Mike,
I'm back at my desk now, and as such can give you the response your posts on this thread deserve.
Again I say, "you sir, are the man".
We probably don't fill in many of the same circles on our ballots, but your evenhanded approach to something you are personally invested in is not the kind of scorched earth "with us or against us" rhetoric these kinds of discussions usually engender, and I (for one) really appreciate it. I also try to see both sides of an argument before I come down on one side or the other, and I'm aware that we all see through a dark glass darkly. Not everything is subjective (everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts), but generally our perspectives and experiences are. It's good for everybody to look at policy issues like this from as many angles as possible.
It's clear that you do. You've freely admitted that your embrace of an electric daily driver makes sense in Maui, and probably not in Saskatoon. If I lived on an island, had 300+ days of sunshine, $4 gas, super-expensive electricity, and the means to generate my own power-- I'd look hard at an electric car as well. It's a great solution in a situation very different from my own.
My only objection is that this has become a religion to a lot of people, and was progressing towards becoming a one-size-fits-all solution, before we elected Mussolini-Lite. The issue is that the only tool most people posses is a hammer, and that in that situation everything begins to look like a nail (whether one roots for the "D"-team or the "R"). You certainly aren't hammering down those of us in flyover states without good air or rail connections, and with kids 1000 mi away by insisting that we all walk the one true path of the EV. It's not lost on you that an electric car is a very poor option in a lot of situations.
I'm the weird conservative that actually thinks we ought to start conserving stuff. What I don't like is when either camp makes stuff up to make their point. I don't feel like you have or are doing that at all, and I think you clarified your thoughts even further-- but I hear from a lot of places how the earth is running out of energy, or food, or some such thing to make a point... when the truth is that we've never had food or fuel in such abundance in all of human history. Far from being over-crowded, the western world is actually in danger of economic decline, unless we continue to welcome immigrants, etc., or decide that children are a blessing and not an encumbrance.
You get this, and I appreciate your approach. Thanks for being a solid dude, advocating from a different perspective.