Should the United States promote electric vehicles

Thanks flamebreath. ==Rebuttal to Round 2== C1: The Environment Response to global warming: Massive subsidies to prevent global warming are not cost effective. According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Kyoto Protocol cost member countries $220 billion, while averting only $95 billion worth of projected global warming harm. [1] These cost figures led the UN International Panel on Climate Change to recommend geo-engineering solutions to cool the globe (by blocking sunlight, for instance) rather than emissions reduction strategies (like subsidizing alternative energy) because the former is vastly more cost effective. And to play devil’s advocate: human-made global warming is far from proven. Looking at millions of years of CO2 levels, the data clearly shows that increases in CO2 lag behind increases in temperature by approximately 1000 years. [2] Physicist Richard Muller explains that as temperature levels increase, the ocean cannot hold as much dissolved CO2 and releases it into the atmosphere (just as warm soda cannot hold as much dissolved CO2). Thus, high temperatures cause increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations, not the other way around. In addition, the current atmospheric concentration of CO2 is 380 parts per million (ppm). In the Ordovician period of the Prolezoic era, Earth had atmospheric CO2 concentrations of 4400 ppm but average temperature levels were far lower than they are today. [3] That’s more than 10 times the current concentration of CO2, but with lower temperatures – the correlation is far from clear. Response to Pollution: Coal power plants – which comprise 65% of US power production - produce more air pollution than gasoline, considering that they spew particulates into the air called black carbon. In fact, black carbon has a far larger (potential) contribution to global warming than CO2. According to V. Ramanathan of UC San Diego, “a mere 10% reduction in black carbon would be equivalent to eliminating 25 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions.” [4] Black carbon is also devastating to human health, causing respiratory problems and killing thousands of people in the U.S. each year, according to an analysis by Princeton. [5] Thus, subsidizing electric vehicles and increasing demand for electricity will mean that coal power plants will burn more coal, increasing – not decreasing – global warming and further damaging our respiratory health in the U.S. Response to oil dependence: Our energy security is not in a very bad situation right now. We still produce approximately 50% of our oil domestically. Of the 50% we import, we get most of our oil from Canada, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia, none of which have any inclination to cut us off. Saudi Arabia has refused at least 3 recent attempts by OPEC to impose production quotas, both to protect their close relationship with the U.S. and because countries like Kuwait simply cheat the quotas, stealing Saudi market share. Response to “no emissions”: My opponent claims electric cars have no emissions. He forgets that these cars use electric power to charge, meaning the emissions still do exist, they are just emitted at the source of the dirty power plant (coal, natural gas) and not the car itself. Furthermore, nuclear power comprises 20% of our grid, but these power plants are between 40 and 50 years old and are thus nearing the end of their life cycles. Since it has been politically infeasible to build new nuclear plants since the Three Mile Island disaster, the grid will become even more dirty, as we build more coal and natural gas plants to replace our nuclear power plants. C2: Subsidy My opponent doesn’t explain here how much of a subsidy would be required to get people to buy fully electric cars. Right now, the typical fully electric sedan costs at least 3 tries the price of the average new car purchased in the United States. It would take a hefty and expensive subsidy to get any significant number of consumers to switch to electric vehicles. My opponent violates my Observation 3 multiple times here, as well, when he cites studies that are about plug-in hybrid vehicles, which are gasoline-powered cars with a small battery that can be charged through a wall-socket. These are not “electric vehicles;” they are “hybrids.” So the 2005 Department of Energy study is invalid because hybrids take far less electricity to charge than a fully electric vehicle. In addition, when the study says that we can replace our “small vehicle fleet,” it is referring to cars that are sedan size or smaller, which is misleading because many Americans own minivans and/or SUV’s. In addition, discussing hybrids is invalid because many hybrids, like the Honda Prius, are quite cost competitive, so they require absolutely no subsidies. The fact that hybrids are gaining popularity in the U.S. with no government intervention proves that government interference in the free market is unnecessary. Lastly, even if he could cite a study that we’d need no new power plants for electric vehicles, that doesn’t answer that the transformers that are on each street, pictured here http://tinyurl.com..., cannot handle the electricity load if everyone owned an electric vehicle, and they would all need to be upgraded, at the significant expense of the utility companies. C3: cost efficiency My opponent’s 2007 study is again about hybrids, not fully electric vehicles, which are much more expensive to charge. In addition, his study assumes that 1) everyone will charge their cars at night and 2) that utility companies will not change their pricing structure to compensate for increased demand for electricity at night. [6] Although right now electricity only costs 2 cents per kilowatt-hour at night (the figure the study uses), utility companies are switching to a more dynamic pricing model, using smart meters, that will more closely match demand. If everyone owned an electric car and charged it at night, electricity prices at night would resemble prices during the day. Considering that the average price of electricity in the U.S. is 6 times higher than the cost figure the study uses, then we get that plug-in hybrids would cost $3.50 per gallon of gasoline-equivalent. [7] This is roughly the same price that gasoline currently costs in the U.S., so it’s not much improvement. Lastly, my opponent’s study ignores the initial price of the car and measures only the price of the energy used to power the car. This is invalid. For example, fusion power promises to one day allow cars to run on water. However, the cars would be prohibitively expensive. A fusion powered car with a purchasing price of $5 million, but a per mile energy cost of 3 cents, is not necessarily superior to a car that costs $20,000 with a per mile energy cost of $3. Electric cars may cost less to power (per mile), but they are at least three times as expensive to initially purchase as the average passenger vehicle in the U.S. Taking into account the inevitable change in electricity pricing and the initial purchase price, electric cars are not cost efficient. I’ll refute my opponent’s third Round in my 4th Round. Citations [1] http://tinyurl.com... [2] http://tinyurl.com... [3] Crowley, Thomas J.; Baum, Steven K. (1995). "Reconciling Late Ordovician (440 Ma) glaciation with very high (14X) CO2 levels". Journal of Geophysical Research [4] http://tinyurl.com... [5] http://tinyurl.com... [6] http://tinyurl.com... [7] http://tinyurl.com...