Driving rings around the climate crisis in the circular economy
In 2016 the Current Consort and I bought a two-year-old electric car that had 25,000km on the clock. It cost us €16,000 after trading in a worthless diesel jalopy. It is now 10 years old with 250,000km under its belt, and although the battery has lost a few cells and the range is down to about 120km, it has enough to get us to and from Limerick, Nenagh or Ennis.
However, we are about to give our beloved Nissan Leaf a heart transplant. Through a company in Kildare called ‘Range Therapy’ we have bought a replacement battery for €8,000. That will increase our range to 220km, which will get us comfortably wherever we want to go.
Even sweeter still, we are keeping the old battery and using it to provide all the electricity needs in our home. We can plug it in a few nights a week on night-rate electricity and what it stores will power the house all day, every day. That’s the circular economy at work.
I hope this allays some of the fears and debunks some of the fake news being peddled as fact about electric cars. There is great value in second-hand electric cars, the battery doesn’t collapse after five years and, far from being a disposal problem, the old battery is a gift that will keep on giving.
Myths about electric cars are part of a concerted pushback across all sectors in the face of the ever-worsening climate crisis.
The environmental agenda is under sustained attack thanks to a massive sense of entitlement on the part of this era of human beings.
We feel entitled to do whatever we like with the Earth and its resources, no matter what impact our actions will have on us and all the other forms of life with whom we share the planet.
Definition of sin
I single out this era because we know the damage we are doing and we know the consequences. To paraphrase the old catechism definition of sin, we have full knowledge and we’re giving full consent.
The longer we go on doing what we are doing, the fewer forms of life will be left to share this delicate ecosystem with us — that is until we too disappear, choked by the poison of our own entitlement.
We have even stopped calling ourselves human beings and sheepishly allow ourselves to be referred to as consumers. We will die of consumption.
This sense of entitlement, summed up in the question ‘why should we be the ones to change?’, extends from celebrities who summon their private jets to go and grab a burger, to the person who will only get an electric car if it can take him from Cork to Dublin and back without stopping. All he is being asked to do is sit on his backside and have a cup of coffee for 20 to 30 minutes while the machine charges.
The latest excuse for not buying electric is depreciation. Depreciation is a nut-case concept when it comes to electric cars. There are far fewer moving parts compared to a petrol or diesel cars, therefore there are far fewer bits to suffer wear and tear.
The car’s capacity to do what you bought it for — to get you from A to B safely, efficiently and with a modicum of comfort — degrades very little over time. There is absolutely no need get a new electric vehicle every few years, unless of course you feel entitled to the smell of a new car at regular intervals.
Cars are not an asset, they are not an investment product, they’re transport machines. If you want to invest in something that holds its value, then buy gold or buy land, but don’t buy a car.
If you buy an electric car it may depreciate in monetary value, but its essential value — its capacity to do what it was bought for — will hold and it will continue to do its job far more cheaply, far more sustainably and for far longer than a petrol or a diesel car.
What’s more, the electric car can have two or three lives. It’s the circular economy in action, money saved, energy saved and less poison pumped into the atmosphere.
It’s time to give the planet a break — it’s entitled to it.
‘We have stopped calling ourselves human beings and allow ourselves to be called consumers. We will die of consumption’