Lifecycle of a Swasticar

Elon’s Swasticars did not become fascist overnight. They were all along part of a system which breeds fascism and green fairy tales in order to boost profits and keep fattening the oligarchs.  Replacing fossil fuel-powered cars with electric vehicles addresses neither traffic congestion nor carbon emissions.  Electric vehicles enter the market as brand new cars who already carry the immense carbon footprint of their manufacture.  Given that they consume electricity, the production of which comes with its own huge carbon and/or environmental footprint, it is doubtful how much, if any, of their accumulated emissions they manage to “offset” during their brief lifetime on the road.  Once they’re dead, their batteries become an environmental disaster. There is still no effective, ecologically viable and sustainable way of recycling these batteries – a tiny detail which “green” car manufacturers forgot to tell us when they were prompting us to save the planet by buying an electric vehicle.

In summary, these so-called “green” vehicles are a threat to the planet before they come on to the market, during their operation, as well as thousands of years after their death.  But even if they have the potential to offset significant emissions, in practice they never do and never will.  Consumatrons get bored with them and throw them away in favour of the next most fashionable model, before these cars have even done any “good” for the climate. In this throw-away necrocapitalist society every product must be wasted and replaced way before its natural death.  Of course, the planet destroyed in the process is irreplaceable.

The Unhappiness Machine will always push new products just as it forcibly removes from circulation the ones already sold. The sooner products, people and resources are terminated ahead of their natural expiration, the steeper the profits will be, and the weaker our democracy will become.

George is an author, researcher, molecular biologist and food scientist.

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