Ian Tarr of the Brown Spectator isn’t a big fan of electric cars and he may have a point.

Think Global, Act Local, and Achieve Nothing: Electric Vehicles Are A Dead End

Most students at Brown are no strangers to the environmentalist movement. An abundance of on-campus groups advocate for conservation, composting, alternative energy, and other environmentally friendly practices. These vocal organizations engage in everything from minor events in Morning Mail to big campaigns like Brown Divest Coal. At first glance, it might seem that such activism puts them at the forefront of cultivating eco-friendly habits.

However, one item at the top of environmentalist checklists — the use of hybrid and electric vehicles (EV) — deserves reconsideration. Though driving these vehicles appears to be a staple of moral environmentalism, hybrid and electric cars have critical flaws that have been pushed beneath the surface: Huge carbon costs of production, combined with the electrical grid’s reliance on coal power, give green vehicles a misleading name. Brown’s conscientious environmentalists need to take note, because though their hearts are in the right place, in promoting hybrid cars and EVs they are advocating for something that actually harms the environment. If nothing else, they can get a better deal for themselves.

In a dealership that sells EVs or hybrids, an eco-conscious consumer will notice two things: the vehicle’s sticker price and its “tailpipe emissions.” The latter is heavily advertised, since the low fossil fuel intake of hybrids and EVs is a main attraction for green shoppers. However, if the consumer takes these low emission numbers as a sign of the car’s greenness, he is being duped: “Tailpipe emissions” does not mean total emissions. This is no semantic distinction, for recent evidence indicates that the manufacturing process of EVs and, to a lesser extent, hybrids, incurs noteworthy levels of pollution. In 2012, the Journal of Industrial Ecology published one of the first comprehensive studies of the life cycle of battery-powered cars. It found that EVs require 30,000 pounds of carbon dioxide to produce, whereas conventional internal-combustion vehicles usually need less than half that amount.