Did you know that a nefarious international conspiracy is afoot to impose eco-communism on freedom-loving Americans? That’s The Truth About Cars’ explanation for recent developments in the shift to electric vehicles.
In its apparent quest to become the Fox News (or Newsmax?) of the automotive media, TTAC fanned the flames of outrage in a pair of recent stories. Last week Matt Posky (2020b) warned that Japan’s announcement that it would ban the sale of non-hybrid internal-combustion engines by the mid-2030s was part of an “increasingly ominous ‘Great Reset’ penned by the World Economic Forum.”
“Once thought of as a ludicrous conspiracy held by disenfranchised wingnuts, the Great Reset is now openly endorsed by world leaders and posited as the only way to save the environment,” says Posky (2020b).
Eco-communists are coming to take your cars!
So what is this grand scheme led by what Posky (2020b) calls a “hegemony” of multinational corporations — including automakers? “Boiled down, the plan is to digitize/electrify everything by 2030 and ensure economies are restructured so that regular people no longer own anything.”
Also see ‘Would Matt Posky have raged against the horseless carriage?’
If you are now worried about Big Brother soon owning your clothes, fine silverware and DVD collection, Posky (2020a) helpfully gets more specific in another story. The overarching goal of the Great Reset is to shift “society toward ending property/vehicle ownership rights as a way to build a more sustainable future at the expense of growth.” This, he darkly concludes, “is effectively eco-communism.”
Here Posky follows in the prophetic footsteps of Ronald Reagan. The future president got his start in politics by presciently warning that if Medicare was created, “pretty soon your son won’t decide when he’s in school, where he will go or what he will do for a living. He will wait for the government to tell him” (Wikipedia, 2020b). Reagan may as well have been talking about Posky, who is a tragic product of this dystopia.
Also see ‘The Truth About Cars falsely stokes fears of private car ban’
But let’s not get too distracted by history. The question of the moment is why the modern-day Commies are in such a rush to destroy electrify our precious bodily fluids transportation system?
The answer: “While we’re not certain why everyone who desires EV supremacy has picked the years between 2030 and 2035 as the period when the internal combustion engine needs to be extinguished, it has been fairly consistent across the industry” (Posky, 2020a).
Industry foot dragging has caused tight timeline
Posky’s use of the royal “we” in the above sentence suggests that both he and his TTAC colleagues are unfamiliar with the link between climate science and recent policy proposals. Thus, let’s review. Investigative reporting by Maxine Joselow (2020) of E&E News uncovered that General Motors and Ford have known about climate change since the 1960s. Instead of addressing it, for decades they heavily invested in lobbying efforts to stymie new regulations (go here for our take).
This strategy may have pleased Wall Street in the short run, but it has contributed to an even bigger long-term problem.
“Our collective failure to act early and hard on climate change means we now must deliver deep cuts to emissions,” said Inger Anderson, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program. “We need to catch up on the years in which we procrastinated” (Dennis, 2019).
Also see ‘Is TTAC editor Tim Healey okay with irrelevant disinformation?’
Transportation generates the largest amount of greenhouse gases in the U.S — roughly 28 percent. Perhaps even more importantly, “Between 1990 and 2018, GHG emissions in the transportation sector increased more in absolute terms than any other sector,” according to the Environmental Protection Agency (2020). The growing popularity of gas-guzzling SUVs has been a contributing factor (go here for further discussion).
So what? “The coming decade will determine whether humanity retains a fighting chance to limit warming to 1.5°C or even 2°C,” states a World Economic Forum report (2020). “The later action is taken, the more dire our position will become.”
Posky’s hyperventilating lacks factual grounding
Is Posky unconcerned about the potential damages that global temperature increases could cause? Or might he share Donald Trump’s view that climate change is a “Chinese hoax” (Jacobson, 2016)?
I don’t know, but one thing that is clear is Posky’s warning about “eco-communism” suffers from an embarrassing problem: He misuses the term. A central tenet of communism is that the “means of production” are owned by the government rather than by private corporations (Wikipedia, 2020a).
Also see ‘Chris Tonn shows great promise in automotive marketing’
No one with any standing has proposed nationalizing the auto industry — including Posky’s bugaboo, the World Economic Forum. And why would they? The group’s membership includes many corporations, including Honda, Mitsubishi, Volkswagen and Volvo. Indeed, their discussions have centered around using market mechanisms to promote energy efficiency.
By the same token, Posky has failed to provide any evidence that car ownership is in danger of being eliminated. It’s true that the World Economic Forum (2020) has called for “accelerating the shift to Shared, Electric and Autonomous Mobility.” However, the group’s advocacy of “servitisation” — paying for a service rather than owning the equipment — mentions “e-mobility” in only a vague and parenthetical manner (Karamitsos, 2020).
The Barbarians are a long way from the gates. Even an ambitious British policy paper only called for “encouraging vehicle usership in place of ownership” (STSC, 2019; Section 131).
Is TTAC’s commitment to journalism or propaganda?
The bottom line is that this media outlet has been playing fast and loose with the facts in an apparent effort to scare its readers. I share TTAC’s skepticism about autonomous vehicles, but the unhinged way they have attacked EVs really undercuts their journalistic credibility.
TTAC can’t have it both ways. If its editorial staff members wish to be viewed as credible sources of automotive journalism, then they need to stop trafficking in easily debunked disinformation.
The hiring of Jason Sakurai gives me some hope. Although he has displayed TTAC’s usual skepticism about an EV transition (2020), his analysis has thus far been more factually grounded than posts by Posky, Chris Tonn or Ronnie Schreiber. Perhaps Sakurai should be the point person for reporting on climate change regulation.
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Dennis, Brady; 2019. “In bleak report, U.N. says drastic action is only way to avoid worst effects of climate change.” Washington Post. Posted November 26; accessed December 6, 2020.
- Environmental Protection Agency, 2020. “Carbon Pollution from Transportation.” Accessed December 6, 2020.
- Jacobson, Louis; 2016. “Yes, Donald Trump did call climate change a Chinese hoax.” Politifact. Posted June 3; accessed December 6, 2020.
- Joselow, Maxine; 2020. “Exclusive: GM, Ford knew about climate change 50 years ago.” E&E News. Posted October 26; accessed November 5.
- Karamitsos, Dimitris et al.; 2020. “What is servitisation, and how can it help save the planet?” World Economic Forum. Posted November 20; accessed December 7.
- Posky, Matt; 2020a. “Progress, Thy Name is ZETA: New Electric Vehicle Lobbying Group Hits the Scene.” The Truth About Cars. Posted November 17; accessed December 6.
- ——; 2020b. “Report: Japan May Ban Internal Combustion Vehicles Next Decade.” The Truth About Cars. Posted December 3; accessed December 6.
- Sakurai, Jason R.; 2020. “Activist Attacks Oil Companies by Shaming Ad Agencies.” The Truth About Cars. Posted December 7; accessed December 7.
- Schreiber, Ronnie; 2019. “UK Parliament Committee Wants to Ban All Private Cars and Trucks by 2050.” The Truth About Cars. Posted August 23; accessed August 23.
- STSC; 2019. Clean Growth: Technologies for meeting the UK’s emissions reduction targets. U.K. Parliament Science and Technology Select Committee. Published August 22; accessed December 7, 2020.
- Wikipedia; 2020a. “Communism.” Page last modified November 29; accessed December 6.
- ——; 2020b. “Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine.” Page last modified January 14; accessed December 6.
- World Economic Forum; 2020a. “Global New Mobility Coalition.” Accessed December 6.
- ______; 2020b. The Net-Zero Challenge: Fast-Forward to Decisive Climate Action. Published January; accessed December 6.
Which is it? Global cooling, as I was taught in college in the early ‘70’s, or global warming, the next gospel, and now “climate change”; heads I win, tails you lose.
Climate computer models, with an almost infinite variability, are nothing more than a guessing game. Sorry, I’m not buying the “sky is falling” panic about anthropogenic climate alterations. Who knows- it might be an improvement. Warmer climes, more arable land, more rainfall. What is the “ideal” climate?
It’s really laughable that human egos think they can “save” the world. Check your virtue signaling, please!
Seriously, what is needed is a cost/benefit study on “climate change” legislation. The panic mode, now standard indoctrination in colleges, causes hand wringing reactive…and very expensive…rules and regulations that, against the enormity of the earths climate variations are statistically insignificant. Let’s use common sense, not panic.
Electric cars are technologically becoming viable, that’s all. Great! Let’s fire up the coal burning power plants and charge up!
My perspective is that the basic science on climate change was settled a long time ago. If you would like to have that debate, the Internet has many opportunities to do so.
For example, back in 2007 Automotive News published a primer on the issue (go here). More recently this publication printed an editorial stating point blank that the planet “is warming at a dangerous rate, and the global auto industry has a major role to play in fixing the problem.”
Indie Auto’s niche is discussing HOW we make the transition to a climate-friendly transportation system. If you’ve got ideas on that front, I’d be delighted to hear them. Or we can focus on automotive history.
Science is never settled. That’s a euphemism for “my mind is made up, don’t confuse me”. Science is not a religion of faith, but truth. Be open to any paradigm shift. There plenty of conflicting data on climate change, and as we learn more, common sense will prevail. Using a panic mode “emergency” as a political bludgeon may not be in our best long term interests. Also, only the wealth countries have the luxury of worrying about a theoretical temperature flux a century from now.
We’ve done an admirable job of cleaning up ICE emissions; just go to any “cars and coffee” gatherings and the exhaust from the old cars literally stinks.
EV’s are coming, as I said, because they are becoming practical and relatively affordable, and acceptable by the public. Imagine no oil changes and smelly fuel! Max torque all through the power band! It will be a new age of personal transportation. Eventually they will be recharged, or battery exchanged, as fast as fueling a car today.
As far as automobiles are concerned, the big question is about personal freedom to own, operate, and travel when, and where one likes. Let’s hope draconian panic driven measures don’t infringe upon that freedom.
One of the things I studied in my doctoral program was how paradigmatic shifts occur in science. So, yes, science does evolve — and sometimes in radical ways.
That said, some theories have more staying power than others. For example, the idea that the earth is flat is not likely to ever make a comeback . . . at least within the scientific realm. The weight of evidence is too overwhelmingly against it. Yet you can still find flat-earthers who argue that there’s a conspiracy to withhold The Truth.
The theory of anthropogenic climate change has come remarkably close to being a consensus in the scientific community – particularly when you consider how broadly it has been studied. I’m hard pressed to point to another topic that has received so much attention in the last 20 years from so many scholarly disciplines as well as highly-ranked scientists and academic institutions around the world.
Given how the peer-review process works, you can’t pull the wool over the eyes of that many scientists. So when I hear people say that climate change was cooked up by some cabal of lefty professors, that’s a good indication that they do not understand how science actually works.
If you really want to debate climate science, I would encourage you to check out RealClimate.org. This is a website run by working climate scientists. I’d invite you to throw all of your best arguments at them and see what happens.
Are you open to changing your mind?
George Carlin had an interesting take on people who want to “save the earth.” If interested, look it up on YouTube. 🤪🤪
Of course! That’s my point, if you look closely. Im open to any proven data…much now are theoretical computer generated models. We will study and learn.
What I’m referring to, and this applies to automobiles, is the politicizing and scare tactics, with much misinformation, and knee jerk reactive panic legislation. We need a cost/benefit basis for environmental regulations, not shaming “deniers” (a blatant argumentative “shut up” tactic).
I’ve no dogma in this fight.
I do like your spirit, though! Much good reading and food for thought about my favorite subject: cars.