Yeah alot of people gonna hate that article wigwam and there probably ain’t enough minerals on the planet to make as many of the newest ev’s to meet the numbers of ice cars we have on the planet now..
Plus the taxpayers, as it says are funding those who can already afford to pay the high price for an ev and when 2030 comes and the supply is restricted from current volumes, as i believe it will. The new car prices of ev’s will rise further and used ice car prices will drop off a cliff and i can see myself leaving the scheme then and keeping an ice car as like many others may well do, who depend on a car. Unless alot changes it will be better as we saw in the lockdown the price of crude oil, went negative as no one was using it and all the storage was full. likewise when more and more ev’s are on the road, it may get cheaper to run an ice car than the alternatives.. when everything is considered. Plus they use oil and gases to make plastics and emit other gh gases which alot worse than co2, imo and are not really regulated or talked about.
Almost all plastic is derived from materials (like ethylene and propylene) made from fossil fuels (mostly oil and gas). The process of extracting and transporting those fuels, then manufacturing plastic creates billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases. For example, 4% of the world’s annual petroleum production is diverted to making plastic, and another 4% gets burned in the refining process.
But how we manage all the plastic that then goes into circulation is equally troubling. Of the almost 3 million tonnes of plastic that Australia produces each year, 95% is discarded after a single use. Less than 12% is recycled, which leaves a staggering amount to be disposed of – in landfills or incinerated.
We used to rely on countries like China, Myanmar and Cambodia to handle our waste plastic. It was convenient to bale it up and ship it offshore for someone else to deal with.
However, the poorly-regulated incineration in those developing nations posed considerable threats to human health and the environment. Globally, in this year alone, researchers estimate that the production and incineration of plastic will pump more than 850 million tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. By 2050, those emissions could rise to 2.8 billion tonnes.
Alarmingly, at least 8 million tonnes of discarded plastic also enters our oceans each year, and plastic pollution at sea is on course to double by 2030. Plastic has even been found in the deepest place on Earth – in the Mariana Trench, nearly 11 kilometres below sea level.
In our oceans, which provide the largest natural carbon sink for greenhouse gases, plastic leaves a deadly legacy. It directly chokes and smothers a host of marine animals and habitats and can take hundreds of years to break down.
As it does, sunlight and heat cause the plastic to release powerful greenhouse gases, leading to an alarming feedback loop. As our climate changes, the planet gets hotter, the plastic breaks down into more methane and ethylene, increasing the rate of climate change, and so perpetuating the cycle.