I have been pointing to several impending realizations about EVs for all too many years, and wondered when it would emerge and hit mainstream. I saw it with cogeneration and then gas cooling and was the first voice of reason but was followed pretty quickly by a band of industry practitioners. In every case, despite the economic fallout, these professionals aligned with me, and we brought reason to the situation.
Perhaps that is why I continue to write these blogs. Nobody has ever written me a response to argue with me, offering another lens to look through. So, I have wondered when the mood was going to mature about EVs. So with the plethora of hype articles indicating everyone was going to drive an EV shifting to an emerging recognition that it simply isn’t true, I expected the tone to be that EVs are just not for everyone.
I thought the tone would be collegiate since this is a complex subject. Well, just like just about everything else these days, it has devolved into accusations that everyone is corrupt. Today’s Wall Street Journal describes them as grifters, a term I simply have never heard or used. Here is what it means: A grifter is a person who swindles you by means of deception or fraud. synonyms: chiseler, defrauder, gouger, scammer, swindler.
This article from the Wall Street Journal offers that criticism and offers proof.
Critical thinking is hard work and requires a person to be willing to drop preconceived notions, long held traditions and beliefs. Let’s face it, we are tired of the complexity of modern life already, and don’t want to work that hard to learn new things. Plus, we are now so suspicious of anyone trying to convince us of anything, that we tend to turn off the inputs and drown out our confusions with our addictive modern methods of coping.
But, we also tend to forget that grifting is expensive, and we really can’t afford it. The price tags for these seemingly noble ideas are expensive, and worse yet they don’t yield the results we thought we were going to get.
So, does calling Biden a grifter get this into focus? Does calling Putin a thug change the world to a better place? After all, you would think President Obama would know the impact his comment would have on negotiations between our two countries.
As I consider our collective plight managing precious resources with ever growing needs I am reminded that we all face the same plight as the child on the beach throwing starfish back into the water. His father comes over and reminds her to look at the beach littered with starfish and says: “It won’t make any difference.” The child remarks: “It made a difference to this one!” and throws another starfish back into the sea.
My voice alone only makes a difference to a few here and there. Join me by raising your voices as well. Together we can fix these things.