Later this month, world leaders will gather in Glaslow, Scotland, at the 26th UN Climate Change Conference to address the continued concerns of climate issues.
On Saturday in Eugene, a group of climate change activists made their own statement, driving electric vehicles through Eugene and Springfield to encourage people to make the switch to electric.
350 Eugene, which is the local chapter of the international climate justice group 350, rented the entire fleet of Arcimoto’s electric utility vehicles for a few hours to make their drive, with people in electric cars following behind.
“Our local folks are really in solidarity about the need to get off fossil fuels and be on to electrify everything,” said Patty Hine, president of 350 Eugene. “Obviously transportation is a huge emission source, and so for transportation, we all need to think about transitioning to electric — you don’t just have to give up everything at once.”
The movement to electric vehicles has been growing in recent years.
Pew Research Center published an article in July that showed 7% of U.S. adults said they have an electric or hybrid vehicle, while 39% said they were very or somewhat likely to seriously consider buying one.
The total number of electric vehicles registered in the U.S. has soared from fewer than 300,000 in 2016 to more than 1.1 million in 2020, according to the center.
Arcimoto, which is a local company that creates electric vehicles, has seen its own boom in production. It’s FUV — a three-wheel, all-electric vehicle designed to replace cars for short trips — went into commercial production in September 2019. As of July, Arcimoto had about 200 employees in Eugene and at the end of March had delivered about 200 FUVs to customers.
More:Eugene’s homegrown Arcimoto electric vehicles finding their way to local customers
“In the city of Eugene we passed in 2014 a climate recovery ordinance, and it’s specified that we will come down in our emissions at a gradual rate over time, and we have not been keeping pace with our goals,” Hine said. “So looking for things that we can do to educate the community to take bolder action and to ask our decision makers to take bolder action, we have launched a ‘fossil free Eugene’ campaign, which is an effort to halt any new gas infrastructure.
“If we’re going to stop burning fossil fuels, we’re going to have to stop building infrastructure for transport and burning the fossil fuels,” she said.
The city’s stated goals are to reduce 2010 level community fossil fuel use and city fossil fuel use by 50% by 2030, reduce total community greenhouse gas emissions, and to have all city-owned facilities and operations be carbon neutral, meaning no net release of greenhouse gas emissions.
Doug Bovee, member of 350 Eugene, said he hoped the parade of vehicles would spread the word about electrification.
“It is very important that we get off fossil fuels and the EVs are one of the ways to do that,” he said. “And this is a local company … you know, it’s sort of a win-win, supporting a local company and supporting electronic.”
Contact reporter Jordyn Brown at jbrown@registerguard.com or 541-246-4264, and follow her on Twitter @thejordynbrown and Instagram @registerguard. Support local journalism, subscribe to The Register-Guard.