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Page added on February 2, 2012
Electric Cars & Overpopulation — R-Squared Energy TV Ep. 10
In this week’s episode of R-Squared Energy TV, I answer questions on the future of electric cars, and the global population, which many feel is the root of so many problems.
Some of the topics discussed are:
- When electric cars might be expected to make significant inroads in the auto market
- Why some people will continue to be tentative about electric cars
- Why I never cover the topic of overpopulation
- My bewilderment at people who can casually talk about a massive population die-off
Link to Original Article: Electric Cars & Overpopulation — R-Squared Energy TV Ep. 10
6 Comments on "Electric Cars & Overpopulation — R-Squared Energy TV Ep. 10"
DC on Thu, 2nd Feb 2012 1:07 pm
Not a very good clip, he spent half of it saying he doesnt really deal with overpopulation, fair enough. But I got the point at the 3 min mark, He didnt have to spend another 3 and a 1/2 mins saying the same thing. As for his limited spiel on EV;s that was just as un-helpful. Its clear he feels replacing a billion gas-burning trash-bins with a billion private EVs to be ‘sustainable’, somehow. If he really was interested in energy and sustainability, that last thing he, or anyone, should advocate is putting a billion EVs on the roads to replace the gas-burners. Not cost-effective, not efficent, not sustainable. Once again, we can see its all about the cars isnt it? We’d literally starve our children(working on it now) to keep the SUVs rolling…
kervennic on Thu, 2nd Feb 2012 3:02 pm
In a french book on metal written by phillipe bihoux et al, they say that there is not enough lithium resrves to equip more than a few percent of cars.
Kenz300 on Thu, 2nd Feb 2012 5:48 pm
Overpopulation makes every other problem harder to solve. The ever increasing world population only leads to more poverty, suffering and despair. We need to move to a more sustainable model that matches resources and population.
BillT on Fri, 3rd Feb 2012 1:49 am
Kenz, you have the right words, but there is no logic behind them. How do 195 countries with a total of over 7,000,000,000 people make drastic changes in thousands of years of culture immediately? Answer: You Don’t! Mother Nature will take care of the over population in humans just as she does in every other species. Disease, famine or resource wars. And, yes, these are coming to the Western countries also. No-one will be exempt.
How many churches have preached large families for the last 500 years? Answer, all of them. I live in the Philippines that is 85% Catholic and the Church is against any birth control even though many here are starving and living like animals. Tell me that a loving God wants his children to suffer and starve? They even oppose condom use. Are religions the work of a god or a devil?
BillT on Fri, 3rd Feb 2012 3:21 am
Kerv…you understand the situation, but most on here still think that we can electrify everything and go on as usual. No-way, no-how. Not going to happen. Can’t happen. Resources are not there and never will be. Electric cars are for the few million out of a billion plus car owners. No more than a small percentage will ever exist.
Paul Scott on Fri, 3rd Feb 2012 11:30 pm
I agree with most of your comments about not being able to replace all the gas-burners with EVs, but I strongly believe we should move in that direction as fast as we can. BillT’s assertion that we’ll only hit a few percent of cars is absolutely wrong, but his assertion that nature will reduce the population is spot on. The resource wars, starvation and diseases are just starting now and will grow fast over the next decades. It’s going to be ugly. But rather than sitting on our hands and commiserating about it, we should work hard to reduce our individual consumption of dirty energy and that’s where EVs and renewable energy come in.
For over 9 years, I’ve been powering my home and car on sunlight with an electric bill of only $100 per year. There are now thousands of us doing this and within a few years, we’ll have over a million people doing the same thing. It’s too late to save most of the people who will be affected by the coming wars and starvation, but the reduction in oil, coal and natural gas that those of us who take these steps help to come about will go far in mitigating the worst of what will come.