are concerns we acknowledge and are being handled, so this is more of a cautionary price than a true argument against it” while the other side is saying “see? See? They don’t work at all!”.
I read the Guardian rebuttal before his actual article. Interesting that they had to make multiple amendments to address some of what the Guardian called out. Of course, nobody really sees the amendments because the majority of readers have already passed through. I definitely agree that the 3-year turnaround is a massive misdirection though. First off, people are going to buy new cars regardless. It’s required to create a sustainable used car market. Second off, selling/returning a 3-year lease car means there must be someone buying/accepting that return. It’s a lease return, not a scrap disposal. Obviously marketing and sales wants you to get a new car sooner, but it’s still necessary. Cars all eventually die.
This article was amended on 5 June 2023 to describe lithium-ion batteries as lasting “upwards of 10 years”, rather than “about 10 years”; and to clarify that the figures released by Volvo claimed that greenhouse gas emissions during production of an electric car are “nearly 70% higher”, not “70% higher”. It was further amended on 7 June 2023 to remove an incorrect reference to the production of lithium-ion batteries needing “many rare earth metals”; to clarify that a reference to “trucks” should instead have been to “heavy trucks for long distance haulage”; and to more accurately refer to the use of such batteries in these trucks as being a “concern”, due to weight issues, rather than a “non-starter”.
I’m not one to side with a bigot, but this is just pathetic… He makes perfectly valid points, if EV manufacturers want to prove him wrong, maybe they should be doing a better job (or admitting that shifting from one type of car to another isn’t the solution to all of our problems, but simply a way for the auto industry to continue to make profits off of “solutions” to the destruction they’ve had a massive part in creating).
A bigot?
He wrote: “As a lifelong beneficiary of the freedom to make jokes about religion, I do think that Boris Johnson’s joke about wearers of the burka resembling letterboxes is a pretty good one.”
Atkinson added: “All jokes about religion cause offence, so it’s pointless apologising for them. You should really only apologise for a bad joke. On that basis, no apology is required.”
That doesn’t sound like bigotry to me. He’s a comedian who’s been making fun of religions his entire career.
“It does seem to me that the job of comedy is to offend, or have the potential to offend, and it cannot be drained of that potential,” Atkinson said of cancel culture. “Every joke has a victim. That’s the definition of a joke. Someone or something or an idea is made to look ridiculous.”
“I think you’ve got to be very, very careful about saying what you’re allowed to make jokes about. You’ve always got to kick up? Really? What if there’s someone extremely smug, arrogant, aggressive, self-satisfied, who happens to be below in society? They’re not all in houses of parliament or in monarchies.”
He added, “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
This is an entirely reasonable point. I disagree with his framing of the concept, which I think has affected his conclusion. Specifically, I disagree with his point that comedians are “cancelled” because of the subjects of their jokes. More important than the subject is the intent.
I think Boris Johnson is a bigot, but I don’t think Atkinson is one. But Atkinson is treating Boris like a comedian, when in fact he’s an elected official. Johnson represented British citizens of all faiths, and being deliberately disrespectful to their religious practices is inappropriate for an elected official. Johnson knows this, and said it anyway because it scored points with his bigoted supporters. The intent was not to make people laugh, but to make some people feel superior to others. For that, he deserves the backlash he rightfully received.
Atkinson, on the other hand, hasn’t said or done anything that would indicate or imply that he’s a bigot.
The Burka deserves to be made fun of.
As well as anyone who supports the treatment of women that it accompanies.
This just in: famous rich white man who jumps, unprovoked, to the defence of another famous rich white man openly being Islamophobic, to defend said Islamophobia, and who, years later maintains the position that punching down at marginalised and oppressed people is perfectly acceptable (nice selective quoting there) - not a bigot!
Oh no, wait, looks like it’s actually bigots defending bigots all the way down… ¯\(ツ)/¯
(E: also, because apparently it still needs saying - being a comedian isn’t a magic bullet that somehow nullifies bigotry, just like saying “it’s just a joke!” after saying something vile isn’t)
Not hard to prove him wrong…
