Ecoblogi – A Blog by Daniel Elkama

Did you know that in the Donald Duck cartoons, Grandma Duck drives a 1916 Detroit Electric, which is an all-electric car? So the electric car is not a new invention. The first electric car was actually built in Aberdeen, Scotland as early as 1832. The combustion engine was developed by the German Karl Benz in 1886. The electric car was more popular than the combustion engine car for a long time, until around 1920. An electric car was safer than a combustion engine car, the ride was smoother, and it didn’t have to be started with a crank. Electricity was more readily available than gasoline.

Why did the combustion engine car win the race and electric cars almost lost, until they again experienced a renaissance and the second coming in 2010 onwards? The reason is World War I and new oil deposits. When World War I broke out, oil was needed for a huge number of heavy military vehicles, airplanes and tanks running on internal combustion engines. After the war, large parts of the territories in the Middle East, including Syria and Iraq, which were part of the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) before the war was lost, were annexed to the British Empire and France. There was a huge amount of petroleum here. In the past, oil was mostly made from whale blubber, which was mainly used in oil lamps, but not in cars. This led to whales drifting to the brink of extinction.

Large oil reserves were also found in Venezuela and in Texas in the United States. Venezuela even became the world’s most prosperous country for a long time. Oil gradually became the most important raw material of the world economy, measured in barrels, and whose value was closely monitored. Wars were started over oil and it was a central part of colonialism. It still is. The conflicts and crises that happen especially in the Middle East are quickly and unpleasantly reflected in the world economy. Many countries in Africa and Asia depend solely on oil exports.

Fossil fuels were never intended by nature to be burned. They are actually not fuels, but fossil geological deposits. Fossil deposits are of biological origin, for example, most of the petroleum is black oil, which was born 70 million years ago from algae in the shallow sea area. In the end, the oil would turn into stone, for example in Estonia you can find this so-called ”burning stone”. Fossil deposits are carbon put out of circulation by nature, i.e. carbon storage. If the carbon stored in it were still in the atmosphere, the average temperature of the Earth would not be 15.5 degrees, but up to 30 degrees. This was the case during the dinosaurs’ time. Since then, the earth’s temperature has generally decreased, until man began to forcefully heat the climate by burning fossil fuels. Nature was not equipped for this, that someone would start pulling coal from the earth and burning it. There are about 4,000 Gt of fossil fuels, or 4,000,000,000,000 tons of coal. There is about 550 Gt of carbon in plant biomass, 2000 Gt in soil and about 950 Gt of carbon in the atmosphere. In 2000, the amount of carbon in the atmosphere was about 780 Gt. Humanity produces about 40 Gt of carbon emissions annually, a large part of which remains in the atmosphere each year. This tells how dramatically the carbon content of the atmosphere is increasing and the climate is warming. The carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere was still 200 ppm (parts per million) in pre-industrial times. Now it is already 420 ppm. So the amount of coal has more than doubled. Because of this, the average temperature of the Earth’s climate has warmed from 14 degrees to 15.5 degrees. It will rise to around 19-20 degrees.

The warming of the climate was first demonstrated by the Swedish physics Nobelist Svante Arrhenius as early as 1896. When we study the temperatures of the ice layers of glaciers with deep drilling and find out the gas composition of the air bubbles trapped in the ice layers, we find out ancient paleoecological and paleoclimatological conditions and we clearly see how the carbon content of the ancient atmosphere clearly correlates with ancient temperatures. That is, the temperature of the atmosphere is directly dependent and directly proportional to the carbon content of the atmosphere. The biggest problem with climate change is that as the earth’s thermostat has broken down, the weather has gone haywire: now there are many more serious and even deadly extreme weather events, such as storms, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, forest fires, heat waves, water shortages. This is due to the shift of the normal distribution of weather on the axis, which increases the probability of extreme weather. In recent years, e.g. very destructive forest fires in the Mediterranean, California and Australia, intensified hurricanes in the tropics, deadly droughts in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel, huge floods in Pakistan and Bangladesh, extensive drying up of major rivers in Europe…

Nature was also not prepared evolutionarily for humans to start burning fossils. Oil is toxic and when it burns, toxic gases and toxic particles are produced. Globally, up to 7 million people die from air pollution, mostly in cities, where the big cause of these deaths is pollution caused by traffic. There were cars in the beginning in the 19th century and first in the 20th century in the old years, so little that their emissions were not harmful at all. They became a problem when millions of cars were mass-produced, and cities and traffic volumes grew. Population growth and ever-increasing consumption increased the traffic volumes to exponentially huge levels. Urban greenery and trees, which reduce air pollution by ionizing it, decreased in cities and this worsened the problems. In London, the famous smogs in the 50s covered the entire city in black smog that killed thousands. Today, pollution problems are greatest in large megalopolises in Asia and America, such as Mexico City, Los Angeles, Dhaka and Delhi. The proliferation of combustion engine cars has increased deaths from air pollution by millions in some countries and cities, especially in the Global South. In other cities, especially in the Global North, the air quality is improving again. Functional electric public transport, cycling, walking and partly car-free city centers are already common in many big cities, for example Helsinki, Stockholm and Copenhagen.

Oil drilling itself also poisons the environment of nearby areas. Oil ends up in groundwater and people’s drinking water, and low-quality oil and gas are burned during oil drilling (flaring) and this pollutes the air. In Nigeria, for example, Shell has ruined the breathing air of millions of people with oil drilling and flaring. In the 90s, Shell was involved in the violent silencing of protests in Nigeria, and the company is even linked to the death of several activists. This case is known as the Ogoni Nine. Oil companies are the richest companies in the world and very greedy. The storage and storage of oil also pollute groundwater. For example, in France, due to the large oil port of Dunkirk, cancer has clearly become more common in the city. According to the law of thermodynamics, there is no such thing as a closed system, but tanks, pipes and facilities always leak into the environment at least to some extent. This helps a lot to understand the causes and nature of environmental problems.

Biofuels cannot replace petroleum and gasoline. First of all, we would otherwise run out of forests and food. Biofuels can be made from, for example, wood and plants and straw from fields. It’s absurd to grow biofuels instead of food in a starving world, and you wouldn’t even get enough fuel that way. The production of biofuels causes great loss of nature. Carbon emissions are almost the same for biofuels as for gasoline, some toxic air pollutants are less. The production of palm oil biodiesel by Neste Oil and other companies is highly unethical. The companies’ palm oil production is currently rapidly destroying the Indonesian rainforests in Borneo and Sumatra. For example, the orangutan and the Sumatran rhinoceros are in danger of becoming extinct because of this. Some of the companies’ subcontractors have even recruited criminal gangs to burn down rainforests in the way of oil palm plantations.

All of this (climate change, oil toxicity and air pollution) indicates that the burning of fossil fuels must absolutely be stopped completely and in a very short time frame. The era of combustion engine cars will soon be over. For example, in the EU it has been decided to ban the sale of traditional combustion engine cars by 2035. This is only 11 years away. In some countries, such as Norway, almost only electric cars are sold. Norway’s best-selling car brand of all car manufacturers (including internal combustion engine car manufacturers) has been Tesla in recent years, and practically all new cars sold in Norway are electric cars. In 2022, there were already 26 million electric cars in the world, and the number has grown significantly since then. The world’s largest electric car manufacturer is either Tesla or the Chinese BYD, which are almost equal. BYD is likely to blow past Tesla in the coming years. Technology production is increasingly concentrated in China, and Chinese technology giants are strengthening their positions. In the West, Tesla will of course remain the most significant. In the West, even traditional car manufacturers, such as Volkswagen, have invested enormously in the production of electric cars. Electric cars are a profitable business, 425 billion euros were spent on them last year, which is more than, for example, Apple’s annual turnover was in 2022. The estimate is that in 2025 there would already be 77 million electric cars. The number is growing exponentially. There are about 1.47 billion cars in the world, so it will take approximately 20 years to replace the entire car stock, taking into account that first electric cars will become more common exponentially and then the spread will slow down due to procrastinators and the fact that the total number of cars will increase as humanity becomes more prosperous.

There are several negative myths associated with electric cars that are not true. One of the most common misconceptions is that you can’t drive them far. Today, electric cars can drive up to more than 650 km on a single charge (Tesla, Polestar). It is also often thought that charging an electric car is slow. It’s true that charging is a bit slower than refueling gasoline.

However, with fast charging, which is becoming more common all the time, it takes about 10-15 minutes to fully charge the car’s battery. An electric car will also be really cheap in that at the moment electricity for that month with normal use (about 1200 km/month) costs about €30 in Finland, while gasoline for an internal combustion engine car costs more than €150 for the same use. Acquiring an electric car is therefore a very good choice also from an economic point of view.

In terms of the ecology of an electric car, what is important is which electricity the car is charged with. If it is charged with electricity produced by coal power, natural gas or nuclear power, the car cannot be considered ecological in any way. Admittedly, the city’s local air pollution is also reduced, but the harm goes somewhere else. If it is charged with clean, renewable energy, wind and solar power, etc., the electric car is very ecological. Some people think that electric cars would often be charged with fossil energy. This is not true. Most electric car owners charge their cars with clean energy, and charging stations almost always sell renewable energy. It is also a common myth that the battery of an electric car cannot last in freezing temperatures. This is also nonsense: electric cars are commonly used, for example, in the very northern parts of Norway on the shores of the Arctic Ocean. Electrifying the entire fleet of cars in Finland would only increase our country’s electricity consumption by 20%, because the efficiency of the electric motor is so much better than that of the internal combustion engine.

Some try to justify the unecological nature of electric cars because of their large batteries and the minerals they need. Electric cars mostly use lithium-ion batteries. It is true that the lithium batteries in some cars contain cobalt, which is unethically mined in Africa. However, batteries are usually cobalt-free. It is possible to establish sustainable mines in the Global North. In this way, we do not promote colonialism and external environmental problems to developing countries. The batteries of an electric car are a little heavier and they use a little more metal than a car with a combustion engine. However, oil production, drilling and oil burning cause many times more harm than the battery mining industry. Oil drilling alone is already worse than the mining industry in its effects, and huge amounts of oil are constantly being consumed, which requires a huge amount of oil drilling. Besides, battery materials are usually recycled, and new mines are not necessarily needed when a circular economy is achieved. In addition, the galvanic cell required by the battery can be achieved with two different salts instead of two metals (cathode and anode). Thanks to this, ecological salt batteries will probably replace metal batteries. The development of technology often solves environmental problems. For example, sulfur emissions were controlled in Western countries with a catalyst. This greatly reduced acid rain in Europe and North America.

There are often two schools of thought regarding the environment. The other calls for simply reducing consumption and fears that new technology will bring problems. The other believes more scientifically and optimistically that new technology will solve problems. When we look at history, we see that the school that believes in technology is right. For example, information technology, digitization, LED lights, and wind and solar power are examples of how new technology has been absolutely important in solving and alleviating environmental problems. It is absolutely good if consumption can be reduced, but the fact is that this is often not possible, the economy grows, the global population grows and people’s consumption habits and level of demands do not decrease. At the moment, the economy of the Global South is growing enormously, and people’s consumption is growing with it. Consumption will not decrease globally as long as the economy grows. We live in a time of great overconsumption, and overconsumption is the biggest cause of environmental destruction. However, reducing consumption is often very difficult. Therefore, it makes the most sense to make the environmental harm of consumption as minimal as possible. For example, LED lights reduced lighting energy consumption to 5% of the previous level. The fact is that people don’t easily transition to a car-free lifestyle, so it’s better to make cars that are as environmentally friendly as possible. If we think that reducing consumption alone is the solution and we are afraid of new technology, we will screw things up badly. Consumption will probably not decrease, at least not enough, and thus the vital investments in new clean technology will be wasted. One example of folly is that it was once imagined that the use of natural gas was the right solution to climate change to prevent it. Using natural gas, the earth burns only slightly more slowly than using oil and coal. It is not a solution, but renewable clean energy, such as wind power and solar power. It would be foolish to suggest that the number of batteries should only be reduced, but nothing else, instead of finding ways to recycle all batteries.

The solution to climate change and other environmental problems requires new innovations, new clean technology and investments in them. The solution is not to continue the current trend just a little bit slower. We absolutely need electric cars and fully electric transport. Electric cars enable a living planet. Another option is to try to reduce the number of combustion engine cars, which, however, will not succeed, especially as the economy and population grow. This would lead to the fact that combustion engine cars would gradually continue to become more common, climate change would worsen and millions of people would continue to die from air pollution. You have to trust science and the solutions and possibilities it offers. The direction of humanity is forward, not backward, and not continuing with the same lifestyle. We need very radical changes and technological revolutions. The development of nature is dictated by evolution, which enables species to adapt to their environment. If the species were to fall off the bandwagon of evolution and development, its entire existence would be in danger. The same is true of humans if our technological evolution were to stop. The development of technology is necessary until we reach a state of equilibrium, where we live in a full circular economy and have unlimited amounts of renewable energy based on recurring natural phenomena at our disposal.

Daniel Elkama