Why do I share Sammy's initial instinct that "focusing on the ills of car culture would divert time and money away from arguably the world’s most important climate solution: electric vehicles?" Mostly because of the oil and gas industry's unmitigated, billion-dollar, multifaceted focus on getting each of us and our sons and daughters to use as much oil and gas as possible and at pace. My EV-activist community started advocating for EVs in 2002 because these zero-emission cars were....wait for it....ready! On the road! Available for purchase and increasingly so. Big Oil would fight to the end and hydrogen fuel cells were a distant possibility. And the climate clock was ticking. Our holy grail was to accelerate adoption. Yes, it is going to be a heavy lift to replace hundreds of millions of gas vehicles with EVs, but we can and must ramp it up right now--with immediate results. Every gas car off the road contributes to fewer asthma and cancer rates and a cooler planet. Rearranging our cities will take much, much longer, without such immediate effects. Today I preface every pro-EV statement I make by saying, "drive less," which I try to do myself. And no, it's not a zero-sum game. But, with that clock ticking, I can't in good conscience ignore this, as Sammy says: EVs are arguably "the world's most important climate solution," and "transportation is the largest source of climate pollution in the U.S." It's the world's second largest source. There are now more EV charge ports than gas pumps in CA, a new Nissan EV—with over 300 miles range—goes for $20k less than the average new gas car, and globally EV sales were up 25% last year. So yeah, let's do this now. It's my main focus.
I hear you on all of this, and also don't think you're too far off from what folks like Doug are advocating for, if you're already starting pro-EV statements with "drive less." There are lots of folks who are super passionate about EVs and climate more broadly, fighting one of the world's most important fights...and other folks who are super passionate about making their neighborhoods more livable, trying to shorten crosswalks and add protected bike lanes (stuff that can be done relatively quickly/easily). I think everybody's on the same team and can make the various problems more solvable.
Appreciate your thorough coverage of the issues around driving, EVs, and their climate impacts.
I’d add a few tangents:
- Home hunters should check the walkability and bikeability scores on sites like Zillow or Redfin. Living where daily needs are within walking or biking distance can boost health, and more desires for these neighborhoods encourages infill and mixed-use development.
- Buying local can help reduce vehicle miles traveled and support the local economy.
- Encourage your employer to install EV chargers. From what I’ve seen, employees love the convenience of charging at work, which often encourages more coworkers to change to EVs, and HR tends to treat on-site charging as a recruitment perk.
This column is great and presents important, complex issues. I want to suggest a follow-up topic. In the long run we should rebuild human communities to be more dense, leaving more space for nature and requiring less travel. But that major rebuilding will take a long time. In the meantime, expanding and promoting public transportation (electrified, of course, and more frequent and useable) should be a major focus of the climate movement. I hope you will cover people who are working on that and people who can testify to the benefits of improved and expanded public transit.
Thanks for this article and the perspective. I too enjoy Disneyland - both as a kid growing up in the L.A. area and as an adult. The change to EV vehicles in Autopia is long overdue and I hope, something that will help change "Tomorrowland" into something that reflects its original goal. For too long now this area has seemed more like "Yesterdayland" than a vision for the future.
I find these ideas very encouraging except for one thing: high-density housing. With high density comes noise, and noise is detrimental to the nervous system. We don't need more stress. There has to be a better way to be environmentally friendly (like getting rid of Air B&B and opening up those properties for permanent residence).
I hear where you're coming from on this, but also not sure there's an easy way out. Lots of research on housing shortages, sprawl and climate, and greater density is badly needs in lots of places for lots of reasons...anyone else want to weigh in? I haven't delved deep on the noise question before.
I'd like to expand on this a bit more. I live in the Conejo Valley. You might think it's quiet here but you'd be wrong. People let their dogs bark for hours. They give loud parties and blast music. They drive souped up cars and motorcycles. They run leaf blowers. There's construction. They scream when they play or swim. Sometimes I feel like I want to tear my eardrums out. I shake. I feel on the verge of a breakdown. I'm not the only one.
There's a lot of building here and people are really upset. The density brings not only noise but a lack of privacy, crowding, parking problems, traffic, pollution. There's stress on the water system. There aren't enough doctors. Medical personnel are quitting in droves. Stores and restaurants are closing. Emergency rooms are busier.
People moved here for the quiet, Sammy, and that's disappearing. Read Next Door and you'll see. We're overbuilding ourselves into gridlock, drought, and ill health. My husband and I don't go to things anymore because it's impossible to get to them. We truly do not need more building in Southern California. This is not anything like the place where I grew up and it pains me to say this, but we may very well leave in our old age because it's killing us.
"The fewer gas cars we need to replace, the lighter the lift."
This is key. Over 40,000 new gas cars are sold every single day in the US. All those brand new internal combustion engines will be pumping out climate change pollution as well as criteria pollutants that kill humans by the millions every year. Every time someone buys one of these cars, the factory makes another. With electric cars now cheaper than gas cars, it's important we stop buying any gas cars going forward and only buy EVs.
The internal combustion industry will completely stop making these engines in about ten years. After that, all new vehicles will be electric and powered by an ever-greening grid. But to get there, we need to keep pressure on the car industry by making sure our friends and family never buy a gas car again.
Hey Paul, thank you as always for reading. I'm curious, and for others reading these comments, what gives you the confidence that the auto industry will stop making internal combustion engine cars in about 10 years?
Hi Sammy, this is something I follow closely. After Tesla proved EVs could be better than any gas car, and then after 2018 when the Model 3 hit the roads, it became clear to leaders in China and Europe that electrified transportation was the end game. Every legacy car company raced to get EVs in their showrooms, and policy began pushing towards eliminating ICE (internal combustion engines). China, in particular, began building battery plants, installing infrastructure, and in a stroke of genius, they allowed Tesla to build a Tesla-owned car plant where several thousand Chinese engineers learned how Tesla makes the best cars in the world. Now there are dozens of Chinese EV companies making very good EVs for half the price of those sold here.
A few years ago, China proclaimed that no pure ICE vehicles will be sold after 2035, only EVs, plug-in hybrids, and fuel cells. Since fuel cells have failed completely in the market, that leaves EVs and PHEVs. PHEVs are a short bridge technology until charging infrastructure is fully built out, but that won't take long.
Europe has similarly concluded EVs are the end game. Norway is going to be the first country to stop selling ICE. After December 31st later this month, no new ICE cars will be sold in Norway. In 2023, the EU passed a law saying no new ICE can be sold after 2035.
The auto industry cannot wait until 2035 to change, they have to move fast. Tesla and BYD are grabbing global market share as fast as they can make the cars. Between the two companies, they should sell over 5 million EVs this year alone.
It's only in the US that people are ignorant about EVs. In China, over 50% of all new car sales are electric. In Europe, between 30%-60% are electric depending on the country. And of course Norway is at 100% now. The US is at a pathetic 10%.
The auto industry needs scale to be profitable. Sales of ICE are falling every year since 2017. There were about 30% fewer new ICE sold this year than in 2017. The momentum to end ICE sales is still in its infancy, but growing. This is where we need to apply pressure. Nobody who cares about the environment or democracy should ever buy a gas car again.
The end won't come in a linear fashion. In another 5 years, it'll be pretty clear to everyone that buying a new gas car is a very bad decision. Toward the end, no one will want to be the last one to buy a polluting, noisy, slow car that runs on oil when all their friends are driving spiffy new EVs that are vastly better and have no negative externalities.
Here is the latest from Lars Strandridder in his show, Best In Tesla. There is a clear trajectory of legacy ICE factories beginning to crash, and it's mostly being driven by China.
Why do I share Sammy's initial instinct that "focusing on the ills of car culture would divert time and money away from arguably the world’s most important climate solution: electric vehicles?" Mostly because of the oil and gas industry's unmitigated, billion-dollar, multifaceted focus on getting each of us and our sons and daughters to use as much oil and gas as possible and at pace. My EV-activist community started advocating for EVs in 2002 because these zero-emission cars were....wait for it....ready! On the road! Available for purchase and increasingly so. Big Oil would fight to the end and hydrogen fuel cells were a distant possibility. And the climate clock was ticking. Our holy grail was to accelerate adoption. Yes, it is going to be a heavy lift to replace hundreds of millions of gas vehicles with EVs, but we can and must ramp it up right now--with immediate results. Every gas car off the road contributes to fewer asthma and cancer rates and a cooler planet. Rearranging our cities will take much, much longer, without such immediate effects. Today I preface every pro-EV statement I make by saying, "drive less," which I try to do myself. And no, it's not a zero-sum game. But, with that clock ticking, I can't in good conscience ignore this, as Sammy says: EVs are arguably "the world's most important climate solution," and "transportation is the largest source of climate pollution in the U.S." It's the world's second largest source. There are now more EV charge ports than gas pumps in CA, a new Nissan EV—with over 300 miles range—goes for $20k less than the average new gas car, and globally EV sales were up 25% last year. So yeah, let's do this now. It's my main focus.
I hear you on all of this, and also don't think you're too far off from what folks like Doug are advocating for, if you're already starting pro-EV statements with "drive less." There are lots of folks who are super passionate about EVs and climate more broadly, fighting one of the world's most important fights...and other folks who are super passionate about making their neighborhoods more livable, trying to shorten crosswalks and add protected bike lanes (stuff that can be done relatively quickly/easily). I think everybody's on the same team and can make the various problems more solvable.
this article was extraordinary. Goofy was great too. You achieved “tikun olam”re: Autopia Thank you sir for your climate colored goggles.
Thank you!!
Appreciate your thorough coverage of the issues around driving, EVs, and their climate impacts.
I’d add a few tangents:
- Home hunters should check the walkability and bikeability scores on sites like Zillow or Redfin. Living where daily needs are within walking or biking distance can boost health, and more desires for these neighborhoods encourages infill and mixed-use development.
- Buying local can help reduce vehicle miles traveled and support the local economy.
- Encourage your employer to install EV chargers. From what I’ve seen, employees love the convenience of charging at work, which often encourages more coworkers to change to EVs, and HR tends to treat on-site charging as a recruitment perk.
Love these suggestions, thank you for sharing!
This column is great and presents important, complex issues. I want to suggest a follow-up topic. In the long run we should rebuild human communities to be more dense, leaving more space for nature and requiring less travel. But that major rebuilding will take a long time. In the meantime, expanding and promoting public transportation (electrified, of course, and more frequent and useable) should be a major focus of the climate movement. I hope you will cover people who are working on that and people who can testify to the benefits of improved and expanded public transit.
100% agree! Definitely want to get more into this. Thank you, Jean.
Thanks for this article and the perspective. I too enjoy Disneyland - both as a kid growing up in the L.A. area and as an adult. The change to EV vehicles in Autopia is long overdue and I hope, something that will help change "Tomorrowland" into something that reflects its original goal. For too long now this area has seemed more like "Yesterdayland" than a vision for the future.
Thank you for reading! If you're interested, I shared some more clean energy-related ideas for what Tomorrowland could be in this piece last year... https://www.latimes.com/environment/newsletter/2024-04-02/column-disneyland-is-ditching-gas-cars-at-autopia-its-a-great-first-step-for-tomorrowland-boiling-point
I find these ideas very encouraging except for one thing: high-density housing. With high density comes noise, and noise is detrimental to the nervous system. We don't need more stress. There has to be a better way to be environmentally friendly (like getting rid of Air B&B and opening up those properties for permanent residence).
I hear where you're coming from on this, but also not sure there's an easy way out. Lots of research on housing shortages, sprawl and climate, and greater density is badly needs in lots of places for lots of reasons...anyone else want to weigh in? I haven't delved deep on the noise question before.
I'd like to expand on this a bit more. I live in the Conejo Valley. You might think it's quiet here but you'd be wrong. People let their dogs bark for hours. They give loud parties and blast music. They drive souped up cars and motorcycles. They run leaf blowers. There's construction. They scream when they play or swim. Sometimes I feel like I want to tear my eardrums out. I shake. I feel on the verge of a breakdown. I'm not the only one.
There's a lot of building here and people are really upset. The density brings not only noise but a lack of privacy, crowding, parking problems, traffic, pollution. There's stress on the water system. There aren't enough doctors. Medical personnel are quitting in droves. Stores and restaurants are closing. Emergency rooms are busier.
People moved here for the quiet, Sammy, and that's disappearing. Read Next Door and you'll see. We're overbuilding ourselves into gridlock, drought, and ill health. My husband and I don't go to things anymore because it's impossible to get to them. We truly do not need more building in Southern California. This is not anything like the place where I grew up and it pains me to say this, but we may very well leave in our old age because it's killing us.
I'm sorry to hear it's been so difficult. Appreciate your sharing.
Thank you! 😀
"The fewer gas cars we need to replace, the lighter the lift."
This is key. Over 40,000 new gas cars are sold every single day in the US. All those brand new internal combustion engines will be pumping out climate change pollution as well as criteria pollutants that kill humans by the millions every year. Every time someone buys one of these cars, the factory makes another. With electric cars now cheaper than gas cars, it's important we stop buying any gas cars going forward and only buy EVs.
The internal combustion industry will completely stop making these engines in about ten years. After that, all new vehicles will be electric and powered by an ever-greening grid. But to get there, we need to keep pressure on the car industry by making sure our friends and family never buy a gas car again.
Hey Paul, thank you as always for reading. I'm curious, and for others reading these comments, what gives you the confidence that the auto industry will stop making internal combustion engine cars in about 10 years?
Hi Sammy, this is something I follow closely. After Tesla proved EVs could be better than any gas car, and then after 2018 when the Model 3 hit the roads, it became clear to leaders in China and Europe that electrified transportation was the end game. Every legacy car company raced to get EVs in their showrooms, and policy began pushing towards eliminating ICE (internal combustion engines). China, in particular, began building battery plants, installing infrastructure, and in a stroke of genius, they allowed Tesla to build a Tesla-owned car plant where several thousand Chinese engineers learned how Tesla makes the best cars in the world. Now there are dozens of Chinese EV companies making very good EVs for half the price of those sold here.
A few years ago, China proclaimed that no pure ICE vehicles will be sold after 2035, only EVs, plug-in hybrids, and fuel cells. Since fuel cells have failed completely in the market, that leaves EVs and PHEVs. PHEVs are a short bridge technology until charging infrastructure is fully built out, but that won't take long.
Europe has similarly concluded EVs are the end game. Norway is going to be the first country to stop selling ICE. After December 31st later this month, no new ICE cars will be sold in Norway. In 2023, the EU passed a law saying no new ICE can be sold after 2035.
The auto industry cannot wait until 2035 to change, they have to move fast. Tesla and BYD are grabbing global market share as fast as they can make the cars. Between the two companies, they should sell over 5 million EVs this year alone.
It's only in the US that people are ignorant about EVs. In China, over 50% of all new car sales are electric. In Europe, between 30%-60% are electric depending on the country. And of course Norway is at 100% now. The US is at a pathetic 10%.
The auto industry needs scale to be profitable. Sales of ICE are falling every year since 2017. There were about 30% fewer new ICE sold this year than in 2017. The momentum to end ICE sales is still in its infancy, but growing. This is where we need to apply pressure. Nobody who cares about the environment or democracy should ever buy a gas car again.
The end won't come in a linear fashion. In another 5 years, it'll be pretty clear to everyone that buying a new gas car is a very bad decision. Toward the end, no one will want to be the last one to buy a polluting, noisy, slow car that runs on oil when all their friends are driving spiffy new EVs that are vastly better and have no negative externalities.
Thank you for this!
Of course!
Here is the latest from Lars Strandridder in his show, Best In Tesla. There is a clear trajectory of legacy ICE factories beginning to crash, and it's mostly being driven by China.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIbKZk9reNs
Thanks for the recommendation for Life After Cars, the title alone makes the mind ratchet to a different orientation. And the Goofy cartoon! I love those Disney classics, like the Disney version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, https://movies.disney.com/the-adventures-of-ichabod-and-mr-toad. Transport technology is ahead of safe operation, and regulation needs to catch up, as this story in the New York Times magazine documents. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/30/magazine/e-bikes-accidents-safety-legislation-california.html?unlocked_article_code=1.5U8.MC_x.UBYSxjjQpSFD&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare Managing the transition.
Thanks for sharing Christine, I'll check out that NYT piece! And glad you enjoyed the Goofy cartoon, I actually learned about it from Life After Cars!