It’s about time for my family to purchase a new car. With our daughter being a senior in high school and our son a freshman, we are firmly beyond the sport team carpooling years. We currently have two cars, a 2010 Toyota Corolla and a 2013 Toyota Sienna minivan. The minivan must go.
The Corolla has, or will have within the next week, 100,000 miles and the van is pushing 60,000 miles. The Corolla, having now gone five times around the fattest part of our globe, still has a good long life ahead of it, Gawd willing. I’ve long thought that internal combustion engine cars are a piece of shit technology and I’ve ached for the day when I could buy something that could move me around in a manner that is less damaging to the world. A worthy wish.
For roughly $50,000 I could order up, tonight, an all-wheel drive Tesla. And yes, for less than $40,000 I could get a model without the all-wheel drive but, for the time being and until climate change kicks in in earnest, I live in a location that tends to get significant amounts of snow in the winter and all-wheel drive is a necessary luxury for myself and my family. Considering that I could sell the Sienna for something close to $20,000, I’d be looking at a car payment smaller than what I had when I purchased the Sienna brand new six years ago. The Sienna (our all-wheel drive vehicle at the moment) gets crappy gas milage so again, the Sienna must go. Side note: I know it’s silly to buy a brand new car but there were extenuating circumstances at the time with the van. Financial planners of the world, please forgive my sins. Also, I’ve searched for used Teslas and they are rare birds. So I think we’d have to go new.
So here we are. I need a new car. There’s a reasonable alternative out there that does less damage to the world. The cost isn’t prohibitive. It’s a poorly timed cost, yes, but not prohibitive. So why am I feeling this hesitation to make the leap into the electric vehicle world?
Paul Kingsnorth is the answer.
Kingsnorth, in Confessions, has penned a set of essays that is equal parts saddening, maddening, and liberating. Kingsnorth is a year older than I am and nearly as handsome as I am, but while I was spending my early adult years logging and cutting down trees in NE Washington, Kingsnorth devoted that time, and more, to the front lines of the environmental movement. Greenpeace. EarthAction. Editor of The Ecologist. Real, heavy, hard-hitting work. And after a couple decades in the trenches, here’s his conclusion: if the Earth is going to be saved (or at least a rough approximation of Earth as humans have known it since we started toddling around), it will need to be saved from those who say it can be saved.
[Insert awkward pause here]
Kingsnorth devoted a good chunk of his life to the protection of wild places. There really is no place left on the globe that hasn’t felt some impact from humans but still, he worked hard to protect those spaces that hadn’t already been paved over, tilled under, cut down, developed, mined, dammed, sprayed, logged, irrigated, what have you. Kingsnorth’s efforts, and the efforts of legions of other lovely humans have produced some wins. Some areas have been preserved. Some habitat for something other than humans has been set aside. And yet, Kingsnorth has watched the environmental movement shift from one of “protection” to one of “sustainable development.”
And that kills him.
Sustainable development, for all its promise, really comes down to this: we need to sacrifice the wild in order to keep humans alive. If you’re driving on I-84 through the Columbia River gorge, and if you’re of a certain age or older, you’ll realize what used to be untouched (aka non-arable) lands on the bluffs soaring above the river are now blanketed with wind-powered electricity generation.
That is sustainable development.
On one hand, I think it’s awesome. There’s a massive source of energy that is now being tapped that doesn’t have a carbon cost associated with it. And when I say there’s no carbon cost, I mean there’s no cost once we get beyond the manufacturing of the turbines, mining the materials needed to make them, shipping them around the globe, constructing them, etc.
But on the other hand… we’ve now taken thousands of acres of previously undeveloped land and plunked down hundreds of wind turbines. To save the world. To save the environment. And this is the environmental movement today. As my son would say, Eef.
So here I am, looking a buying an electric car. Is it a better choice than a gas powered car? Yes, I firmly believe that it is. On an individual scale, at least. But what happens if my entire state, or even county, or even city, decided to switch over to electric cars en masse? We’d need to start producing a whole lot more electricity, that’s what. And where will that power come from? I certainly hope it won’t be coal or natural gas, but if it’s a renewable it’s going to have to occupy a sizable chunk of the Earth. Can we say that we’re saving the Earth if we’re covering it with solar panels in the name of saving it? Kingsnorth would argue we can’t.
This is probably the most important book I’ve read in a very, very long time. Five stars. Go track down a copy here: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/999308029
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