The Wheels of Progress: Challenging Quebec’s Sustainable Mobility Plan from an Ecological Economics Perspective
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In recent years, the urgent need to address the negative impact of climate change on both the environment and human society has led to the implementation of numerous measures to decrease greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from the transportation sector.Among the various global policies and strategies to curb transportation's GHG emissions, adopting electric vehicles (EVs) have become the dominant policy solution to reduce such emissions.In policy documents, a transition to EVs is justified specifically in regions endowed by a decarbonized electricity sector and natural resources necessary for the production of electric vehicle.The evidence supporting such claims remains uncertain and requires a critical investigation regarding the material coherence between these justifications and the existing evidence.Since Quebec is among the regions with the mentioned characteristics, this thesis is set to analyzes the biophysical feasibility and environmental viability of Quebec's plan for electrification of transportation.It also aims to explore the socio-economic and historical context within which the new policies namely Sustainable mobility 2030 and Critical and strategic mineral/metal plans 2030 are being developed.In doing so, this study evaluates Quebec's plan to establish a self-sufficient "electric battery ecosystem" by 2030 and achieve complete electrification of transportation by 2050 by utilizing its abundant hydroelectricity and mineral endowments.The study quantitatively analyzes the hydroelectricity and mineral requirements for three scenarios in 2030 and 2050, namely reference scenario, sustainable mobility policy implementation, and light trucks ban.The results suggest that while Hydro-Québec's production capacity is substantial, it may not be sufficient to meet significantly high demand peaks.In addition, to meet the increasing demand for minerals will require a substantial amount of resources, in some cases exceeding both Quebec's current production capacity and proven reserves.The study also demonstrates that a ban on light trucks, even without implementing the sustainability policy, could significantly reduce GHG UNFCCC United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change USMCA United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement ZEV Zero-Emission Vehicle how external limits define the maximum amount that can be produced, thereby determining the plausibility of the normative narrative.To move beyond a mere transition model and towards a transformation model, it is crucial to address the complex issues of desirability, feasibility, and viability of technology in mobility policy transitions.Tackling these challenging questions is essential, and orthodox economics should not shy away from them.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.011 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.012 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.012 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".