Jeremy Clarkson: Just been for a walk round the farm and I’m a bit alarmed by how few butterflies there are.
Something is afoot.
Danny Wallace: Diesel-smelling Top Gear host who threatened climate protestors misses butterflies.
To be fair. His farming ventures have moved his opinion on climate in a positive direction.
But have they? His insistence at this point is that he doesn’t have to do anything, or change anything, science will “solve the issue”. Nothing better than someone who thinks any mess they make can be cleaned up by someone else so why bother trying to make any changes that makes your life slightly less convenient?
He added: ‘I won’t drive a Tesla. I’ve got probably 10 cars, all with V8 engines. I don’t think electric cars solve anything. Science is going to be needed here, not politics. Science will solve it eventually. Always does.’
https://metro.co.uk/2024/04/29/problem-jeremy-clarksons-global-warming-joke-20736068/
To be fair. His farming ventures have moved his opinion on climate in a positive direction.
He’s right about electric cars not solving anything but wrong about politics not solving it. Science has already provided the solutions like over a decade ago but no one is willing to implement it.
No it’s capitalism and the car industry that wants to continue selling cars that are pushing for EVs.
Cars in general are bad for the environment and the people around them. EVs are a bit better than internal combustion, but it’s not a miracle.
EVs still emit tons of rubber particles because of tire shedding, they are heavier and require more energy to move around, they still require vast amounts of paved parking and roads, and they can still crush pedestrians and animals.
If you have to have a car, it should be an EV if possible, but it would be better to reduce the amount of cars in cities and around us.
I’m really tired of this pervasive fantasy where people actually think we can get rid of all cars and bring public transport to the masses in the space of a year.
We live in a car centric society and changing that is going to take a decade at the minimum.
EVs are our best solutions currently, we don’t have time to wait for trains or hydrogen. We should absolutely start trying to phase cars out completely but that doesn’t negate the fact that saying “EVs don’t help” is essentially being an oil barons mouthpiece.
changing that is going to take a decade at the minimum.
And that’s way too optimistic. Given the life expectancy of modern autos, the “quick” option of EVs will be a couple decades or more.
Building car-centric towns and cities has taken most of a century of constant growth. Now those cities exist and we no longer have the growth so rebuilding them is a much bigger job. We’re talking many decades, likely a century or more. In the meantime we can’t afford to be stuck with ICE.
Although maybe you’re not from the US so the problem is not as severe. Here in Massachusetts we also have the advantage of so many towns and cities being built out before cars. We’re “behind” on being car-centric so hopefully can fix that trend more quickly
Uhh isn’t progressing to electric cars… science progressing to help solve the issue? What a strange train of thoughts.
Substitute religion out for technology and this is still meaningful
Uhh isn’t progressing to electric cars… science progressing to help solve the issue?
No. It isn’t.
It’s capitalism shifting their private transport scam from an energy source that they exploited the living crap out off to another that they haven’t mismanaged into the ground yet.
I know someone who has a similar outlook (climate change is real but science will solve it, so we don’t need to change anything). Basically anything science produces toward that end they will move the goalpost and say it’s not worth pursuing because science will fix it.
It is essentially their way of making climate change denialism seem reasonable and open-minded. I think if somebody came up with a miracle device to magically reverse everything, they’d complain it’s too costly at any price.
It is essentially their way of making climate change denialism seem reasonable and open-minded. I think if somebody came up with a miracle device to magically reverse everything, they’d complain it’s too costly at any price.
Yup. When/if we do find a way to dial back global warming, billionaires will be screaming for us to not use it because they’ve already found ways to make money off of people dying.
What he thinks will happen is Tony Stark inventing a… Thing. And this Thing will make the climate better by doing… Stuff. And no one will have to change or do anything or even think about it because this Thing will do the Stuff for them.
I don’t think electric cars solve anything. Science is going to be needed here, not politics. Science will solve it eventually. Always does.
There are tons of people with that opinion that “the eggheads will just figure it out like they always do”. IMO it’s incorrect, but people on all ends of the political spectrum have that take.
IMO he’s correct that individual action doesn’t matter, but he’s wrong that political action doesn’t matter. It reminds me of the gun hobbyists in the US who are against gun control because they don’t want their enjoyment of their hobby to be constrained by laws intended to get less people killed. There are solutions here where you can have your cake and eat it, but you just don’t want to decouple the fantasy of your hobby from the reality of it.
There’s nothing wrong with enjoying guns or cars as a hobby, but you should also acknowledge that their widespread presence is a net negative for society and regulating them would be a good thing for the world in the long run. It doesn’t mean you can’t have your toys.
Certainly nobody who drives their car to the office every day on a congested freeway is thinking about how fun it is to drive a V8. Less car dependency and more public transit would mean less cars on the road which would make driving more fun for petrol heads like Clarkson anyway. He should want more public transit, cyclist infrastructure, etc. It would benefit him indirectly even as a petrol head.
What I find funniest though is when he says in that quote in the same breath “electric cars don’t solve anything” and then “science will solve the problem”. My brother in Christ, science made the electric cars!