The Bait & Switch Of Electric Cars.

Electricity, where art thou...?

Today all the fire departments across Austria will do a five minutes test of how to behave in a general blackout. A blackout which really means no electricity. Yes, electricity is becoming a rarity.

Bits and drabs have trickled through the various morning shows, news programs and newspapers about what we should do in the event of an electricity shortage. Plain and simple, they are expecting that the power supply doesn't cover the power demand, especially now that we are heading into the cold winter season.

Consider how much more electricity most of us are using in our daily lives which we didn't use a decade or two ago. We plug in our phones, computers and also pride ourselves in having the latest technological kitchen equipment. A fridge that talks to us, a blender which gives our biceps a chance to dwindle and a robot hoover in our house, a robot lawnmower outside all directed by  Alexa, Siri & co. To name but a few and is it any wonder that we all need so much more electricity? Never mind the resulting state of our collective waistlines, blood pressure and general malaise! 

Top it off with the latest trend of pseudo climate friendly electric cars, which everyone thinks are the panecea for us to patch up this climate destruction. Honestly, a clever conjuring trick if I ever saw one. 

With so many more electric cars being bought to console the old conscious, it isn't any wonder that power-cut-drills are being instigated across the world. What I would like to know is what will happen to all those ' old petrol or diesel engine ' cars that are perfectly fine to drive another decade were it not for the lack of a electrical docking station. Are they destined for the ever growing rubbish dumps of the world?

Electric cars or rather the engine themselves are laden with climate crimes. Where do people think the elements of a electrical battery strong enough to drive a car come from? And at what costs to the environment?

That's where the old bait & switch of the car industry has come in. Trying to make us buy new cars yet again despite us knowing that our old ones are still going great guns, all gift wrapped in the argument that it stops climate destruction.

What I want to know is why hardly anyone mentions the real issue at hand:

             We drive too much.

             We walk or cycle too little.

             We want too much.

             And we want it all now.

Time to recondition our collective expectations of life and coincidentally, also a chance to be more happy with our lives. Do less, have more.

Biggi