The seemingly green new car titan offers a lot of greenwashing for the consciousness of rich leftists. But the core problem of excessive consumption remains, and as Tesla’s profitability and stock soars, actions that benefit shareholders will increasingly be at odds with a cohesive American climate strategy.
Drive behind a belching Diesel pick-up truck and you know it can’t be good for anyone’s lungs. The black smoke explodes out of the exhaust and then dissipates into the air like tiny drops of poison in a glass of water. The deafening sound of it’s engine makes it obvious efficiency and a small carbon footprint are not its priorities. In search of cleaner alternatives to fossil fuels electric vehicles have emerged as the likely champion, the champion of them being Tesla.
With the Model-S, Model 3, and soon-to-be-released Cyber Truck, Tesla embodies the technological disruption so many of us have been itching for from car-makers. What’s incredible is that not only are all of Tesla’s cars fully electric, they’re also brilliant to drive. Sitting in a Tesla feels luxurious and minimalist. Instead of a puzzle of dials and controls filling every inch of the front dash, the Model 3 welcomes you with simple buttons and a large flat screen tablet that has all the functionality to control every little fun quirk the car has to offer. It’s an absolute pleasure to drive, too. Step on the gas (err… electric), and the whole car shuttles forward as if attached to a slingshot. It’s magnificent. Relax and turn on the auto driving features to stay in your lane and navigate the soul-crushing starts and stops of commuter traffic. In the span of a decade Tesla has reimagined car transportation and by almost every metric built the best cars on the market today. Getting over the “range-anxiety” of electric charging, it would be a no-brainer to buy one if you’re in the market for a new get-around-town-mobile.
But the allure of a flashy new thing is different than sustainable choices. Based on current market adoption rates it will take over a hundred years to phase out all internal combustion engine vehicles. One of the core problems is cost — not everyone can afford buying a new car. For the majority of Americans just getting by, even a mid-grade Tesla at $30K is prohibitively expensive. And the environmental impact of the mining, extraction, transportation, and assembly of batteries and electronics for Tesla vehicles often goes unconsidered. As it goes, out of sight, out of mind. For the wealthy demographic of Tesla owners, feeling like you’re doing good for the planet eclipses actually doing good, and sustainability seems to be presented as a new gimmick that can simply be purchased.
In order to launch a sustainability revolution in America and globally, efforts must be made to decouple wealth from ethical consumption. Across the board individuals and companies are turning toward offsetting carbon emissions by buying their way out while barely changing their day-to-day habits of consumption. Fans of EVs and Tesla will say that Americans will always want to drive, and better to give them a car they want to buy that is also significantly greener than the standard SUV or Truck. It is a step in the right direction. And they’re right, but when considering the scale and urgency of upending humanity’s unsustainable practices, marginal gains from buying a new EV do not accomplish nearly enough.
The danger of Tesla lies in the rabid protectionism many fans of the company feel. Any ounce of critique is met with a torrent of arguments and dismissal. As Tesla solidifies itself as an economic force in the United States and abroad, efforts to boost investor returns will run counter to government sustainability initiatives. Or, in the case of EV subsidies, government sustainability initiatives will be contorted into profitability schemes.
The solution is not more cars, cheaper cars, better cars, but less cars. As humans adopt sustainable lifestyles, the allure of profiting off this shift will create “pay-to-play” in sustainable choices. Individuals with means can buy their way out of their carbon footprint, and for the rest of the population cheaply existing in the energy intense lifestyles set-forth by the wealthy will mean living unsustainably. Big houses on large plots of land far from cities that are connected via massive road infrastructure are the current model of living, and a model of living Tesla and other EV hopefuls intend to exist within. But this model must be upended. If we are serious about sustainability, we will not make it some cachet for the wealthy. Purchasing sustainability will only lead to more problems for us all. Society should recognize Tesla for the wildly successful and productive car company that they are, and not the silver bullet for sustainability its fans would want us all to believe.
