Should people switch to electric cars for the environment?

Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: Should people switch to electric cars for the environment?
Position1 of 2›: Yes, people should switch to electric cars
Argument‹2 of 3›: Electric cars reduce noise pollution

Noise pollution is a problem. Noise pollution disrupts restful sleep, causing stress and fatigue. But it also can affect the environment.

The argument

The argument concerns a form of pollution that is easy to overlook because it leaves no residue. Electric cars are considerably quieter than conventional ones, and the reason is mechanical: having no internal combustion engine, they generate none of the noise that combustion, exhaust and gearchanges produce. What remains is tyre and wind noise, which at ordinary speeds is far less than an engine contributes. Noise pollution is disruptive noise that negatively affects the lives and health of the organisms exposed to it, and the argument's point is that this is a real harm rather than an aesthetic complaint. It operates on several kinds of living thing at once. Animals rely on sound to communicate, and persistent background noise can prevent them from hearing one another — interfering with mating, with warning, and with the coordination of groups. Plant growth can be adversely affected. And for people, noise prevents restful sleep, which is itself a route to a range of further health effects. Road traffic is among the largest and most widely distributed sources of that noise, because it runs continuously, at all hours, through the places where people and animals actually live. That distribution is what makes the vehicle fleet the effective lever: reducing the noise each vehicle makes reduces exposure everywhere the vehicles go, without anyone having to change where they live or how they travel. This is why the case for electric cars is not exhausted by emissions. Considered only as machines that make less noise, they would still deliver a measurable environmental and health benefit across cities, roadsides and the habitats adjoining them. A quieter environment is better for the people trying to sleep in it and for the organisms trying to live in it — so the switch is worth making on this ground alone, alongside the others.

Premises

[P1]Electric cars lack combustion engines and therefore operate much more quietly than conventional cars. [P2] Noise pollution harms human health, animal communication, and plant growth. [P3] Switching to electric cars would substantially reduce noise pollution and its harms. [C] Therefore, people should switch to electric cars to create a quieter, healthier environment.

Counter-arguments

It’s dangerous if people can’t hear an electric car. If no one can hear an electric car coming, they can be easily run over.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P4] Although the reduction of noise pollution will make the environment healthier, electric cars pose a risk if they can’t be heard.