Idahoans Beware: Electric Vehicles Have Toxic Tires

Get our free mobile app

A couple of summers ago, I was driving home after a shopping trip to Boise.  I spotted a massive plume of black smoke on the horizon.  It was from a tire fire, miles and miles away. I passed it as I drove through Wendell.  Back in Twin Falls, I could see the plume from another direction.  Tires are an environmental challenge.  Rubber is stripped from some in recycling, ground, and then mixed with asphalt, but old tires dwarf the need for recycled products.  You can only make so many tree swings.

A new report says electric vehicles are making tire pollution even worse.  You can see the trusted link by clicking here.  EVs are heavier, tires may wear even faster than on a traditional car and truck, and particulate may foul roadsides and the air.  I realize the hemp clothing crowd will ignore any such news.  It questions their climate religion.  Imagine being a modern-day virtue-signaling Pharisee and then learning you’re harming Gaia.  You’ll have to hug an additional tree this week for a dispensation.

Could it be that nothing we do will make any difference regarding the planet's future?  There are a handful of radical college professors who recommend humans be sterilized so that by the end of the century the earth will be devoid of our kind.  They may have the only legitimate solution, however.  What if we all get vasectomies and then the final people realize the climate keeps changing?  I suspect they’ll feel they’ve been conned.

I met the comedian Garrison Keillor 35 years ago.  He wrapped up a graduation speech by telling the young people in the audience to change the world by having children.  I agree.  It’s some future intellect that will provide solutions to many of our most vexing issues.  Wild dogs roaming the planet won’t come up with any brilliant ideas.