Dear Editor
With all of the talk about replacing vehicles that use fossil fuels with electric vehicles, there appears to be no real attempt to address where the additional electricity required to charge a greatly increased fleet of such vehicles will come from. Certainly not from renewable resources, as we don’t have enough to cover current usage, and have to use coal to cover the shortfall.
With even the small number of EVs currently in New Zealand, there need to be measures in place to mitigate the environmental problems that these vehicles cause. What measures are in place to ensure we are not importing vehicles with batteries that are manufactured from materials sourced using child labour and unsound mining practices in third world countries? What steps have been taken to ensure expended batteries from such vehicles are recycled in the most efficient manner possible and are prevented from entering landfill?
Regardless of a shift to EVs, oil is still needed to manufacture such vehicles, which are largely made from the same oil-derived plastics as vehicles with combustion engines. The majority of the fabric used for clothing these days is derived from oil. So what is the point of shutting down the search for oil resources which will obviously be needed by future generations?
There is no logic at all to what is currently being espoused as a response to climate change.
Signed
Rod
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