Earlier this month, in their seven-hour climate town hall, CNN had its anchors put the same incredulous question to the 2020 일산포장이사 Democratic presidential candidates: Are we all going to have to drive electric cars now?

안양용달이사 The short answer was: Yes, indeed, and quickly. “We have to take combustion engines vehicles off the road as rapidly as we can,” Vice President Joe Biden said. Senator Bernie Sanders called for “heavily subsidizing the [electric vehicle] industry.” Senator Elizabeth Warren expressed her goal to switch all light-duty cars 수원용달이사 and trucks to electric power by 2030, following the blueprint laid out by erstwhile climate candidate Governor Jay Inslee. (Senator Kamala Harris sets her EV objective to 2045.) And entrepreneur Andrew Yang responded to Wolf Blitzer’s question with his typical techno-optimism. “Electric cars, it’s not something you have to do. It’s awesome,” Yang said. “You feel like you’re driving the future. And I did not just say that because Elon Musk endorsed me just the other week.”

인천용달이사 There’s a problem with that rosy response: If Americans drive their electric cars anywhere near as much as they do with their current gas-guzzlers, it would cancel out the carbon reduction brought on by electrification.

The lines drawn for climate activists have become much sharper on reducing emissions. With the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) giving the world about a decade to switch over to an emission-free future, de-carbonizing transportation now has a CNN-countdown-clock-level urgency. Still, the Democratic candidates remain vague on how to they will fund or build a carbon-free transportation network.

It’s a common 서울용달이사 refrain that the transportation sector is now the greatest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, making up 29 percent of the U.S. in 2017. Of the 1.8 billion tons of greenhouse gases produced by transportation in the United States in 2017, 59 percent of it came from passenger cars and light-duty trucks. Add heavy-duty trucks (23 percent) and that number goes up to about 82 percent of transportation emissions.

Part of that story is actually a success: Electricity generation used to hold the dubious honor of being the biggest contributor to climate change, until the combination of advancements in wind and solar and cheaper natural gas gave cleaner alternatives to coal power. Indeed, carbon-free transportation will eventually require a carbon-free grid, with that latter goal set by 2045 or 2050.

With 75 percent of Americans still driving to 강남용달이사 work by themselves, changing over to electric cars looks like a promising step for reducing emissions. But a host of timing and technical challenges stand in the way. Electric vehicles accounted for just two percent of the 5.3 million cars sold last year, and Americans are holding on to their cars longer than ever; at current rates, it would take about 15 years for the current 263 million vehicle fleet to turn over. Ramping up EV sales would require radically ambitious incentives. Many EV skeptics note that the vehicles themselves are resource-intensive to manufacture, and electric cars take about twice as 강북용달이사 much energy to build than a traditional internal combustion car. And before mass electrification of cars and decarbonizing the grid, Americans will need to reckon with two big facts: The population is growing and people are driving more.