The principle plot thread that climate advocacy groups are loosing is that a combination of regulation, subsidies and public investments are just not going to get us to to reduction in net CO2 emissions without a tax on net emissions, too.
Taxing carbon is not "very, very, very unpopular" when you pair it with a dividend, as legislative proposals do. In fact, it's very popular! https://clcouncil.org/polling
There's a more basic emotional component at work here, and I think it dominates the behavior at play. Lots of active, inside people on the left fundamentally. . . just do not like to direct their attacking firepower on MAGA Republicans, especially on climate.
They believe it's "useless", and more to the point, depressing and upsetting to them personally. When your opponent simply does not concede the premises of your argument--or facts or reality, for that matter--engaging in politics with them loses its thrill very quickly and permanently.
Fighting inside the ranks, however, is much more gratifying. One can get more personal with center-leftists like you and I, and can actually get them to change more quickly. More importantly, it's a quicker route to power than the slow, boring (har!), depressing, aggravating, seemingly "useless" work of more general politics. Factional infighting feels more like a heroic crusade by comparison.
(Why, yes, I have been engaging with progressive Twitter somewhat lately. Why do you ask?? :P)
"... to meet our climate aspirations we not only need to replace 100% of existing fossil fuel electricity, but we also need to convert the entire fleet of vehicles for transporting people and cargo to electricity. That’s a lot of electricity!"
Plus convert all gas furnaces, water heaters, cooktops/ovens/ranges/stoves/grills, and clothes dryers to electric and cleanly generate enough extra electricity for all of those.
I can’t stand the Sunrise Movement, but I’m not sure how donors could have created what you consider to be more grass roots-y and accountable? Can you expand on that, or give an example of what you consider an effective grassroots movement?
The Koch brothers tried doing this exact thing in the mid 2010s with Concerned Veterans for America, Americans For Prosperity, Generation Opportunity & others. I hadn't made the connection until I read your piece, but now I can't ignore it. It's basically the same tactic of putting pressure on politicians by mimicking a mass movement. The Koch brothers' organizations... were not successful to put it gently.
Matt, you might want to have a talk with your cohost. (This is from the Seattle Weeds. I was there and I remember this exchange.)
"Audience Member 7: Do you think that the best way to mobilize voters around caring about climate solutions and voting in people who care about climate solutions is stoking fear about what will happen if we don’t do those things or making it kind of a hip and possibly profitable endeavor? What’s best?
JC: I think the best way is to combine it with issues that, because when people talk about “kitchen-table issues”, generally that seems to exclude a lot of issues that are deeply important to most people who have kitchen tables and many who don’t. So I think that combining climate with talking about immigration or we’re talking about some of the criminal justice reform or talking about the military, I think that’s an effective way."
A while back, I saw a piece on a company that had developed technology to pull Carbon dioxide out of the air and either convert it to fuels or mineralized it. They interviewed a professor of engineering who insisted that the carbon capture company was one of the bad guys because they took fossil fuel company money and carbon capture was going to slow the transition to renewable energy.
The thing is that if some oil company is the only place you can get funding, what are you supposed to do? And if you’re having trouble convincing countries to drop fossil fuels, don’t you want to pursue the kind of technology that could pull the greenhouse gasses out of the air?
It seemed like dogmatism that was getting in the way of a possible solution that might be more acceptable to the general public and is more likely to be feasible.
Is it to change the way these activists will behave in the future? If so, it won't work. You're just reducing your influence with them by being needlessly mean and rude.
Is it to advance your stated cause? If so, it won't work. You're just giving those you disagree with ammunition to prevent progress on these issues.
Is it to raise your profile with people who already agree with you? Perhaps, that might work, but, I don't see the benefit in fighting climate change.
What do you hope to accomplish by writing this?
It seems you'd be better off arguing for the policies you believe in, arguing for the strategies you believe will work, and arguing against people on the right fighting against the things you believe in. I really just don't understand why you feel the need to publish things like this unless it's to engage with the centrist media circle jerk that does both immediate and longterm harm to the causes you would like to advance by inadvertently decreasing the popularity of the causes themselves.
I like your work and want you to be successful. This just seems at least as counterproductive as some of the poor tactics activists use to me.
I don't know whether or not Matt has thought about it in these terms, but I think the way this article could have value is in persuading regular Democratic politicians to ignore and indeed show contempt for these counterproductive left-wing activist groups. It's helpful to the Democrats to have the far left be as pissed off at them as possible, because the far left doesn't deliver votes when they're on your side, and everybody else in the country hates them. The only way they can hurt Democrats is if Democrats listen to them, so the more contempt Democrats have for them, the more inclined Democrats will be to do smart things.
I mean, that's certainly a strategy and a theory, but it defies logic and reason. Democrats are much better off spending their time telling the truth about the GOP than ever talking about the far left. Talking about the far left in a critical way decreases support for Democrats among both members of the far left who might otherwise be resigned to vote for a party they view as less than perfect and centrist swing voters who don't separate Democrats from the far left. It is an objectively poor strategy in a 2 party system.
What Matt is doing here is simply reinforcing GOP bad faith attacks on Democratic aligned groups.
If you're a Democrat in a swing district/state it's objectively stupid to do things that might cause you to lose support from anyone. Those Democrats need every leftist in their constituency tun out to vote for them. Being a jerk to leftists will not do that. It's dramatically better to simply ignore them.
But, more focused on this article itself, Matt will have a better time convincing people to do the things he wants by arguing affirmatively for the things he believes than he will by being mean to the organizations the people he wishes would change their behavior are donating to.
Ignoring the "bad" groups is the right answer. Showing contempt for them is the wrong answer. Show contempt for the right. They are the villains in this story.
Well, what if he influences some of us to not support these activists, to encourage them to take different strategies, etc.? What if he influences some of us to do our own activism differently? That might change things, right?
He's more likely to influence donors by telling them who to donate to not being mean and rude to the people they support. This is basic human psychology.
The entire tone of this article is rude and mean. The title is mean and rude. You can be critical without being hostile. Calling their actions "outbursts" is mean and rude. By being mean to those they support, Matt is making donors feel like he is being mean to them. We're tribal creatures.
I can't find MY's tweet that I'd like to link to here because Twitter search functionality is terrible. But I think Matt's focus both here and with previous criticism of these activists (e.g, Sunrise Movement) is pointed at their donors to defund these non-profits. Matt's point - it seems to me - is that their poor tactics are impeding implementation of his prioritized version of a Progressive agenda and defunding them seems like the surest path to mitigating the risk the pose.
Fair, but what he's doing here will just piss donors off and decrease his influence over them. A better, more effective approach is to highlight organizations doing work Matt believes in. In effect, he's doing the same thing he's complaining about.
Activists want attention. If Matt doesn't like their work, the most effective thing Matt can do is elevate their competitors instead of giving them the thing they want most. If people like Sunrise want the attention of people like Matt, but he doesn't give it to them, they will either change their behavior or whither away into obscurity.
Just like with a child, rewarding good behavior is more effective than punishing bad behavior. I'm pleading with Matt to do what works instead of going for an easy, satisfying, but ineffective emotional release.
I think the goal of articles like this is to plant a seed of doubt in advocacy non-profits into current strategies that may work against their own stated interests (even if they support intrinsic ones).
Yes, this article has pissed off a bunch of advocacy types. But that was the point. Pissing someone off is a way to get into their head. This article won't change their minds today, or tomorrow. But next year? Maybe.
The seed of doubt has been planted. Let the sprouting begin.
Perhaps, but a much more effective approach is bringing attention to the organizations Matt does think donors should support instead of pissing off activists by publicly criticizing them. My argument is that things like this do more harm than good and he should use his assets, skills and, talent to do things that are effective just as he is arguing organizations like Sunrise should.
Activists want attention. If you don't like what they are doing, you shouldn't give them what they want. Pissing people off is by being mean and rude is not an effective way to change their behavior. If anything, they got attention from this so they will keep doing things he doesn't like.
Activists make progress by increasing awareness. If we continue to hear about Sunrise, even in critique, it is more likely that we will support them. Matt is giving them what they want most. He is actually helping them, not hurting them on net. They way he could hurt them the most is by ignoring them and highlighting those that he does support.
I honestly don't know. I'm not an expert in everything he discusses here. I suspect he's mostly right, but there are some errors on the margins. His general theory of how to Democrats can win elections doesn't seem right to me based on my specific area of expertise, but I could be wrong.
But, being right is of marginal importance if you are trying to make political change. That's my point. That's why I want to understand what he hopes to achieve with this.
Perhaps, but movements in culture, media, commerce or politics start on the margins. To make change you need to start by aligning with people who care the most about something. If you think they are doing something wrong, you should try to convince them to change in a way that is likely to be successful. This will not do that.
But beyond that, people like Matt determine which fringe ideas cross the chasm into the mainstream. If he and other center left pundits think activists like this are being counterproductive to a cause they believe in, the best solution is to collectively ignore them and advance the activists, ideas, and tactics they think will be successful instead. Pieces like this are just counterproductive if his goal is to make climate change legislation more likely.
Which is why I want to know what his goal actually is.
If you tried to convince them and they kicked you out of the org's forum, that means your solution was ineffective. That doesn't mean that ANY solution can be effective, but it does mean this specific approach did not work. Learn from that and try something else.
Good leaders praise in public and criticize behind closed doors because that's what works. You can argue with human nature all you want, but I'd rather understand how humans work and behave accordingly. If his approach was likely to advance the causes we both care about, I'd support it, but this approach will not do that.
No, if you do not think they are effective/right/etc. then you should ignore them not elevate them by writing about them and sharing it with your large audience.
Activists do the things they do to get attention. If they do not, they will change or their movements will wither away and die.
The core reason for the CRT hysteria is that conservatives know that being aware of US history is harmful to the conservative movement so they don't want people to know about it.
Thank you! I appreciate it. I deeply care about many of the same things Matt does. That's why I pay to be here. I'm just begging him to do things that will have a better chance of achieving his stated goals. It undoubtedly feels good to write things like this. It just doesn't work.
While I agree with much of the pragmatism here, it feels like a lot of this could have been written about Civil Rights activists in the 60s. Do you think that they were similarly counterproductive by loudly pushing for less-incremental, overall-unpopular change?
This comment is commonly made regarding a whole host of social movements. MLK famously complained about moderates who urged caution. OTOH, there are any number of occasions when movements *did* move too fast and thereby caused a decisive backlash, or gained power on the basis of ideas that were too ideological and unfeasible, and so failed to govern effectively. I wonder if there are any good studies/books on how to tell the difference between occasions when activists should forge ahead aggressively, and when a more tactical, incremental approach would be more beneficial.
So my takeaway is that the loadstar should be reduced carbon emissions at the lowest cost per ton, identifying and prioritizing strategies on those metrics, and trying to implement/reduce barriers to as many of those high priority solutions as possible.
Since I haven't seen them mentioned here yet - I know Drawdown (drawdown.org) takes that approach, and I haven't come across many reviews or technical critiques disputing their analysis yet...
I thought Adam Serwer made the point well on The Weeds. Roughly, the point of politics isn't to give an accurate representation of history, it's to use parts of history in a way to win elections so you can pass legislation your constituents would prefer (and probably people who didn't vote for you might like too). Good episode, Matt. Good post here too.
Hi Matt, love the newsletter and the Weeds! Is it possible to elaborate on the claim that "these groups are basically fake and there’s no reason to defer to them." Intuitively, this resonates with some of my ambivalence that led me to leave the nonprofit sector altogether. But I suspect if I brought this claim back to my former nonprofit colleagues, many of them would absolutely see themselves as credible and legitimate messengers for the issues and communities that they claim to represent, and the sunrise people obviously would too, so where in your view are they going wrong? Is it something to do with the philanthropy/awarded funding they receive being incorrectly understood as a proxy for popular support for their positions? In other words, why do they see themselves as "real" if they are actually "fake?" Thanks!
I also like, as a matter of engineering habit, to imagine interesting scenarios and how technology affects that. Let us consider a heavily EV future and what would happen in the case of a mass evacuation event like an approaching hurricane. This will be interesting. Gridlock conditions often occur. Currently we often find people running out of gas. Which can be addressed by fuel bowsers. How is this going to work with EVs. Somebody going to bring you a five gallon can of electricity? How many charging stations will be available and where will they be? This might take a little planning.
One issue for fuel vehicles is that the basic "life support" system of cars (I don't know what the correct term is, but I mean everything not related to moving the vehicle - air conditioning, music, lights, etc.) is very inefficient to support with gasoline. Is it more efficient to support all this stuff with electricity, so that being stuck in traffic is less taxing on a battery than on a tank?
The principle plot thread that climate advocacy groups are loosing is that a combination of regulation, subsidies and public investments are just not going to get us to to reduction in net CO2 emissions without a tax on net emissions, too.
Taxing carbon is not "very, very, very unpopular" when you pair it with a dividend, as legislative proposals do. In fact, it's very popular! https://clcouncil.org/polling
There's a more basic emotional component at work here, and I think it dominates the behavior at play. Lots of active, inside people on the left fundamentally. . . just do not like to direct their attacking firepower on MAGA Republicans, especially on climate.
They believe it's "useless", and more to the point, depressing and upsetting to them personally. When your opponent simply does not concede the premises of your argument--or facts or reality, for that matter--engaging in politics with them loses its thrill very quickly and permanently.
Fighting inside the ranks, however, is much more gratifying. One can get more personal with center-leftists like you and I, and can actually get them to change more quickly. More importantly, it's a quicker route to power than the slow, boring (har!), depressing, aggravating, seemingly "useless" work of more general politics. Factional infighting feels more like a heroic crusade by comparison.
(Why, yes, I have been engaging with progressive Twitter somewhat lately. Why do you ask?? :P)
"... to meet our climate aspirations we not only need to replace 100% of existing fossil fuel electricity, but we also need to convert the entire fleet of vehicles for transporting people and cargo to electricity. That’s a lot of electricity!"
Plus convert all gas furnaces, water heaters, cooktops/ovens/ranges/stoves/grills, and clothes dryers to electric and cleanly generate enough extra electricity for all of those.
I can’t stand the Sunrise Movement, but I’m not sure how donors could have created what you consider to be more grass roots-y and accountable? Can you expand on that, or give an example of what you consider an effective grassroots movement?
Great article, more dunking on the potemkin grassroots please.
The Koch brothers tried doing this exact thing in the mid 2010s with Concerned Veterans for America, Americans For Prosperity, Generation Opportunity & others. I hadn't made the connection until I read your piece, but now I can't ignore it. It's basically the same tactic of putting pressure on politicians by mimicking a mass movement. The Koch brothers' organizations... were not successful to put it gently.
They put money behind the Tea Party movement, which I think arguably broke the country. So that’s effective, just not in a good way.
But yes, this is a standard tactic, and it’s not sinister. George Soros really does donate to a bunch of progressive activist groups.
Matt, you might want to have a talk with your cohost. (This is from the Seattle Weeds. I was there and I remember this exchange.)
"Audience Member 7: Do you think that the best way to mobilize voters around caring about climate solutions and voting in people who care about climate solutions is stoking fear about what will happen if we don’t do those things or making it kind of a hip and possibly profitable endeavor? What’s best?
JC: I think the best way is to combine it with issues that, because when people talk about “kitchen-table issues”, generally that seems to exclude a lot of issues that are deeply important to most people who have kitchen tables and many who don’t. So I think that combining climate with talking about immigration or we’re talking about some of the criminal justice reform or talking about the military, I think that’s an effective way."
A while back, I saw a piece on a company that had developed technology to pull Carbon dioxide out of the air and either convert it to fuels or mineralized it. They interviewed a professor of engineering who insisted that the carbon capture company was one of the bad guys because they took fossil fuel company money and carbon capture was going to slow the transition to renewable energy.
The thing is that if some oil company is the only place you can get funding, what are you supposed to do? And if you’re having trouble convincing countries to drop fossil fuels, don’t you want to pursue the kind of technology that could pull the greenhouse gasses out of the air?
It seemed like dogmatism that was getting in the way of a possible solution that might be more acceptable to the general public and is more likely to be feasible.
What is your goal with this article?
Is it to change the way these activists will behave in the future? If so, it won't work. You're just reducing your influence with them by being needlessly mean and rude.
Is it to advance your stated cause? If so, it won't work. You're just giving those you disagree with ammunition to prevent progress on these issues.
Is it to raise your profile with people who already agree with you? Perhaps, that might work, but, I don't see the benefit in fighting climate change.
What do you hope to accomplish by writing this?
It seems you'd be better off arguing for the policies you believe in, arguing for the strategies you believe will work, and arguing against people on the right fighting against the things you believe in. I really just don't understand why you feel the need to publish things like this unless it's to engage with the centrist media circle jerk that does both immediate and longterm harm to the causes you would like to advance by inadvertently decreasing the popularity of the causes themselves.
I like your work and want you to be successful. This just seems at least as counterproductive as some of the poor tactics activists use to me.
I don't know whether or not Matt has thought about it in these terms, but I think the way this article could have value is in persuading regular Democratic politicians to ignore and indeed show contempt for these counterproductive left-wing activist groups. It's helpful to the Democrats to have the far left be as pissed off at them as possible, because the far left doesn't deliver votes when they're on your side, and everybody else in the country hates them. The only way they can hurt Democrats is if Democrats listen to them, so the more contempt Democrats have for them, the more inclined Democrats will be to do smart things.
I mean, that's certainly a strategy and a theory, but it defies logic and reason. Democrats are much better off spending their time telling the truth about the GOP than ever talking about the far left. Talking about the far left in a critical way decreases support for Democrats among both members of the far left who might otherwise be resigned to vote for a party they view as less than perfect and centrist swing voters who don't separate Democrats from the far left. It is an objectively poor strategy in a 2 party system.
What Matt is doing here is simply reinforcing GOP bad faith attacks on Democratic aligned groups.
If you're a Democrat in a swing district/state it's objectively stupid to do things that might cause you to lose support from anyone. Those Democrats need every leftist in their constituency tun out to vote for them. Being a jerk to leftists will not do that. It's dramatically better to simply ignore them.
But, more focused on this article itself, Matt will have a better time convincing people to do the things he wants by arguing affirmatively for the things he believes than he will by being mean to the organizations the people he wishes would change their behavior are donating to.
Ignoring the "bad" groups is the right answer. Showing contempt for them is the wrong answer. Show contempt for the right. They are the villains in this story.
Well, what if he influences some of us to not support these activists, to encourage them to take different strategies, etc.? What if he influences some of us to do our own activism differently? That might change things, right?
He's more likely to influence donors by telling them who to donate to not being mean and rude to the people they support. This is basic human psychology.
What do you see here that’s rude, as opposed to critical? In particular, how is he being rude to the donors themselves?
The entire tone of this article is rude and mean. The title is mean and rude. You can be critical without being hostile. Calling their actions "outbursts" is mean and rude. By being mean to those they support, Matt is making donors feel like he is being mean to them. We're tribal creatures.
I can't find MY's tweet that I'd like to link to here because Twitter search functionality is terrible. But I think Matt's focus both here and with previous criticism of these activists (e.g, Sunrise Movement) is pointed at their donors to defund these non-profits. Matt's point - it seems to me - is that their poor tactics are impeding implementation of his prioritized version of a Progressive agenda and defunding them seems like the surest path to mitigating the risk the pose.
Fair, but what he's doing here will just piss donors off and decrease his influence over them. A better, more effective approach is to highlight organizations doing work Matt believes in. In effect, he's doing the same thing he's complaining about.
Activists want attention. If Matt doesn't like their work, the most effective thing Matt can do is elevate their competitors instead of giving them the thing they want most. If people like Sunrise want the attention of people like Matt, but he doesn't give it to them, they will either change their behavior or whither away into obscurity.
Just like with a child, rewarding good behavior is more effective than punishing bad behavior. I'm pleading with Matt to do what works instead of going for an easy, satisfying, but ineffective emotional release.
Wait, how do you know that he will turn off donors?
Basic psychology. He might deter some with this approach, but he'll lose influence with more.
I think the goal of articles like this is to plant a seed of doubt in advocacy non-profits into current strategies that may work against their own stated interests (even if they support intrinsic ones).
Yes, this article has pissed off a bunch of advocacy types. But that was the point. Pissing someone off is a way to get into their head. This article won't change their minds today, or tomorrow. But next year? Maybe.
The seed of doubt has been planted. Let the sprouting begin.
Perhaps, but a much more effective approach is bringing attention to the organizations Matt does think donors should support instead of pissing off activists by publicly criticizing them. My argument is that things like this do more harm than good and he should use his assets, skills and, talent to do things that are effective just as he is arguing organizations like Sunrise should.
Activists want attention. If you don't like what they are doing, you shouldn't give them what they want. Pissing people off is by being mean and rude is not an effective way to change their behavior. If anything, they got attention from this so they will keep doing things he doesn't like.
I'd like to think that at least some activists want to make progress on their causes, and that those activists will be open to the criticisms here.
Activists make progress by increasing awareness. If we continue to hear about Sunrise, even in critique, it is more likely that we will support them. Matt is giving them what they want most. He is actually helping them, not hurting them on net. They way he could hurt them the most is by ignoring them and highlighting those that he does support.
But is Matt wrong?
I honestly don't know. I'm not an expert in everything he discusses here. I suspect he's mostly right, but there are some errors on the margins. His general theory of how to Democrats can win elections doesn't seem right to me based on my specific area of expertise, but I could be wrong.
But, being right is of marginal importance if you are trying to make political change. That's my point. That's why I want to understand what he hopes to achieve with this.
Perhaps, but movements in culture, media, commerce or politics start on the margins. To make change you need to start by aligning with people who care the most about something. If you think they are doing something wrong, you should try to convince them to change in a way that is likely to be successful. This will not do that.
But beyond that, people like Matt determine which fringe ideas cross the chasm into the mainstream. If he and other center left pundits think activists like this are being counterproductive to a cause they believe in, the best solution is to collectively ignore them and advance the activists, ideas, and tactics they think will be successful instead. Pieces like this are just counterproductive if his goal is to make climate change legislation more likely.
Which is why I want to know what his goal actually is.
If you tried to convince them and they kicked you out of the org's forum, that means your solution was ineffective. That doesn't mean that ANY solution can be effective, but it does mean this specific approach did not work. Learn from that and try something else.
Good leaders praise in public and criticize behind closed doors because that's what works. You can argue with human nature all you want, but I'd rather understand how humans work and behave accordingly. If his approach was likely to advance the causes we both care about, I'd support it, but this approach will not do that.
No, if you do not think they are effective/right/etc. then you should ignore them not elevate them by writing about them and sharing it with your large audience.
Activists do the things they do to get attention. If they do not, they will change or their movements will wither away and die.
The core reason for the CRT hysteria is that conservatives know that being aware of US history is harmful to the conservative movement so they don't want people to know about it.
Thank you! I appreciate it. I deeply care about many of the same things Matt does. That's why I pay to be here. I'm just begging him to do things that will have a better chance of achieving his stated goals. It undoubtedly feels good to write things like this. It just doesn't work.
While I agree with much of the pragmatism here, it feels like a lot of this could have been written about Civil Rights activists in the 60s. Do you think that they were similarly counterproductive by loudly pushing for less-incremental, overall-unpopular change?
This comment is commonly made regarding a whole host of social movements. MLK famously complained about moderates who urged caution. OTOH, there are any number of occasions when movements *did* move too fast and thereby caused a decisive backlash, or gained power on the basis of ideas that were too ideological and unfeasible, and so failed to govern effectively. I wonder if there are any good studies/books on how to tell the difference between occasions when activists should forge ahead aggressively, and when a more tactical, incremental approach would be more beneficial.
So my takeaway is that the loadstar should be reduced carbon emissions at the lowest cost per ton, identifying and prioritizing strategies on those metrics, and trying to implement/reduce barriers to as many of those high priority solutions as possible.
Since I haven't seen them mentioned here yet - I know Drawdown (drawdown.org) takes that approach, and I haven't come across many reviews or technical critiques disputing their analysis yet...
I thought Adam Serwer made the point well on The Weeds. Roughly, the point of politics isn't to give an accurate representation of history, it's to use parts of history in a way to win elections so you can pass legislation your constituents would prefer (and probably people who didn't vote for you might like too). Good episode, Matt. Good post here too.
Hi Matt, love the newsletter and the Weeds! Is it possible to elaborate on the claim that "these groups are basically fake and there’s no reason to defer to them." Intuitively, this resonates with some of my ambivalence that led me to leave the nonprofit sector altogether. But I suspect if I brought this claim back to my former nonprofit colleagues, many of them would absolutely see themselves as credible and legitimate messengers for the issues and communities that they claim to represent, and the sunrise people obviously would too, so where in your view are they going wrong? Is it something to do with the philanthropy/awarded funding they receive being incorrectly understood as a proxy for popular support for their positions? In other words, why do they see themselves as "real" if they are actually "fake?" Thanks!
I also like, as a matter of engineering habit, to imagine interesting scenarios and how technology affects that. Let us consider a heavily EV future and what would happen in the case of a mass evacuation event like an approaching hurricane. This will be interesting. Gridlock conditions often occur. Currently we often find people running out of gas. Which can be addressed by fuel bowsers. How is this going to work with EVs. Somebody going to bring you a five gallon can of electricity? How many charging stations will be available and where will they be? This might take a little planning.
One issue for fuel vehicles is that the basic "life support" system of cars (I don't know what the correct term is, but I mean everything not related to moving the vehicle - air conditioning, music, lights, etc.) is very inefficient to support with gasoline. Is it more efficient to support all this stuff with electricity, so that being stuck in traffic is less taxing on a battery than on a tank?
I think this critique of the Climate movement can basically be hefted onto large swaths of the Democratic coalition.
An excellent article, and brave of Matt to write.