Hello everyone!
I think we can all agree, that the below image is gross!
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It doesn't matter where you sit in the political landscape, if you were in either of the two cars on the right, you'd be rolling up your windows as you cough and swear. Yeah, there are two cars on the right, but you can barely see the first one because of the exhaust fumes.
In the US, school buses travel about 4 BILLION miles each year and provide transportation to 25 million American children (Source).
This 2012 report from the World Health Organisation links diesel exhaust fumes with a range of different cancers, primarily lung cancer. Diesel fumes are a known carcinogen, but the dangers don't stop there.
This 2008 report in the American Journal of Epidemiology presents studies showing that diesel fumes can lower the IQ of children.
As the below graph shows (from this incredibly detailed blog post) there is an absolutely massive correlation between IQ and income.
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Which stands to reason right, the smarter you are, the more likely you'll overcome obstacles to earn more money.
This 2005 study from UC Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group shows that for some reason (they're honestly not sure why) the students in the school buses are exposed to higher concentrations of pollutants inside the bus than outside of it.
None of these studies are recent, these are issues we've known about for a decade, but I think honestly the technology to convert all these school buses to electric is really new.
Here is Bernie Sanders' pledge as part of his New Green Deal:
School and transit buses. Provide $407 billion in grants for states to help school districts and transit agencies replace all school and transit buses with electric buses. The EPA classifies diesel exhaust as a probable human carcinogen, and this exhaust contains over 40 different chemicals and air pollutants that are classified as hazardous air pollutants under the Clean Air Act. Children on school buses are exposed to concentrations of these substances that can be 5-15 times higher than background levels negatively impacting their health and performance in school. Once older buses are replaced with clean electric buses, school districts will save in fuel and maintenance costs over the life cycle of the bus.
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So... is reducing American children's exposure to known carcinogens and IQ-reducing pollutants worth $407 Billion of tax payer money? Clearly we're not talking about increasing tax revenue, we're basically talking about purchasing less F-35 fighter jets.
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The US has US$1.508 trillion deal with Lockheed Martin to keep them these babies rollin' out... and I'd argue that not lowering American children's IQs would be worth the investment of having less fighter jets.
Personally, I think that electrifying the US school buses could be done a lot cheaper. There are 480,000 school buses in the US Source. You could convert these buses to an electric battery for about $25,000 which equals $12,000,000 (12 Billion)... however, you save $3 Billion PER YEAR in fuel and maintenance.
So basically, if all the school buses in the US had been converted to electric 4 years ago, they would have paid themselves off in fuel and maintenance savings by now.
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Electric vehicles have far fewer moving parts, nothing is corroding while the bus is idling, and since most school buses only work for 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the afternoon, that gives them 20 hours to charge from renewable power sources.
Bernie's $407 Billion grant is all about buying new buses, which I think is a far more recommended approach, but for the people that hate to spend tax payer money on things, this $12 Billion conversion plan costs the same as three (3) F-35 fighter jets.
3 fighter jets or not poisoning 25 million American children?
I know, I know, it's a tough decision.... that's why I'm not running for president in literally any country.
The benefits of electrification don't stop there though...
The above accident is reported here, no one was seriously injured.
At the moment US school buses have their huge heavy engine at the front of the vehicle and then the bus cabin is relatively light. Electric batteries are heavy, and are placed along the floor of the vehicle... lowering the center of gravity and evening out the weight distribution between the four wheels.
The other benefit is that the huge wheel base of a school bus allows for a large electric battery. This means that in an emergency, school buses basically become mobile batteries themselves. If a disaster strikes one area of the country, the neighboring areas can send these mobile batteries to help set up powered refugee areas.
This is an incredible idea by Bernie Sanders. An idea that literally has no losers, an absolutely massive upside, can be paid off within years and is so good that I honestly hope every presidential candidate from both sides of the aisle takes it up.
I'd love to talk this through in the comments if you have any points to make, thoughts to share or questions to ask.
Thanks for reading!
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