There has been serious resistance, in the past, to the push for a more eco-friendly environment. In our continent, the resistance movement has been led by, of course, Big Oil and by the poltical right. Donald Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord during his one and hopefully only term as president. The US isolated itself from the rest of the world, in doing so. President Biden has since brought the US back into the Climate Accord fold. A well known fallback for the political right is by them puffing out their chests and saying “WELL, how do these people get to the conferences. “THEY USE JETS WHICH CAUSE EMISSIONS, HYPOCRITES!” Well, yeah. A few jets compared to the leading emitter of the world, gas powered cars.

But, things are starting to change. Slowly, but the momentum is picking up. Have you filled up your car lately? OUCH! Think its bad here, just look at Europe. The Europeans have for years been leading the push away from the dependency on gas. But still, their heavy dependence on Russian oil and gas has been a big elephant in the room, as it relates to Putin’s unlawful invasion of Ukraine. That being said, Europe, except for Tucker Carlson’s favourite dictatorship in Hungary, are participating in the sanctions of oil and gas exports from Russia. This is forcing Europe to increase their push away from oil and gas dependence. The invasion and resulting sanctions have also forced countries to consider increasing imports from bad actor countries such as Iran and Venezuela. That is an option countries would rather stay away from. So, times are a changing.

Car manufacturers in the world, such as Tesla and Volkswagen, are leading the push towards electric vehicles. The Big 3 automakers, in the US, have set a goal of having 40% to 50% of their vehicles electric by 2030. GM is setting a goal of phasing out all gas powered vehicles by 2035. Other car makers are following suit. Europe is looking at banning all gas powered car sales by, 2035. Compare this to now, where only 4% of new US car sales are electric or hybrid plug ins. Even Ford is getting to the act, in a big way, by introducing an electric version of its best selling F-150 pickup truck.

A big stumbling block, in the US, is the lack of charging stations. Currently, there are only 43,000 such stations in the US. However, President Biden has set a goal of 500,000 such stations by the end of the decade, with the recently passed Infrastructure Act being a catalyst for this. Admittedly, there is a way to go. However the momentum is there and it is building.