Tom Bleakney is an evangelist. You ask, and he will take you for a ride in his royal blue Tesla, accelerating rapidly on the freeway ramp a smile on his face. He'll put it self-driving mode, but his hands remain on the wheel. He doesn't really trust it.
Bleakney wants us all to drive an electric car, and his fingers quickly navigate to the car's panel to show the hundreds of mostly newly created charging stations. The mapping system tells traveler how to plan needed refueling stops along a route. The Tesla navigation system even calculates the amount of energy needed to climb hills.
(More than 79,000 charging stations have been installed in California. A picture of Bleakney’s dashboard display is in the banner at the top of this article.)
And while he's at it, he will tell you not to eat beef or fly in jet airplanes. He wants you to use a heat pump instead of a gas fired furnace. And he loves solar panels, including the ones he donated to CPC. Bleakney is a bit of a nag, which is to say that he is slightly ahead of his time and impatient that the rest of us haven't caught up.
Tom Bleakney at the wheel.
Although he views the planet with alarm, he relishes the recent rapid progress. As David Wallace-Wells wrote in a New York Times opinion piece, electric vehicle sales may have grown by 60 percent in 2022: 30 million EV's on the road, up from 10 million in 2020. In California, EV's constituted nearly 18 percent of new vehicles, compared to 6 percent nationally. More than 79,000 charging stations have been installed in the state.
Even though California leads the United States, other countries are far ahead. In Norway, 80 percent of new cars are electric; in Germany, 55 percent of new cars registered in December were electric or hybrid. China's rise has also been dramatic; the country's only manufacturer, BYD, has surpassed Tesla for global market share.
EV growth surprised Bleakney and most other analysts. The global market share for EV's was not projected to top 10 percent before 2030. It is already there, and headed toward 40 percent by the decade's end. Battery manufacturing has also grown rapidly. Canary Media reports, commitments to making batteries and their components in North America grew to nearly $17 billion between the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022 and the end of that year.
A lifelong scientist, Bleakney began as a skeptic, believing that the earth would balance itself. But one night in a lecture hall at Cal Tech, the data overwhelmed him. It "opened my eyes to the whole global warming threat," he told me. Then, he follows with a science lesson that made him believe that the planet would not return to equilibrium unless humans behaved much differently. "You learn new things. The physics would be exciting if it were not so depressing."
Still, he says, progress is possible. Electric car adoption is one example, new research on the resilience of the biosphere is another. And finally, Bleakney has lived long enough to see people change their minds. Harvey Mudd, his own college, now has a strong program in climate science and offers resources to students and the interested public.
Interestingly, The Inflation Reduction Act may provide as much as $1-trillion in tax incentives, much of it headed to traditionally conservative, climate skeptic states. Georgia and Idaho lead the pack. As Wallace-Wells writes, culturally "red" may link with environmentally "green." Per capita, the legislation is likely to spend about twice as much in Republican states as in Democratic ones.
Environmentalism is a Christian imperative, he says. "As a Christian, you need to be a good guardian of the environment. He adds that people are going to have to make some lifestyle compromises. "We can't save the planet by collecting bottlecaps." Then, with a twinkle in his eye, he notes that the compromises are not as tough as they were even a few years ago. With electric cars and other energy sources, technology is making adoption easier and more attractive.
Bleakney wants environmentalism to be part of his faith and his legacy. He continues to battle cancer. So far he's fought it to a draw, but he views his future the same way as he looks at the planet, with a mixture of hope and despair.
Meditate on that.
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As is our custom, CPC members and others gather each Friday morning at 8 am Pacific time for 24 minutes of Centering Prayer. Please join us. If you have not registered you can do so at Meditation Chapel https://meditationchapel.org. If you would like me to handle the registration process, please send me an email: charlestaylorkerchner@gmail.com
Sources:
David Wallace-Wells New York Times opinion article, January 11, 2023. Access limited to subscribers. https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=253&emc=edit_dww_20230111&instance_id=82451&nl=david-wallace-wells&productCode=DWW®i_id=702848&segment_id=122243&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2Fff1511fe-7937-59a5-b351-934e70911c13&user_id=c0818241b475423556f2ca42a38946c2
David Wallace-Wells, New York Times opinion article, March 8, 2023. Access limited to subscribers. https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=253&emc=edit_dww_20230308&instance_id=87172&nl=david-wallace-wells&productCode=DWW®i_id=702848&segment_id=127219&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2Fbdb17baa-d97e-588a-b11e-142070c7d7b6&user_id=c0818241b475423556f2ca42a38946c2
https://electrek.co/2022/10/27/electric-cars-reach-new-car-sales-california-compare-us/
Lelia N. Hawkins, Harvey Mudd College, https://www.hmc.edu/chemistry/faculty-staff/hawkins/facing-climate-change/
How much carbon does your airplane travel add to the environment? (A long trip will produce as much carbon as a person in a poor country creates in a year.) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2019/jul/19/carbon-calculator-how-taking-one-flight-emits-as-much-as-many-people-do-in-a-year
How much pollution are your bank account and credit cards creating? https://thirdact.org/act/bank-emissions-calculator/
PHotos:
Banner and Tom Bleakney photos by CTK