"I totally hate the electric car"--New Yorker article

The New Yorker article, "The Artificial Leaf", in the May 14, 2012 issue, is about Daniel Nocera and his promising, but undeveloped, technology to split water into hydrogen and oxygen mimicking photosynthesis.  This would be a very positive development so I was reading the article with enthusiasm.  I was bothered by a couple of gratuitous slaps at electric cars--one was a claim that Tesla batteries cost $40,000, which is straw man argument considering that the Nissan Leaf costs only $35,000 for the car plus batteries and the Volt is about $40,000 total.

A second dig, again at the Tesla with exaggerated prices and all electric cars by association, was the statement, "It's usually argued that complex technological gains trickle down to the poor--that the innovations required to reduce the sticker price of a Tesla Roadster from a hundred and ten thousand dollars to eighty thousand dollars will also eventually improve the lives of people at the bottom of the global income scale."  Now I agree that it is not possible for everyone in China to own cars the way we do in the U.S.  But I also believe that the U.S. urban patterns require cars for most people to get to work.  Using batteries charged by renewable energy is vastly superior to using fossil fuels.  And even those 10% or so of the people in China who have cars also need to get off fossil fuels if we are to stand a chance of stopping climate catastrophe.

But I went from being annoyed to shocked when Nocera was quoted as saying, "I totally hate the electric car."  The author, David Owen, explains that electric cars would increase fossil fuels for generating electricity since, "growth in renewable sources couldn't conceivably keep up."

Really?  Now that wind and solar are very close to the cost of fossil fuels, and are even lower if you count the actual health costs, especially of coal, Owen's argument is simply wrong.  This does not even count the cost of global warming.  (More on this in posts to come;  here's one good rebuttal: Bay Area Smart Energy 2020.)

I can forgive Daniel Nocera.  Like many advocates for a certain technology, it is understandable that he is overly enthusiastic for his own projects and critical of others.

However, the New Yorker should be ashamed to be putting out such blatant misinformation. 

I am sure that the authors of the full page Chevron ad on page 5 of the same issue (see below)--which states, "we'll still rely on traditional energy for decades to come"--are gleeful at the New Yorker's ill conceived attack on electric cars.  Instead of attacking electric cars the New Yorker needs to recognize that they are a necessary part of the solution.  And it's time that all oil company ads include a cautionary note--"WARNING--BURNING FOSSIL FUELS IS CAUSING CATASTROPHIC CLIMATE CHANGE."  That would mean oil companies are really getting real.