This might seem heresy in this website, but the answer isn't billions riding e-bikes, it's millions riding or driving whatever they like, 4 x 4s included, without wrecking the environment in consequence.
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I don't know where anybody gets the idea that e-bikes are environmentally friendly. Maybe they listen to the marketing hype too much. They are not 'friendly' to manufacture or import, they use 'difficult' battery technology, and the energy to drive them is at best second generation and has to be produced by conventional means. The efficiency may be improved somewhat by rider effort, but even that has been called into question as the rider is not an efficient means of propulsion either!
I'm not knocking them, because I've got one and it turns out to have been a good buy from my viewpoint. It's just that anyone who says those magic words 'helping the environment' hasn't given the matter any consideration at all. The e-bike becomes attractive here in the UK because of accessibility compared to a car or public transport, exercise, and the fact that we duck the huge tax on fuel for road vehicles.
If we ever reach the point where electricity can be produced in a fundamentally different way, that will change the picture dramatically, but it seems we're quite a long way away from being able to do that at present, so whether we use fossil-fuelled or electrically powered vehicles is not very relevant at present. The real 'push' to progress is, and will be, the certainty that fossil fuels will run out sooner or later, and therefore become no longer cost effective. It will be a commercial pressure rather than an environmental one, I think. Try persuading the huge American commercial operations that saving the environment should take precedence over making a buck....
You're absolutely right in what you say, it's not really what we do that's the problem, it's how many of us are around doing it. We'll always be collectively selfish, competitive and greedy, and so those who can make a good profit by satisfying those 'faults' will always do so in the most direct way.
Rog.