EV & Poverty? Blog Action Day Connect the Dots

October 14, 2008 by Rob.

It’s time for another Blog Action Day post.  This year’s topic is poverty and I wanted to skip the obvious petroleum-poverty arguments and find another link between electric vehicles and poverty.

As an idealist, I’m taking the high ground that people would life themselves out of poverty if they could work.  And they would work if they could get to work.  I believe that lack of transportation or highly inconvenient transportation is a major contributor to global poverty.

If EVs dominated the world then:

• we’d have effective wide area public transportation because EV range limitations require infrastructure for long trips.
• there would be less suburban sprawl so housing would be convenient, affordable, and dense.
• our air would be cleaner and poor people would have healthier air to breathe
• cities would be quieter
• poor people could buy fuel based on time of use and trade convenience for savings
• cars would be more reliable and easier to maintain

Carbon powered transportation increases poverty because our societies consistently make “cheap & easy” choices that stack the deck against the poor.

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