Voice of the People.

The Electronic Vehicle scam appears to be one of the biggest global scams of the 21st century. There is no such thing as a 'zero emissions' car as of now. Here are some of the factors which are eye-opening and everyone needs to know. The most important component of an EV is the battery which requires Lithium, Cobalt, Graphite, Manganese and other minerals which need to be mined and processed. This mining and processing release a lot of carbon emissions.

An electric car associates its emissions with some far-off place owing to mining and processing. According to an estimate, EV battery manufacturing alone is responsible for 50% of the carbon emissions that a normal car would generate in its entire life. This means that a brand new EV has already produced 30,000 pounds of CO2. Now, most of the electricity being produced globally is based on natural gas or oil/coal-based power plants. If the electricity is coming from a coal-based plant, an EV would emit 9-12 ounces of CO2 as compared to 7.5-10 ounces of a conventional car. Even if the electricity is being produced from a green source, it requires around 150K kilometres for an EV to become less carbon emitting than a conventional car.

An EV 'exports' the carbon emissions somewhere else. Around 500,000 pounds of material needs to be mined to produce a single 1000-pound battery, it takes 100 to 300 barrels of oil to make the battery that can hold 1 barrel of oil equivalent energy, and the list goes on. The plan in place to increase use of EVs will require more mining of these dangerous minerals which is another threat to environment as well. Moreover, the demand for these minerals will increase up to 4000% since there are not enough mineral resources in world to make enough batteries for that many people.

MUSA ABUBAKR

Islamabad

Flood-fuelled migration

IT is anticipated that by 2050 between 25 million to 1 billion people will migrate due to climate change. Hence, climate-fuelled displacement directly impacts urban life because most of the migrants move toward cities for better life. Sources say about 0.7 million people migrate annually from rural to urban areas in Pakistan owing to floods and droughts. Therefore, Pakistan has experienced large and small natural disasters since its inception, but 2022 rain-flood has been the worst natural calamity in the history of Pakistan which affected and damaged more than the Indian Ocean tsunami-2004, the Kashmir earthquake-2005, Haiti earthquake-2010 and...