Grand River Transit

[tomh009]

Fixed that for you. No, a single person isn't enough. But if a million Canadians decide to drive an EV, or even drive a smaller car, or to eat less beef, it will indeed have an impact. Not enough, on its own, no. But neither is any Canadian government policy going to solve things on its own. We are all in this together, and we all need to act, individually and collectively.

Regarding CO2, reducing industrial/commercial electricity use will typically reduce natural gas-based generation, and thus reduce CO2. EV charging at home is off-peak and can (currently!) be handled through surplus nuclear power with no CO2 impact. But "supercharging" etc increases daytime load and CO2 emissions. And if we have enough EVs, we may need natural gas generation at night, too, at some point.

The problem is more serious than that though...even if every Canadian in the whole country stopped driving entirely, and ate a vegan diet, and never flew, we'd still have a pretty big carbon footprint. The policies of the country, and indeed our capitalist economy ensure that even if everyone was doing everything right (even against their self interest), we'd still have trouble making the difference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvhXtOps4MM&t=1s&ab_channel=KurtisBaute

The biggest thing personal change actually achieves, in my opinion, is a market and political signal to those making the more impactful decisions that it's time to stop screwing around and actually deal with this problem.

As I said, we are all in this together, and we all need to act, individually and collectively.