Welcome to the Electric Revolution: Why Your Next Car Will Be Electric.
The ‘Pale Blue Dot’ is a photograph of Earth taken on Feb. 14, 1990, by NASA’s Voyager 1 space probe at a distance of 3.7 billion miles.
If you just bought a gasoline car it's likely the last time you ever will.
Electric cars came before the internal combustion engine. At the beginning of the last century, we were on a path to clean electric mobility, but then we took a massive wrong turn. The discovery of oil, and the gigantic hydrocarbon industry that followed, sealed the fate of our early electric cars and sent the internal combustion engine on an incredible journey. This journey gave humanity mobility, freedom, and great prosperity, but also a poisoned planet. The oil industry and the internal combustion focused automakers, have played a leading role in the willful destruction of our world, our air, our climate and possibly even threatening our survival on this rock.
Less than 20 years ago, the electric car sparked back into life with the obscure and little-known launch of Tesla Motors. Since then, the automotive industry has been turned on its head. Every indicator now confirms that we are in the middle of an electric revolution that reaches beyond just cars. Most people are unaware of the rapidly accelerating pace of this revolution and what it will mean for them. The revolution is about to go exponential.
Whilst it is still mostly misunderstood, the electric car and the parallel green revolution is going to bring fundamental change and huge opportunity. The electric car revolution does not solve all of our climate problems, but it is a big catalyst, not just for cars, but also for the entire energy industry upon which we developed society for the past 200 years. The way we moved, the way we produce electricity and the way we consumed in the 20th century will be changed beyond recognition by the mid-21st century; almost no area of life will remain untouched.
THE OVERVIEW EFFECT
The earth is a living, breathing, adapting, miracle spinning at roughly 1,000 miles per hour in the vacuum of space. It can self-heal, can repair the scars of earthquakes, volcanoes, and asteroid impacts. It’s beautiful and has a singularly astounding trait - survival.
It’s our home, and as far as we know, possibly harbouring the only active intelligent life in existence anywhere. The ‘Pale Blue Dot’ is a photograph of Earth taken on Feb. 14, 1990, by NASA’s Voyager 1 space probe at a distance of 3.7 billion miles. Astronomer Carl Sagan famously described this iconic photograph in his 1994 book of the same name with the opening lines “Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.”
Out of over seven billion of us, (and the roughly 100 billion who have ever lived), less than 600 people have been in space. When the Apollo 8 mission, in 1968, first travelled far enough for the astronauts to be able to see the full sphere of the earth, they experienced something dramatic and totally unprecedented. They called it the Overview Effect. Suddenly seeing our entire world; beautiful, blue, thriving and alone in the vast emptiness of space awoke a new, unfamiliar emotion.
I was lucky enough to meet Neil Armstrong in 2006 at a technology event in Dublin Ireland, he was happy to pose for a photo with me which really was a great privilege and memory in my life.
Space is hostile, alien, and unable to support life. A human would die in less than 20 seconds if exposed to outer space. With the absence of air pressure, our blood cannot remain a liquid in space and would boil from within, a very unpleasant, horrific, and swift death. Earth’s fine blue line, as first fully observed by the Apollo astronauts is all we have. That thin blue line wrapped around the earth is our atmosphere. Without it, life does not exist. It is delicate and needs to be protected and maintained, not destroyed. We are extremely vulnerable when viewed from a few hundred thousand kilometres in space. Our solitary, lonely world is unique. There is no planet B.
Our world is composed of the elements of the universe. Carbon is one of the most abundant of them. Nature has produced and stored away carbon for millennia before humans came along. We have released millions of years of stored carbon in a tiny fraction of Earth’s lifetime. Humans are consuming the Earth’s resources and jeopardising our future survival. Our population has more than doubled since man first walked on the moon in 1969. The impact of these extra four billion humans on our climate and air has been devastating.
Since the 1970s there has been a growing awareness of climate impact caused by human activity. With the establishment of organisations like Greenpeace and images of destroyed wildernesses, oil spills and air pollution, we have become aware of the damage that has been done, yet we continue apace. The Overview Effect has not reached many. Only now, as climate change is becoming more self-evident by the season, are we starting to realise and act. It may be too late. There is the possibility of survival and even thriving into the future, but only through immediate, significant action. The options are available, and life can be better, but first I will explain how we have poisoned the air we breathe and how the electric car can be one big part of the overall solution.
