no clean diesels are not perfect, but they are a solid step forward in the reduction of co2 and other pollutants from normal gasoline engines and frankly there isn't much of an alternative in the electric car yet since our grid is based dirty technology.
But that "dirty technology" that provides power is here to stay. If you expect it to be entirely replaced in the short run, then you need to put down the pipe. Even if the federal government committed to making the country run on green energy, it would likely take decades to implement. And I have my doubts Canada's energy needs could be met on wind, solar, and hydro alone. Realistically, the best alternative to coal fired plants is nuclear power. Incidentally, you might want to read up on nuclear power: it's a very clean source of electricity, and although Chernobyl was a terrible accident, it is the only one of it's kind, and was the result of poor reactor design and flawed operations.
Anyway: we already have a network of coal-fired power plants. Yes, they produce pollution. Lots of it. But we're not using them to their full capacity, either. In fact, there's enough power generated to charge plenty of electric cars during off peak hours. Let's say the amount of pollution caused by these plants is a constant, P.
So, here's what you're suggesting is that these plants go on producing excess electricity. They continue to produce pollution at level P. Then you suggest we put diesel engines on the road. Now they're pretty good, but they still produce pollution. Let's call that C, a positive constant. So total pollution under your theory is P + C.
Now, if we take all those clean diesels off the road, and replace them with electric cars, what do we end up with? Well, we can charge the electric cars using excess power from those coal plants. That doesn't add to pollution, since it's excess power that would otherwise be wasted. So P remains constant. But we get to take all those polluting diesels off the road! So total pollution is equal to P.
Now, it doesn't take a genius to see that P + C > P. That's true by definition.
So, given that there's no way Canada is going to switch over to clean energy overnight, electric cars are a better alternative than even clean diesels.
but what you are suggesting is instead of closing these plants down and using alternative energy sources, we should keep the status quo and keep running the coal plants so we can run electric cars
This is a total non-sequitur. There's absolutely no reason why Canadians cannot both drive electric cars
and move towards alternative energy sources. The two are not mutually exclusive. But in the short term, while we make that transition, we still wind up further ahead by driving electric cars...
