Conservation Comment: Climate emergency and the power of electric vehicles

Mercury Energy CEO Fraser Whineray at the wheel of Mercury's 1957 Ford Fairlane, Evie, who, despite its looks, is an electric vehicle.

Comment

On Tuesday, February 11, 2020, our council voted 10 to 3 for declaring a climate emergency.

To some it was seen as scaremongering, to others a call to arms. For me, it is the latter and it should encourage all of us to support the council to take whatever steps necessary to reduce Whanganui's carbon footprint.

If it costs us more in the medium term, that is better than the greater costs of the long term.

Cr Vinsen reckons it's not up to the council to save the world. He's right, but not how he sees it. It is up to all of us - governments, councils and citizens - to change our actions to reduce our carbon footprint.

As for the dinosaurs who can't see the meteor, prepare to explain it to your grandkids.

Although our society has encouraged cars, building spreading suburbs far from everything, we should at least reduce cars' impact as they are a major part of transport's 18 per cent contribution to CO2.

Converting as much of our vehicle fleet to electric vehicles (EVs) will make a big difference.

Around the middle of last year, the Government proposed a "feebate" scheme to encourage the uptake of electric cars in particular.

The idea is, if you buy a new or used EV you could get up to $8000 off its price but if you choose a top-of-the-range gas guzzler you will pay close to $3000 extra.

That would be about 4 per cent extra on a Ford Ranger, currently about $41,000.

Simon Bridges said when this was first announced it was "bad policy", but he certainly didn't offer any alternative to reduce our obsession with big, new, gas guzzlers - except to build more roads.

One can only assume he must be determined to encourage Kiwis to carry on driving towards the climate change cliff, and if people want to do it in a Ford Ranger – yee haa!

A forgotten saving feature of EVs is maintenance.

Your average car has 2000 moving parts, pistons, crankshaft, carburettor, valves, gears, transmission, clutch, driveshaft and differential all prone to wear, and either replacement - or the end for the whole vehicle.

An electric vehicle roadshow in Whanganui last November. Photo / File

The EV has 18 moving parts, less than 1 per cent of a fossil fuelled car, and these are mostly motors and suspension.

These are so reliable, Tesla guarantees them for infinite kilometres.

The major maintenance for an EV is tyres. Brakes are almost redundant as most braking recharges the battery.

The price of EVs has dropped 13 per cent from 2018 to 2019, and, like your flat screen TV, has much further to go before it plateaus.

But certainly the biggest saving is in running costs. EECA has the figure for equivalent-sized cars and the electricity cost for EVs is 15 per cent of petrol.

If you were running at about 1000km a month you'd be saving $2000 a year.

I am quite sure the movement towards EVs is inevitable for the practical reasons above, but, as our road transport is responsible for 18 per cent of our CO2 emissions, this is one area we can rapidly improve on and, at the same time, improve the quality of our air.

It defies logic that the oil companies should keep exploring for oil.

Chasing something that is one of the prime causes of climate change certainly won't fix it.

Even investment is rapidly moving away from oil. But just because oil has been so important for us doesn't mean we can't change.

The climate is, and so must we, on many levels.

• John Milnes is a Green Party candidate for three elections, founder member of Sustainable Whanganui, parent and grandparent.