By Joe Martino | The Pulse
Norway has become the first country where the majority of new car sales are pure-electric, (not hybrid). In 2020, 53% of all new cars sold in Norway were electric. This is up from 42% in 2019. The major ‘fuel’ behind this change is the availability of Volkswagon EV’s.
“Our preliminary forecast is for electric cars to surpass 65% of the market in 2021,” said Christina Bu, head of the Norwegian EV Association. “If we manage that, the goal of selling only zero-emission cars in 2025 will be within reach.“
The Norwegian government plans to ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2025, and is providing tax breaks and financial incentives to help consumers make the switch.
Questions still remain around the environmental impact of battery creation and battery recycling. While there is no nasty emissions polluting the air we breathe, electric cars require fossil fuels to create the energy that ends up charging the lithium ion battery that runs the vehicle.
Depending on where you live in the world, some people will burn more fossil fuels driving an electric car than driving a gas car. Imagine, if you’re driving an electric car in the US, where fossil fuels produced 63% of the country’s energy in 2017, you’ll likely release more pollution into the atmosphere than an EV would in another country who’s energy production relies more on geothermal or solar, like Iceland for example.
As the world politically pushes to solve the destructive habits of our current society, one that heavily pollutes, over produces and isn’t in balance with nature, most of our innovations are heavily limited by our existing economic systems and how nothing we invent can be ‘too’ disruptive to these systems. Just look what happened to the water powered car inventor Stanley Meyer.
To draw on my personal experience. I have had the rare and unique privilege to have witnessed new energy technologies first hand that can run cars, houses, large warehouses etc, all that require no charging, fossil fuels or external factors. This means one wouldn’t have to rely on any weather elements to use a clean and almost limitless source of energy. Imagine that!
Of course, the biggest issue these inventions pose is that they would squash billion dollar industries and leave some people jobless – in our current system that it. Thus, these inventions often remain hidden and out of public awareness – even labelled as ‘conspiracy theories.’
Yet I stood in front of one with a small group of foreign financiers, qualified engineers, and powerful businessmen to vet and examine the device. I watched as the eyes of these engineers lit up when they began to understand how these technologies worked. They turned into curious, excited children who were playful and having the time of their lives. So why? Why doesn’t technology like this free humanity? That’s complicated.
When it comes to electric vehicles and renewables, it’s nice to see the hearts of humans wanting to embrace solutions they believe are on the cutting edge, and that they believe will help us live in a better world, but what if there was enough public transparency that made all aware of the energy technologies that truly exist out there? Would they demand something different? Or perhaps if we did have technologies that could free humanity, we might hold to our old ways and still want to charge people to use them and dominate people by controlling them.
Perhaps we’re getting to some more important questions now. One’s that push to take responsibility for embodying the world we truly want to live in.
We are at a key time in our world where we must begin realizing what it is that truly holds back these technologies and solutions. It isn’t as simple as saying it’s ‘a powerful elite,’ while that may be a part of the story, especially as business interests are protected, we also have to look at our ways of thinking – our world views. Do we want to live in a society where we truly collaborate and live freely? Or are we addicted to competition and domination, symptoms of a culture that believes we are all inherently separate beings that don’t affect one another.
This article (Norway Becomes First Country To Sell More Electric Cars Than Gas Cars) was originally published on The Pulse and is published under a Creative Commons license.