This video is a year old but still very timely (13:15):
Every day as we eat breakfast we listen to our local NPR station. Every half hour there is a short summary of Iowa news. Pretty much every day in that summary of Iowa news there is a small blurb about the latest in the long running battle to bury carbon pipelines under rich Iowa farmland with what seems to be a very minimum of scrutiny.
The stated goal of the pipelines is to move greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from ethanol plants via the pipeline to underground storage in caverns under North Dakota. I do not know all the details of the plan. As I said from my vantage it looks like the pipeline company is doing all it can to be secretive. Once in a business meeting a vendor looked at me and said “You’ve got to take a leap of faith here.” Um, no I don’t.
Nearly everyday when the pipeline news of the day comes up, I ask my wife “what are farmers and ethanol companies gong to do when there is little need for ethanol anymore?” From what I can see on the horizon – and I am no ‘futurist’ – ethanol is used mostly for cars and pickup trucks blended with gasoline and as electric vehicles become the standard the need for gasoline and ethanol will dry up.
This just got me to noodling on what the effects of the transition from internal combustion engines(ICE) to electric vehicles (EVs) will be. Take anything I say as having little validity. I am just doing some thinking. For one thing I doubt I will be around to see what happens. But my understanding is that something like half of America’s jobs are in some way related to the automobile, just to give you an idea how massive such a transition will be.
Let me say at this point that whatever happens, I would much rather see Democratic presidents and congresses in charge of the governmental aspects and the setting of standards. Democrats will be listening to all stake holders to make sure that regulations are fair and equal to the job. Even right now we have Republicans trying to tear down the regulatory agencies at a time when they will be crucial.
Republicans often just let industries police themselves. That has never worked and would be a disaster in such a huge transition coming.
The focus of my noodling is jobs. Digging around the internet to try to get a handle on what the future is reveals that as expected lots of people are trying to get a handle on what will happen because they are affected.
Think about it. Because the EV will have fewer moving parts and will not need oil, gasoline, coolants, belts and who knows what else. What they will have is onboard computers, tires, windshield wipers and probably a plethora of safety equipment and some sort of driver assist mechanism.
Labor in the EV age will probably be shifting from assembly line at the auto factory to the battery factory and the mines where the raw materials for the batteries will be mined. There will also be a need for installation maintenance of charging stations.
Perhaps one of the biggest needs now and the huge need in the future will be highly skilled, highly trained workers to run the machinery that create the batteries and the autos. Even beyond that will be the need for engineers who will be creating the machinery and creating the new cars and systems of the future.
All this change must happen and it will be happening fast. This change is inevitable and must happen if we are to have any chance at turning back climate change for future generations. We have already started on the road to EVs. At a moment in history like this we need political parties to aid in creating the science and the environment for the EV, not stand in the way trying to keep ICE cars as the standard just to keep oil companies rich as the earth chokes.
This is also the time that we must be improving our education systems to meet the challenges that are here now. This is not the time to wreck our public school systems as states like Iowa have been doing. Cutting education funding for public schools and universities while shifting money to religious private schools will simply make it hard for today’s children to compete as tomorrows adults.
Voting for a party that will concentrate money in few hands at this critical time will result government that is beholden to those few rich. Thus the government will be concerned with making laws that keep those rich wealthy and the rest of us unprepared to meet the future.
Voting for a party that can see and will help prepare us all for the future needs to be utmost in our minds. We are not going to stop the march of progress, so we better prepare to meet it.
Sorry if this sounded like rambling – it sort of was rambling. The future with EVs is almost overwhelming and has multiple aspects. Much like the computer revolution that we are still going through there will be opportunities we can’t even imagine right now. But we must prepare ourselves to be ready for the challenge.
Science and sound verifiable education will prepare us for the future. Crippling our education systems to promote ideological agendas will kill us in the long run.
Blog For Iowa 