Electric vehicles are caught up in the culture wars. Data from Ipsos shows the percentage of Americans who believe EVs are better for the environment than gas cars has dropped 5 points since 2022.

Everyone knows that electric vehicles are supposed to be better for the planet than gas cars. That’s the driving reason behind a global effort to transition toward batteries.

But what about the harms caused by mining for battery minerals? And coal-fired power plants for the electricity to charge the cars? And battery waste? Is it really true that EVs are better?

The answer is yes. But Americans are growing less convinced.

The net benefits of EVs have been frequently fact-checked, including by NPR. "No technology is perfect, but the electric vehicles are going to offer a significant benefit as compared to the internal combustion engine vehicles," Jessika Trancik, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told NPR this spring.

It’s important to ask these questions about EVs’ hidden costs, Trancik says. But they have been answered “exhaustively” — her word — and a widerange of organizations have confirmed that EVs still beat gas.

  • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
    388·
    2 months ago

    can you really blame us?

    let me run through the last 8 years of American history with four words, “we were lied to”. doesn’t matter from whom, doesn’t matter what. we’re constantly being lied to. truth is, it’s been true for longer than 8 years, but the last 8 have been especially transparent.

    we’re learning that the upper echelon only trusts the American public to do three things; consume, produce, and die. if you can’t even do that for them, you’re removed as an undesirable.

    so yeah, trust in the system is broken. it’s going to take at least a generation or two just to repair it ** if they work on it**.

    I can’t fault anyone who’s untrusting of a system that continuously covers lie after lie with more lies.

    • JackFrostNCola@lemmy.worldEnglish
      163·
      2 months ago

      8 Years?

      How long did fossil fuel companies know about climate change?
      How long did the fuel industry know about the effects of leaded petrol?
      How long did cigarette companies know about links to cancer?
      How long did pharma companies know about opioid addiction risk?
      How long did social networking companies know about psychological manipulation?
      How long did the sugar lobby know about their links to diabetes and obesity?
      How long did the manufacturing companies know about PFAS and microplastics?

      I would say you have always been lied to.

    • atzanteolEnglish
      124·
      2 months ago

      I can’t fault anyone who’s untrusting of a system that continuously covers lie after lie with more lies

      I can and will. Learn some basic critical thinking skills and apply them. Throwing your hands up and ranting about how “the system is broken” is mopey teenager shit.

      Things are far more complicated than your whiny rant. They world is shades of gray rather than the simplistic “bad guy in black / good guy in white” situation that you characterize it as.