Drive an Electric Car

If you can’t rely on public transportation, walking, or biking and must have a car, then get an electric car. If you own a home, you can get a charging station setup at your home. If you have solar panels, you can charge it from that or opt in for clean energy from your utility provider for 100% renewable energy. If you don’t have your electricity coming from clean renewable sources, then buying an electric car doesn’t help much except to prepare you for having renewable energy in the near future, which can still help with the transition. If you rent, talk to your landlord about getting charging stations. There are some programs to set this up, and it should not cost landlords much, if at all. Or, offer to help cover the costs if that’s a major issue.

Using an electric car allows you to drive without emitting CO2 into the atmosphere, not only causing global warming but also pollution and VOCs in your region. Gas cars are the number-one air polluter in residential areas.

Most full electric cars have a 200-400-mile range. If you need more than that, then you can plan your trip around charging stations. If you think that is too inconvenient, you can buy a “plug-in hybrid” car that has a short all-electric range, roughly 30 miles, and uses gas for longer trips. This allows you to use mostly all electric for day-to-day trips, and when you drive on longer trips, you still have the convenience of gas.

If you can’t get an electric car charger at your house for some reason, then at least get a hybrid car or any gas car with high miles per gallon. The less gas you use, the better. Also, buy a used car in this case. We can’t be producing more all-gas cars and supporting that by buying new ones.

Note that replacing your gas car for an electric car doesn’t mean that your gas car should be thrown away. Unfortunately, there is already “embodied carbon” in your car, which means energy and CO2 emissions have been used to make that car. So, it does not make sense to just throw it away and replace it with a new car, since that will actually cause more impact on the planet. However, if you sell your car used to someone else, then that someone will use it until it reaches the end of its lifecycle. Still, buying a new or used electric car will make the demand for electric cars go up and help us achieve better infrastructure overall.