Chariots (2021)

Clara Ford drove a 1914 Detroit Electric, which she by far preferred to the Model T, a gasoline engine car built by her husband Henry[1]. Detroit Electric shipped its last car in 1939 and now we are told that the race to the electric car has just started[2].

Every carmaker is planning to become carbon neutral soon, and they are telling us, constantly telling now, that the planet can only be saved by purchasing electric cars. Like anyone else, I can appreciate the advantage of eclectic cars in carbon management, but I feel that we are not given the whole story. According to some, BHP for example, there could be 125 million electric cars on the road by 2030. Each of these cars will need about 183 lbs. of copper to build their motors[3]. I am not sure that mining all of those millions of tons of copper will be very kind to Mother Earth. Will she be saved or not?

I also have a certain ‘inquiétude’, a worry that our planet can only be saved by those with money to promote the mining. How can the poor help? How can Earth be truly saved if we exclude those who are economically challenged? Is it not ‘our’ planet after all? How can the electric car be a symbol of both salvation and inequity? If there was a heartfelt desire to save Mother Earth, governments would give tax breaks to those who have forfeited car ownership, instead of helping others to buy more vehicles.

What is killing our world is the societal model of promoting constant and excessive consumption of all matter. The rest is marketing and, so far, marketing has not saved anything.

Daniel H. Dugas
February 23, 2021

Image credit: [Detroit Electric auto on a promotional tour through mountains from Seattle to Mt. Rainier] / Cress-Dale Photo Co., Crary Bldg, Seattle. https://www.loc.gov/item/2003653829/

For more on this:
A Clear Conscience and a Bright Blue Sky (2020)
http://daniel.basicbruegel.com/a-clear-conscience-and-a-bright-blue-sky-2020/

[1] Henry Ford’s Wife Wouldn’t Drive Ford Model T, Kept Her Electric Car
https://cleantechnica.com/2014/04/11/henry-fords-wife-wouldnt-drive-model-t-kept-electric-car/

[2] Our Path to an All-Electric Future
https://www.gm.com/electric-vehicles.html

[3] How Much Copper is in an Electric Vehicle?
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-much-copper-is-in-an-electric-vehicle/

A Clear Conscience and a Bright Blue Sky (2020)

The goal of any ad is to make us feel good about a company and its products. This ad from the Melbourne, Australia-based BHP Billiton multinational mining, metals, and petroleum company, fits the bill. According to its advertorial gospel, published in The Economist October 2020, by reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the air, electric cars will save the world. But this glossy hope does not tell the whole truth. The ad states that ‘by 2030, there could be 125 million electric cars on the road.’ More cars on the roads, this is the hope for our future and these are the words of a company responsible for so much destruction. Still fresh on our environmental awareness radar is the 2015 collapse of a dam at the Samarco-BHP mine. This was Brazil’s largest environmental disaster, it killed 19 people and spilled roughly 40 million cubic metres of toxic sludge into communities, the Rio Doce river, and the Atlantic Ocean, 650 km away[1]. BHP Billiton is also responsible for the Ok Tedi environmental disaster in Papua New Guinea. Between 1984 and 2013, BHP’s mine discharged about two billion tons of untreated mining waste into the Ok Tedi river[2]. This is the same company that has violated scores of indigenous communities’ rights across the Americas. The trail of environmental, social, and public health disasters linked to BHP[3] is a long one and yet they want us to think of them as the saviour of the world, they want us to believe that they are the ‘Big Thinkers’ who leave a small carbon footprint. It is hard to take and even harder to understand why such ads could be printed. One hundred and twenty-five million electric cars will not solve the problems of pollution that will occur through their manufacturing process; the extraction of tons and tons of copper needed to build the hearts and the veins of these cars will not make our planet better. The only ones to profit are the investors and perhaps the marketers selling us on the fallacy that our conscience should be clear.[4]

[1] BHP faces first step in $6.3 billion UK claim over Brazil dam failure
[2] Ok Tedi environmental disaster
[3] Broken Hills: Six cases from BHP’s long trail of disasters (PDF)
[4] According to the Visual Capitalist website, an EV contains about 183 lbs. of copper. 125 millions cars multiplied by 183 lbs. equal twenty three billion pounds of cooper.