Green Illusions: Why Ozzie Zehner claims that Electric Cars are nothing to crow about

.

In a recent book, it has been claimed that many of the so-called green initiatives do more harm than good.  The author is Ozzie Zehner, and his main argument is that these steps are so tiny, that they only appear to help the problem.

Many have argued, in various contexts, that the Good is the enemy of the Best, and it is an irrefutable argument, both ways.  The "best" here is so impossible to attain: to get most households in the temperate zones to save energy by insulating their homes as much as they can, to get most households in the world using energy-efficient light fixtures, to get all energy-inefficient cars and vehicles off the road, and finally, to completely move towards mass transportation (and make it energy efficient).  He argues that the energy standards of present-day hybrid and electric cars are laughably minimal, and I agree.  They're good only compared to the average non-hybrid, non-electric vehicles, which are absolute fuel hogs and polluting monsters.

We know we've got our fingers in the dyke, but what does he want: that we should take them out?  While we watch disaster grind towards us at slow speed, it is some consolation that we're slowing it just a little.

A lot of what we do—what I do, certainly—is with a view to setting an example.  A million people are not watching what I do, but perhaps it makes a difference to my immediate family, and a few of my friends, and a few of my students.  We've got the students trying to increase the level of recycling that goes on at our school, and around us, barely perceptibly, more recycling is happening: stores are offering to recycle, new recycling bins appear in odd places.  Recycling is a significant way of saving energy and lessening our carbon footprint.

Elsewhere in town, of course, big executives are making decisions to cut costs by streamlining their purchasing and their trash disposal.  While one business chooses to improve their public image by placing a recycling bin in a prominent place, another business lays off an employee who used to be in charge of recycling, and recycling is added on to the duty of another employee who's already overworked.

But we can't be deterred by every stupid and uncaring thing that any business anywhere chooses to do.  As soon as a business goes public, the stockholders hold it to ransom, you see (or at least, the management likes to pretend that the stockholders have tied their hands in regard to environment-friendly activity inside the business).

I like to think that not every board of directors is as bottom-line as the cartoons make them out to be.  In order for businesses to be a little more green, stockholders must make do with a little less green, meaning smaller dividends.  Not hugely smaller, but significantly smaller.  Businesses, politicians, economists must all get together about slowing down consumption of the environment, and consumption of energy.  This might mean slowing down of traditional measures of "productivity", e.g. GDP.  If so, so be it.  If we live by the GDP, we're going to incinerate ourselves by the GDP.

Anyway, get hold of brother Ozzie's book, but don't buy it; just borrow it.  The good and the best had better call it off; we've got to have both.

Arch.