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**JULY 17, 2023**
Kuttner on TAP
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**** Electric Vehicles vs. Hybrids
A reader's guide to a fake climate debate
The other day, Peter Coy, a writer whom I usually admire, had a column
in The New York Times
<[link removed]>
that seemed peculiar. His story, titled "A Climate Hawk's Issues With
Electric Vehicles," was counterintuitive: Electric vehicles are actually
more harmful to the environment than hybrid cars.
So I read the column again, and did a little digging. I think Coy got
the story wrong; and worse, was taken in by a storyline that is part of
a well-organized campaign by carmakers, oil companies, climate deniers,
and right-wing Republicans looking to block the Biden administration's
agenda of accelerating the shift away from fossil fuels.
Here's the supposed story. Coy begins, "[T]here's a good argument to
be made that the government, and automakers, are leaning too hard into
all-electric and neglecting the virtues of hybrid technology." But if
you drill down and look harder, there really is no such valid argument.
According to the story, if you count the environmental cost of
batteries, and compare how people actually drive hybrids versus EVs,
hybrids win. Coy relies extensively on analysis and data provided by
Toyota, adding the disclaimer that Toyota, which has invested heavily in
hybrids, is far from disinterested.
Coy quotes Toyota, "The overall carbon reduction of ... 90 hybrids over
their lifetimes is 37 times as much as a single battery electric
vehicle," and adds, "That's a stunning statistic if true."
But is it? As evidence that the statistic is valid, Coy quotes Ashley
Nunes, a senior staffer of the Breakthrough Institute: "Toyota's claim
is accurate. We've crunched the numbers on this," says Nunes.
That should raise some suspicion. The Breakthrough Institute is
identified only as "a think tank." But as most people who follow climate
issues know, Breakthrough was co-founded by Michael Shellenberger, an
abrasive contrarian who has long downplayed the worst scenarios for
climate change, manipulated data, and attacked mainstream environmental
groups as being responsible for lack of progress on the problem.
One of his essays with the other Breakthrough co-founder Ted Nordhaus,
later expanded into a book, was titled "The Death of Environmentalism
<[link removed]>." Since leaving the think tank
in 2015, Shellenberger has become a right-wing talking head. His latest
book, using data acrobatics to blame homelessness on liberals, titled
**San Fransicko**, was skewered in these pages by Peter Dreier
<[link removed]>.
But lest this seem guilt by association, let's take a deeper look at
the real story. The argument is that since electric vehicles use
dramatically more key minerals like lithium in their production, thanks
to their bigger batteries and heavier weight, if we instead distribute
those minerals around to hybrid cars, and assume that every one of them
will replace a traditional gas car, emissions will be reduced on net.
Given the assumptions, that is a plausible claim. But what it does not
tell us is whether an
**individual** hybrid car creates more greenhouse gas emissions than an
individual EV. The answer is yes
<[link removed]>, by quite a lot
(aside from a handful of regions with mostly coal-powered electricity).
This is no surprise given that hybrids can get as little as 15 miles per
gallon <[link removed]>.
It's true that behemoth American EVs tend to consume a lot of
resources. But one could equally well turn that fact around and argue
for regulations on vehicle size and weight, so drivers are pushed to
buy, say, a Chevy Bolt rather than a 9,000-pound
<[link removed]> Hummer EV.
If you want to research this for yourself, have a look at the EPA's
excellent, thoroughly documented and regularly updated page "Electric
Vehicle Myths
<[link removed]>." There
is a whole section devoted to refuting the contention that EVs are worse
for the climate because of the costs and environmental toll of battery
manufacturing.
Toyota made a big bet about a decade ago that EVs would be some decades
off and they could get a lot more profit out of their existing
factories. This turned out to be a major mistake, as first Tesla and now
Kia, Hyundai, and BYD have gotten a head start on what will clearly be
the car industry of the future. Now, the company is reduced to slippery
data tricks to try to convince people to buy their Priuses. It is
disappointing to see a journalist as good as Coy unintentionally doing
their bidding.
~ ROBERT KUTTNER
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The Actors Walk
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The strike of SAG-AFTRA highlights a summer of workers' pushback
against a finance-driven economy. BY HAROLD MEYERSON
President Biden's Most Powerful Student Loan Tool
<[link removed]>
Income-driven repayment can be used to forgive as much student debt as
he wants. BY RYAN COOPER
The Climate Denialist Think Tank That Might Produce the Next FTC
Commissioner
<[link removed]>
It turns out that radical ideology IS allowed at the FTC. BY JULIAN
SCOFFIELD
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