In the lead-in to his column, Yglesias talks about how climate catastrophizing is a road to illiberalism. He mentions "watermelons" (different than the pro-Palestinian emoji) who are "green on the outside, red on the inside." These are people who want to "solve" climate change by ending capitalism.
I think that's a pretty interesting insight. When California says it wants to ban ICE vehicles, there's an element of unreality to it. We have an entire infrastructure set up to service ICE cars, but we do not have the grid to support everyone driving EVs. The solution, in my mind, is hybrids. If we mandated that every vehicle was to be a hybrid, that would both have a major impact on emissions, drive down the price of gasoline and provide a glide path to eventual EV fleets.
I can't help but wonder how many EV Acolytes are really invested in destroying the "power" of Exxon Mobil. Hating petrochemical companies is performative leftism, because they do, in fact, suck. However, your feelings about Exxon or extractive companies or capitalism all seem tangential to the goal of simply reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.
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