How clean are electric vehicles?

There have been a couple of interesting articles recently about the greenhouse gas impact of all-electric vehicles -- one in Scientific American (subscription required) and another in EnergyDSM, a web site devoted to demand-side energy efficiency. Such vehicles aren't really zero-emission, of course: they just emit from the local power plant while they charge instead of emitting from their own tail pipes while they run. So where does the balance come to rest? Here's the short version:

According to a 2008 report referenced by EnergyDSM, in an area with an average mix of power from coal, natural gas, and renewables for this country, plug-in vehicles produce 40% less greenhouse gas emissions than conventional internal combustion engine vehicles. Go Volt! However, here's the rub: in an area mostly dependent on coal (such as West Virginia), plug-in vehicles actually result in more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional hybrids. Go Prius!

(Beyond the issue of energy efficiency for its own sake, there are other reasons to favor electric-power-train vehicles. See my earlier post on the subject.)

Life Lessons

We find ourselves now in the rebellious adolescence of our species, in which we question which of those shalts and shalt-nots that have been passed down to us by our fathers and mothers are Good for Us and which of them merely were good for us when we were children, and reasoned as children. Like all adolescents, we go often astray and can hope only that we survive these trying times with some measure of health and dignity remaining to us.

It is in this hope that I write to you today. Setting aside rape, genocide, and the loss of continence that comes with age, there can be no greater trial of the human spirit than air travel. As one who has recently come through this experience, I have learned lessons great and small that I pray will grant a benefit to those who come after me.

Part 1. While I was in a shuttle on the way to the airport, the driver played cool jazz renditions of favorites like "Girl from Ipanema" and "Summertime." I see you fidgeting in your seat. You start to raise your hand querulously; you have a question to ask. That question is: Aren't those songs already cool jazz? Yes. My friends, they are -- but not cool enough. The driver turned up the volume, nodding his had abstractly in the absence of a beat.

This brings me to the first of today's lessons: Nothing good can come of cool jazz, leastways of cooler, jazzier derivatives of already cool, jazzy songs. This kind of sad pap desecrates and insults perfectly good music and dulls the senses and wits of those who listen to it -- even of those whose senses and wits come pre-dulled by the experience of being awoken before dawn by the prospect of riding in a flying cattle car.

Part 2. Upon arriving at the airport, I went immediately in search of breakfast. I found something resembling it, poorly, in an egg and sausage bagel. This brings me to my second lesson. If you have ordered a meal with a protein component and find that 3.5 minutes later it has already been delivered to you, hot and in a wrapper, one of two things is true. One, you are about to feast on some cheap-but-delicious smoked something that requires no real preparation in between ordering and eating, on account of its having been slow cooking for hours in a way that nature may not have intended but can certainly appreciate. Or two, you are about to endure a tragic uncanny-valley food experience with something that may or may not have been cooking for hours but in any case has not been improved by it. If your meal includes eggs, it is in the latter category. Fast-food breakfasts are all about carbs. If you can't find an all-carb option, starve.

Part 3. My third and final lesson: When that plane takes off, and you've passed through the stages of grief into Acceptance that Yes, you will be trapped where you are for a certain amount of time, you may become aware that you're tired. You're sore. You're in fact very uncomfortable in your seat. You may think to yourself, Maybe I would feel better if I put my seat back a bit. Children, never forget that God sees you, and that He is judging you.

Now, if it is between the hours of 9:00 pm and 6:30 am, and there is an ocean far below you, then you put that seat back. Put it all the way back! You and your fellow hand-basket travelers deserve a rest. But if not, consider that you are being Tried; do not be found wanting. Keep that seat in its full upright position, or you will surely hear the cracking of the knees of the poor soul behind you, and you will surely be judged harshly.

We are now at the end of what I have to teach to you today, Theophilus. Think carefully upon what you have learned, and go forth now into the world a wiser, gentler, better human being than you were.