transportation

Upon my return from the Atacama, I began thinking about the definitions of some seemingly basic words: transportation, for one; need, for another. I wondered if the mining requirements might be lower, depending on the prevailing mode of transportation, or if there was a way to conceptualize social need as something distinct from the stream of inputs demanded by downstream industries. I pondered whether a reimagined transportation sector in which many more Americans rode buses or bikes would require the same massive volumes of minerals as one in which every household owned their own electric vehicle. I speculated about the per person material footprint under distinct mixes of electrified mobility.

Surely, I thought, some other researcher had already tested these hypotheses. I turned to databases of academic articles and browsed the reports of climate think tanks. To my surprise, no such studies existed. Instead, and without exception, all the extant models assumed that the only way to eliminate emissions from transportation is to replace individual gas-­powered vehicles with individual electric vehicles. The best possible future, “net-­zero emissions” (per the International Energy Agency), envisioned a world full of cars powered by batteries. Successful climate action meant a Tesla or a BYD in every garage.