When I first learned about Tesla Motors in 2006, I wasn’t looking for an opportunity in clean tech. Having spent too much time working in the financial services industry, I decided it was time to pursue a career in something that I was passionate about: cars. Moving to Detroit was not an option, so I set out to see what automotive opportunities existed in the San Francisco Bay Area.
After seeing a story about Tesla in The New York Times, I was intrigued. I had lived in the Bay Area for nine years and had never been part of the tech start-up scene. The car itself seemed pretty hot and the advanced drivetrain technology was very interesting. At first, the notion of doing something to combat global warming was not really part of my consideration, although over time it became an important dimension.
The thing that intrigued me most about EV technology was its simplicity, the extraordinary torque of the motor that makes for an incredible driving experience and the fact there are no tailpipe emissions. Having the opportunity to drive a Tesla Roadster often, it always felt strange to get back behind the wheel of my Mitsubishi Evo, which felt like a bucking, wheezing bronco relative to the smooth power of the electric drivetrain.
These memories came back to me as I pondered the implications of “climategate," the recent controversy regarding leaked emails from the climate researchers at East Anglia University in England. While the "right" predictably jumped on them as damning evidence that climate change is a fraud, the "left" was equally predictable in trying to smooth over the situation as if nothing could shake the absolute consensus that has been asserted that climate change is being driven by man-made factors.
At the risk of being dropped off some Christmas card lists, I might point out that the scientific evidence supporting climate change as a man-made phenomena is far from certain.
The efforts to correlate emissions of CO2 over recent history with global temperature trends and cycles at a geological scale have resulted in a model that asserts that there is a relationship between the two, but still has enough unexplained error that a lack of temperature increases over the recent twelve-year period is still consistent with the model. The hard science is much more nuanced than the soundbites that permeate the airwaves and the simplistic declarations of impending catastrophe. The problem lies with the strong political momentum around climate change that requires the science to be absolute. That political necessity is steamrolling even the most supportive researchers’ efforts to improve on our limited understanding of what is actually going on.
In 1992 I was studying geophysics at Brown University, my chosen major before switching to the even more dismal science of economics. At the time, proponents of global warming were generally considered the lunatic fringe. Today, to be skeptical of man-made global warming is to be considered a lunatic or worse, a “climate denier.” But climategate has brought the actual, imperfect science to the fore again, and we are finding that science is never so certain as political dogma.
Mike Hulme, a professor of climate change at East Anglia, the university that is the subject of climategate, wrote in a December 2, 2009 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal:
Even if the general uncertainty of the science is accepted, a reasonable person might argue it is best to assume the worst and try to take action to reduce CO2 emissions anyway. The problem is the current policy direction will cost extraordinary sums of money and impose significant taxes, primarily in the form of cap and trade. To make this acceptable to voters, the argument is boiled down to simplistic appeals to take drastic action now or face certain catastrophe within our childrens’ lifetime. If the science is not absolute, rational people have a good basis to challenge some of the most significant and far-reaching proposals on offer, especially when we are confronting such issues as joblessness or healthcare.
It makes me long for the days when electric cars were considered attractive simply on the basis of their technological superiority, extraordinary driveability, energy efficiency and cleanliness, and not because of some moral imperative that we must take immediate action to save the polar bears. Aggressive federal policy may speed the adoption of this new technology in the short term, but runs the risk of establishing a shaky foundation for long-term market success since our politics are so fickle.
Disclosure: Darryl Siry was the chief marketing officer of Tesla Motors from December 2006 until December 2008 and a special advisor to Coda Automotive.
Photos of the Nissan Leaf electric car’s North American debut in Los Angeles in November: Bob Peterson.
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