"When the pandemic first hit, many considered the rapid development of an effective vaccine as only a remote possibility. After all, an HIV vaccine has still not been developed. Yet today, only a year later, there is a sliver of light. The flurry of effective Covid-19 vaccines that have emerged from clinical trials — and with other new vaccines in the pipeline to deal with new variants — means there is a real prospect that the pandemic may end soon.
There is an important lesson here for how the world could tackle the next big challenge facing humanity: climate change.
One of the key components of the success of the vaccine programme has been a lack of interference from politicians. True, the US government’s Warp Speed programme provided some important logistical help. Yet, in many ways, governments everywhere did the bare minimum — and we’re all the better for it. Instead of dictating how the vaccine should immunise, how much it should cost or who should make it, politicians identified the problem that needed solving and wrote the cheques to make it happen. The rest was down to scientists.
Using a similar approach would be a huge step forward in our quest to tackle climate change. Having spent over four decades in the auto industry, I’ve seen my share of well-intended political initiatives having a negative impact on the ultimate objective. Diesel is the most high-profile example.
In the early 2000s, the UK provided incentives to motorists to purchase diesel cars. The reasoning was that they use less fuel than petrol vehicles, therefore they were an environmentally friendly alternative. Less than a decade later, though, and the truth has proved very different. Diesel engines produce several times more nitrogen dioxide than petrol cars, irritating lungs and causing breathing difficulties.
The crux of the diesel saga was that politicians overstepped their mark. Instead of identifying the problem, writing the cheques and leaving much of the rest to scientists and engineers — as they have done with vaccines — they fatefully dictated what they believed to be the solution.
Today, we face a similar challenge. When I worked at Nissan, the Japanese carmaker, I was responsible for the launch of the world’s first mass-market electric vehicle, the Leaf. It will therefore come as no surprise that I am a vocal advocate for electric cars and the role they can and will play in helping to achieve a healthier planet. Yet I also urge caution on policymakers who view electric vehicles as the only way towards a cleaner future — at least for transport, which accounted for a third of the UK’s carbon dioxide emissions in 2019.
Climate Capital
Where climate change meets business, markets and politics. Explore the FT’s coverage here
The UK government has done its bit by defining the problem and setting the ambitious goals of banning the sale of combustion engine cars by 2030 and a net zero emissions economy by 2050. Now, it has to encourage a competitive environment that sees engineers battle it out to discover and develop multiple technologies to reach that goal. Electric vehicles may not be the best way.
Hydrogen, for example, could outperform batteries for efficiency when it comes to heavy goods vehicles and long-haul buses. Synthetic fuels may well continue to provide the drama, noise and excitement that make sports cars so special. And there will no doubt be engineers and scientists whose research will see them stumble upon the application of an environmentally friendly fuel that no one previously thought possible. In other words, politicians must avoid putting all of their eggs into one glovebox.
If there is one good thing to have come out of this pandemic, it’s the setting of a new precedent for a much healthier and fruitful relationship between politicians and scientists and engineers. Let’s not stop here."
I don't follow this logic regarding this vaccine analogy. The government literally banned the use of many safe and effective vaccines entirely for almost a year, and every government has still banned some. They set the price, have banned it's sale.
Regardless of what you think of the vaccine effort, I don't think anyone would look at the covid vaccine effort and see it as the government staying out of it.
If most countries weren't doing lockdowns all over the world to the tune of billions of dollars lost - the incentives for developing vaccines so quickly would be much smaller.
Giving a grant for 10 million dollars to 10 companies that might have a shot at developing the vaccine is one thing. Banning almost all business worldwide till the vaccine is developed redirects almost all the money in the world towards developing that vaccine.
If governments banned fossil fuels ignoring the economic consequences for a few years - we would solve global warming no problem. The alternatives would get developed in record time because of how much money they would be immediately worth.
But the suffering in the meantime caused by the regulations don't seem as justifiable in case of global warming as it did in case of Covid lockdowns, so governments won't do this for global warming (or at least - not until people start dying of global warming in big numbers).
The alternatives would be so expensive that nobody could afford them. Without fossile fuels nobody would even bother to build them because of the cost and trouble. Without fossile fuels there wouldn´t even be any planes and trucks available to deliver materials for development and production. Ban fossile fuels and civilization will collapse in a day.
Weren't the RNA vaccines developed in a matter of days? It's the testing that takes awhile and there's no way to speed that up since the goal is to validate effectiveness and side effects over time.
With banning fossil fuels, how are you so sure it would be a net gain? I think you underestimate how dependent much of the world is on fossil fuels. Are you willing to let populations starve or freeze to death to solve global warming?
"Obviously" it would not be a total ban, even with strict lockdowns, essential workers (like supermarket workers, food truckers) were still allowed to work.
One of the thing that bothers me about the Western environmental movement is its short-sightedness. Literally "out of sight, out of mind".
A lot of polluting industries have been moved overseas, recyclation of waste was in practice done by poorly paid third worlders, palm oil and wood from former pristine wilderness counts as "renewable", ugh. Germans dump their waste to Poland or Czechia to burn. Etc. etc.
And both batteries and electricity production come with a huge environmental impact. To sell electric cars as green plays into the already bad shortsightedness.
When capitalists do the same and mine some strip of land bare, they are rightfully pilloried and accused of reckless greed. But the same happens out of putatively good intentions and is nowhere near as criticized.
Usually the people making the policies aren't the same people who move the stuff "out of sight".
> And both batteries and electricity production come with a huge environmental impact.
Batteries are compact, valuable objects that are used for years, then can be used in stationary applications for a few more years (so what if it has only 70% capacity - still plenty enough to serve as a network balancing battery) and then recycled.
And "environmental impact" of electric energy is several times lower than it could be if we used internal combustion engines for everything instead of centralizing them. ICE in cars have about 20-30% efficiency. Electric engines are over 90% efficient and big turbines in fossil-fuel based powerplants achieve 50-60% efficiency.
If we use the same amount of oil to drive a powerplant and then drive a car on that energy - it would drive almost twice as far as if you just used it to power a normal ICE car.
What the headline says: Electric vehicles may not be the climate answer after all.
What the story actually says: Hydrogen, for example, could outperform batteries for efficiency when it comes to heavy goods vehicles and long-haul buses. Synthetic fuels may well continue to provide the drama, noise and excitement that make sports cars so special.
This title is silly. 100% of the people who care about climate will tell you there is no silver bullet. No single thing is the climate answer. But electric vehicles will be part of a larger answer, there is no doubt about that.
16 comments
[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 42.4 ms ] thread"When the pandemic first hit, many considered the rapid development of an effective vaccine as only a remote possibility. After all, an HIV vaccine has still not been developed. Yet today, only a year later, there is a sliver of light. The flurry of effective Covid-19 vaccines that have emerged from clinical trials — and with other new vaccines in the pipeline to deal with new variants — means there is a real prospect that the pandemic may end soon. There is an important lesson here for how the world could tackle the next big challenge facing humanity: climate change. One of the key components of the success of the vaccine programme has been a lack of interference from politicians. True, the US government’s Warp Speed programme provided some important logistical help. Yet, in many ways, governments everywhere did the bare minimum — and we’re all the better for it. Instead of dictating how the vaccine should immunise, how much it should cost or who should make it, politicians identified the problem that needed solving and wrote the cheques to make it happen. The rest was down to scientists. Using a similar approach would be a huge step forward in our quest to tackle climate change. Having spent over four decades in the auto industry, I’ve seen my share of well-intended political initiatives having a negative impact on the ultimate objective. Diesel is the most high-profile example. In the early 2000s, the UK provided incentives to motorists to purchase diesel cars. The reasoning was that they use less fuel than petrol vehicles, therefore they were an environmentally friendly alternative. Less than a decade later, though, and the truth has proved very different. Diesel engines produce several times more nitrogen dioxide than petrol cars, irritating lungs and causing breathing difficulties. The crux of the diesel saga was that politicians overstepped their mark. Instead of identifying the problem, writing the cheques and leaving much of the rest to scientists and engineers — as they have done with vaccines — they fatefully dictated what they believed to be the solution. Today, we face a similar challenge. When I worked at Nissan, the Japanese carmaker, I was responsible for the launch of the world’s first mass-market electric vehicle, the Leaf. It will therefore come as no surprise that I am a vocal advocate for electric cars and the role they can and will play in helping to achieve a healthier planet. Yet I also urge caution on policymakers who view electric vehicles as the only way towards a cleaner future — at least for transport, which accounted for a third of the UK’s carbon dioxide emissions in 2019. Climate Capital
Where climate change meets business, markets and politics. Explore the FT’s coverage here The UK government has done its bit by defining the problem and setting the ambitious goals of banning the sale of combustion engine cars by 2030 and a net zero emissions economy by 2050. Now, it has to encourage a competitive environment that sees engineers battle it out to discover and develop multiple technologies to reach that goal. Electric vehicles may not be the best way. Hydrogen, for example, could outperform batteries for efficiency when it comes to heavy goods vehicles and long-haul buses. Synthetic fuels may well continue to provide the drama, noise and excitement that make sports cars so special. And there will no doubt be engineers and scientists whose research will see them stumble upon the application of an environmentally friendly fuel that no one previously thought possible. In other words, politicians must avoid putting all of their eggs into one glovebox. If there is one good thing to have come out of this pandemic, it’s the setting of a new precedent for a much healthier and fruitful relationship between politicians and scientists and engineers. Let’s not stop here."
Regardless of what you think of the vaccine effort, I don't think anyone would look at the covid vaccine effort and see it as the government staying out of it.
If most countries weren't doing lockdowns all over the world to the tune of billions of dollars lost - the incentives for developing vaccines so quickly would be much smaller.
Giving a grant for 10 million dollars to 10 companies that might have a shot at developing the vaccine is one thing. Banning almost all business worldwide till the vaccine is developed redirects almost all the money in the world towards developing that vaccine.
If governments banned fossil fuels ignoring the economic consequences for a few years - we would solve global warming no problem. The alternatives would get developed in record time because of how much money they would be immediately worth.
But the suffering in the meantime caused by the regulations don't seem as justifiable in case of global warming as it did in case of Covid lockdowns, so governments won't do this for global warming (or at least - not until people start dying of global warming in big numbers).
With banning fossil fuels, how are you so sure it would be a net gain? I think you underestimate how dependent much of the world is on fossil fuels. Are you willing to let populations starve or freeze to death to solve global warming?
How many test subjects were immunised at 3am?
If the testing was on the critical path, there would be no good reason to wait till 9am the next day to start testing.
Yet as far as I'm aware, no testing was done at 3am immediately after lab certification at 2:57am...
This is one example of many where the vaccine development effort fell far short of the effort society should have put into it.
IMO we should instead focus on options like a rapidly expanding trial.
Is it worth having a few people have to get up at an inconvenient time to save a thousand lives?
"The writer, a former chief executive of Aston Martin and chief operating officer of Nissan, is chairman of Switch Mobility"
There, now the thing is whole.
A lot of polluting industries have been moved overseas, recyclation of waste was in practice done by poorly paid third worlders, palm oil and wood from former pristine wilderness counts as "renewable", ugh. Germans dump their waste to Poland or Czechia to burn. Etc. etc.
And both batteries and electricity production come with a huge environmental impact. To sell electric cars as green plays into the already bad shortsightedness.
When capitalists do the same and mine some strip of land bare, they are rightfully pilloried and accused of reckless greed. But the same happens out of putatively good intentions and is nowhere near as criticized.
> And both batteries and electricity production come with a huge environmental impact.
Batteries are compact, valuable objects that are used for years, then can be used in stationary applications for a few more years (so what if it has only 70% capacity - still plenty enough to serve as a network balancing battery) and then recycled.
And "environmental impact" of electric energy is several times lower than it could be if we used internal combustion engines for everything instead of centralizing them. ICE in cars have about 20-30% efficiency. Electric engines are over 90% efficient and big turbines in fossil-fuel based powerplants achieve 50-60% efficiency.
If we use the same amount of oil to drive a powerplant and then drive a car on that energy - it would drive almost twice as far as if you just used it to power a normal ICE car.