ICE ICE BABY

TAKE ONE VOLKSY FASTY AND ADD A SUBY FLAT FOUR ... SIMPLE

- Dave Morley

I know I've mentioned this before, but I keep seeing social media experts making all sorts of claims about renewable energy, climate change and electric vehicles. What puzzles me most is not that everybody has an opinion (I worked that out years ago) but those opinions are so absolute, set in concrete and non-negotiable. And one-sided. I think probably social media is partly to blame for enabling idiotic statements and vile insults without the fear of an accompanying smack in the nose, but why is there no grey area in this discussion?

Seems to me there's probably scope to tread a more moderate path with a more flexible opinion. I don't know why this hasn't occurred to more people, but a bit from Column A and a bit from Column B would appear to be a valid point of view. But it just doesn't seem to compute with the type of people who type in CAPITALS and refuse to see anything but their own side of an argument.

Which, when it comes to electric vehicles makes no sense at all. If you can convince me that a world with electric garbage trucks and warehouse workplaces with silent, zero emissions forklifts wouldn't be a better place to be, then I'll eat my hat. Same goes for somebody who lives in an inner-urban setting with plenty of solar panels on their roof and a short commute to work every day. Provided they never want to venture farther than the outer suburbs (and most of them never do) then an EV makes a fair bit of sense.

For me, an EV isn't going to work. I've tried to drive interstate in one and the charging delays and hassles were just over the top. But a plug-in hybrid? That might just do the trick. I mean, I still live on the edge of a big city and a lot of my driving is the short-commute stuff I was talking about. And when I need to go interstate, I could run my hybrid till the batteries are flat and then have the petrol engine cut in to keep me going for as long as there are service stations.