Binary Thinking – The Enemy of Climate-Friendly Transportation Solutions

By Edward A. Sanchez — May 11, 2023

If you’ve spent any amount of time around The Watt Car, you’ll know that myself and Phil Royle, although both observers and generally advocates of transportation electrification, above all, are pragmatists. As much as people would like global transportation to magically transition to clean, renewable energy overnight, the reality of physics, logistics, supply chains, and other factors makes even the most well-intentioned and well-coordinated efforts a years or decades-long process.

I stumbled across a post on the site TheConversation.com – of which I am a fast fan – because of its pragmatic, reasoned view of hot topics, informed by facts and science, rather than the typical partisan fare of sensationalism, demagoguery, and FUD. In particular, I came across a post entitled, “The thinking error that makes people susceptible to climate change denial”.

The big-picture takeaways from the post are that partisans (the examples were predominantly conservative-leaning climate change deniers) fall into binary (all-or-nothing) thinking. The article specifically cites the recent cold temperatures in parts of the United States, the Texas winter of 2021 in particular, as an example that climate-change deniers latch onto as “proof” that climate change, and/or global warming, is a “hoax.”

Sometimes an all-or-nothing approach on either side of an equation can be a hindrance. (Image by Markus Spiske)

However, the objectively measured climate patterns over the last century show a clear rise in the average temperature, with a particularly pronounced uptick starting in the 1980s. You would think with several decades of fairly irrefutable scientific evidence, we would have moved past the partisan argy-bargy about climate change, and the necessity to take action.

Oh, but if only politics were that simple. There are deeply entrenched interests intent on protecting their investments and business models that know that rapid change in energy models could have a disruptive, if not catastrophic, effect on business, profits, and investor happiness.

If I could shift the narrative just a bit, it’s equally unhelpful when environmental activists call for complete bans on certain fuels and industries, sometimes with an irrationally short phase-out timeline. That’s not to say there won’t be scientific breakthroughs, improvements in energy and fueling infrastructure, and other developments that make the goal of carbon-neutral transportation and energy a reality.

Elon Musk famously tweeted in March 2020, “Physics is the law, everything else is a recommendation.” But physics is a tricky thing. Barring a major breakthrough, liquid hydrocarbon fuels (gasoline and diesel, predominantly) have a huge advantage over current batteries in regard to potential energy relative to volumetric size and weight. Of course, as discussed, the difference between liquid fuels and batteries is combustion basically eats up the storage medium of the energy as it consumes it, whereas batteries keep it intact.

The prospect of a 1,000-mile range pure-electric pickup truck seems like an impossible dream right now with the current state of battery technology. Not to mention what the recharge time would be on such a massive battery, or the fact that such a beast would likely be categorized as a commercial vehicle for its crushing weight. Cynics and doubters of EVs will cite that this feat has already been accomplished by Ram, with a trim of its Ram 1500 EcoDiesel pickup, a claim validated by automotive journalists.

Does that mean engineers should give up on working toward that goal? Not at all. But it won’t be achieved through magical thinking. It will be achieved through tireless research, trial and error, and numerous unsuccessful prototypes. Even if it is ultimately achieved, there will surely be doubters that bring up a “Yeah, but” edge case that tries to disprove the claim or downplay the achievement.

At the groundbreaking ceremony for Tesla’s new lithium processing plant outside Corpus Christi, Texas, Governor Greg Abbot was quoted as calling Elon Musk “the greatest entrepreneur on Earth.” Abbot is far from a peace-and-love naïve liberal environmental activist. Perhaps he’s just relishing the Lone Star State’s “win” over so-called-socialist California. But it shows even red state politicians are starting to “get” that green energy technologies are not just deluded idealistic dreams, but in fact good business. That’s a kind of green we can all get behind.

(Main image courtesy Tesla)

- Store - Podcast - Facebook - Google News - Twitter -