Should people switch to electric cars for the environment?

There are better forms of transport that don’t use power

Question: Should people switch to electric cars for the environment?
Position‹2 of 2: No, people should not switch to electric cars
Argument‹2 of 2: There are better forms of transport that don’t use power

When people think of transportation, they automatically think of a car. But a car isn’t the only way to get around.

The argument

The argument accepts the premise that petrol cars are environmentally damaging and rejects the conclusion that electric cars are therefore the answer. The comparison being made is the wrong one: the alternative to a petrol car is not only an electric car, and among the available options the car is not the best. Bicycles and walking are the options this argument points to, and their advantage is structural rather than marginal. They produce no harmful fumes at all — not fewer emissions than combustion, but none, and with no upstream generation required to move them. An electric car reduces tailpipe emissions while remaining a heavy powered vehicle that has to be manufactured and charged; cycling and walking remove the vehicle from the equation entirely, which is a difference in kind rather than in degree. They also deliver a benefit no car of any description does: they are good exercise. The same trip that would otherwise be a passive transfer becomes physical activity, so the health of the person travelling improves alongside the environment they travel through. Cars treat that activity as a cost to be minimised rather than a benefit to be captured. The conclusion drawn is about where money and encouragement should go. Investment is finite, and directing it into electric cars locks in the assumption that people will continue making the same journeys the same way, in individually owned powered vehicles, with the environmental problem addressed only at the point of propulsion. Encouraging other modes instead would be better for human and environmental health together. So the case against switching to electric cars is not that they are worse than petrol cars. It is that treating them as the solution forecloses the better options — and a policy subsidising a less damaging car crowds out one that would have replaced the car.

Premises

[P1]Bicycles and walking produce no harmful emissions and provide health benefits through exercise. [P2] Resources spent promoting electric cars could instead be directed toward these healthier, cleaner alternatives. [C] Therefore, people should not switch to electric cars but should adopt better non-powered modes of transport instead.

Counter-arguments

It would be ignorant to believe everyone could afford to not use a car in their daily life. Cars are used to make traveling long distances easier, like getting to work or school. If someone needed to go to the hospital, they would not benefit from riding a bike or walking.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P3] Some people need cars to travel long distances as well as get to the hospital. Not having cars would make people’s lives harder.