Policy experts and policymakers generally have a problem whereby they look for single, large solutions to complex problems. This one-size-fits-all thinking pervades all aspects of American society, but it seems especially prevalent in environmental policy — particularly anything related to climate.
The global nature of climate change somehow convinces environmentalists that the only proper responses are global and universal.
We saw this with lightbulbs. Environmentalists could have focused on the efficiency of bulbs that are always on and hard to change — say, the bulbs in public libraries or parking garages — which make the added efficiency and lifespan more valuable, and the harm from switching on and off a non-factor. Instead, environmentalists messed with the bulbs in people’s houses, which turn on and off more.
Blanket bans and mandates of certain technologies often undermine the goal of a regulation, or increase costs far more than the benefits. Different people live different lives. Work, location, family situation, and a thousand other factors determine how we cook, use electricity, and how we travel.
A year ago, I posted on Twitter about the ways in which plug-in electric cars are really inapt for many circumstances and got this head-scratching reply.
Maybe he thinks everyone going 300 miles is taking a work trip from Washington, D.C., to Boston or a weekend jaunt from L.A. to Vegas. But when my family travels 300 miles, we are often going into some small, little-traveled mountain town where the vacation rentals are cheap because few people go there. Also, we need to be able to stop at our leisure for bathroom breaks and leg stretches, and we need to bring a ton of stuff for our dogs and six kids.
I wrote a piece last summer headlined, “Environmentalists need to understand that not everyone is like them.”
Maryland and California are trying to make the gasoline-powered car extinct, which is the height of one-size-fits-all folly.
Urbanist writer Kea Wilson has a more nuanced approach in a new article headlined, “We Should Stop Subsidizing EVs For All and Focus on ‘Super-Drivers.’”
Citing a report by a group that advocates plug-in cars, Wilson writes: “Roughly 10 percent of U.S. motorists — or 21 million people — are driving an average of 110 miles every day….
“Most existing electric vehicle incentives, though, don’t successfully target those fossil fuel ‘super-drivers….’ Instead, subsidies tend to opt for a wide-reaching strategy that seeks to put every American in an e-car regardless of how much they drive. In practice, since tax credits are non-refundable and historically have only applied to new cars, that means that pretty much only the wealthiest Americans take advantage, whether they consume a lot of gasoline or not.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Now, of course, some super-users are really bad targets for EVs — say, the person whose 110 miles-a-day average is really two weekly trips of 335 miles. But an Uber driver who has a garage at home, or an Amazon delivery driver — they really might be optimal adopters of EVs.
If more environmentalists can accept that not everyone needs to live the way the environmentalists wish they lived, they might have more success.