I find few things more satisfying than when “those” types try to argue me that my EV is not better for the environment than their gas car, and me telling them I don’t care about the environment, I bought my car because it can haul a dresser and still rip a 0-60 in under 3s. And it costs me pennies per mile to drive.…

I’ve never heard of anyone griping about tire pollution until it came time to argue against EVs.

Incidentally, the U.S. also has a declining birth rate.

No Elon Musk is an essential pre condition for success.  

You’re never going to get an objective answer for a sum total of “how bad” something is. Its not a quantifiable figure. You can quantify how much of many particular many “evils” something is, but you can’t mix and match “evils” and sum them together to get an objective figure. Especially since a lot of what you said…

That’s what she said.

Agree, but I have to add a point.

As raw material prices go up, recycling will become economically feasible.

Or, governments should fulfill one of their purposes of existence and use legislation to tip the scales of the “free market”.  

environmental/econonic/social impact of rolling blackouts due to insufficient power to charge vehicles

You say you honestly want to know, however, it seems like you really just want to nitpick numbers that are spoon fed to you that support your current mindset. The truth is that you’re asking for answers that can’t reasonably reported accurately because there isn’t an accurate way to measure the “social impact of the…

It would be wonderful for the environment if we could just gracefully decline in population.

But so many of the basic underpinnings of our economy are depending on growth, which is created and sustained by the increasing population. We are kind of stuck in a Ponzi scheme loop right now, and having a reduction in…

“high-speed rail service”

Yes, we should be moving to more mass transit and less commuting. We should strive for walkable cities and other programs that reduce our use of individual vehicles.

Government pushing baby making reminds of Shinzo Abe and we know how that turned out.

This might not fully fit your request but it could be a good start.

It’s all smoke and mirrors. The environmental impact of both types of vehicles is catastrophic. Great. So ICE vehicles are a category 5 hurricane and EVs are a category 3. Fantastic. They are both capable of wreaking spectacular damage.

So things would get crowded more slowly and we’d still get more open space and opportunities for wildlife outside of India and China, although IIRC China is about to start, if not already has, entered into its own population decline. It is Africa where the biggest growth is, but for the rest of the world, a managed…

Something something socialism something something the poor something something libruls

It will be interesting to see how battery recycling will factor into this in the future. Probably a number of years away but the ability to recycle these materials could help as well if that process is less fossil fuel dependent than the mining process.

Personally, the only thing holding my wife and I back from more kids is the cost of childcare. It’s gotten astronomical in the US. Do something about that or increase tax credits and we will see a higher birthrate here.