That she pushes hydrogen so much is disturbing to me. The source we need will either be water or polluting processes. Water is something we should be protecting and conserving with battles going on for it all over. Definitely don't need to be putting Niagara Falls worth of it into cars. The alternative is commercial production which is anything but ecofriendly. That it contains less energy than gasoline for same volume will impact efficiency, logistics, and safety in some setups. Overall, hydrogen fuel is a very bad idea. That she pushes that undermines her credibility to me.
The reason I like electric, on other hand, is that makes the power-source neutral and could spur investment into our strained grid + battery tech. Yet, it has its own environmental consequences that should be carefully considered by anyone claiming the moral high ground. The environmental impact of manufacturing has a nice summary:
I'm baffled by your inclusion of a link to a four year old anti-wind turbine rant in the Daily Mail at the end of an otherwise sane and sensible comment.
I glanced at the photo in search results before heading to work thinking it was the right article. It wasn't. Good catch. Here's the intended article that covers the damage of rare-earth mining and why most countries don't do it:
The point of including the topic was that these people talk all kinds of green while doing it using stuff made in most eco-damaging and unhealthy way. A little hypocritical. Further, they should bring up the reality of expanded mining of rare earth elements in these discussions [among other issues] and attempt to make a cost-benefit analysis of various approaches. Current approach is to pretend it doesn't exist or sweep it under the rug.
There's still the issue of using our most precious resource up the way we do everything else. It could be done with desalination plants like they already use in California. There's also research into doing it more efficiently:
So, dealing with the fuel source using ocean is a possibility. (light bulb) Might even be a solution to rising oceans as arctic caps melt. Now there's some original thinking on the topic haha. Probably wouldn't work in reality but might make a good movie scenario.
The reason I like electric, on other hand, is that makes the power-source neutral and could spur investment into our strained grid + battery tech. Yet, it has its own environmental consequences that should be carefully considered by anyone claiming the moral high ground. The environmental impact of manufacturing has a nice summary:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car#Environmental_asp...
Or, we can just look at a picture of Nichols' "green" and "clean" vision...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-C...
...then guess what a 2000+% increase of that would entail.