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The Electric Car – “climate solution or creator of poverty”

The climate is changing rapidly and a major cause for that is the extensive use of oil. Day after day, month after month people travel to work in their cars driven by petrol.

Thinking about it, we can, and have put a man on the moon. But we cannot build a fully functioning green alternative. Or can we? As Barack Obama said: “Yes we can.” And we have already done it. Several manufacturers have produced an electric car, but no one has taken it to the next phase; serial production.

Then, what is the problem?

We could easily legislate, giving the manufacturers no choice. It sounds easy, but I can assure you, that is not the case. Our whole society is adapted to the use of oil. If we were to start using electric cars, we would have to build a whole new infrastructure. That is a huge investment, and it could have serious impact on the economy of a country. That could result in tax raises and cutbacks on government grants.

To cut it short the danger with the electric car is that the demand for oil would drop dramatically. This gives us another perspective; it all comes down to one group, who have strong incentives to stop the development of electric cars, the oil companies. Then again we have to ask ourselves, in what state would our economies be without the oil? For example: have a look at Norway, would they be such a prosperous country without their “black gold”? And lets not forget about Dubai, in what state would they be?

Therefore, you could say that the oil, in fact, has been a solution against poverty, and that the electric car was going to disrupt this, instead of being a savior of our climate. Who wants to live in scarcity and breathe fresh air?

Having said that I believe we are standing at a crossroad. Option one: keep up the production of petrol driven cars. So there are incentives to continue the production of oil, which will keep our countries rich and prosperous. However, this means that our planet will eventually break down, and life as we know it will vanish.

Option two: ban petrol driven cars and start serial production of electric cars. The remake of our infrastructure will create thousands of jobs which will keep the level of prosperity up, and maybe, raise it. Also, we will save our planet, our generation and those to come.

Hard to choose? Not really.

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