{"id":58916,"date":"2021-08-07T07:11:35","date_gmt":"2021-08-07T12:11:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58916"},"modified":"2021-08-07T07:11:35","modified_gmt":"2021-08-07T12:11:35","slug":"crisis-hiding-in-plain-sight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58916","title":{"rendered":"Crisis hiding in plain sight"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Crisis hiding in plain sight<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Putting a positive gloss on the news is especially important as we attempt to recover from a pandemic.\u00a0 And if that positive gloss is green in colour, so much the better. And so yesterday we were treated to the\u00a0news<\/a>\u00a0that:<\/p>\n

\u201cMore electric vehicles were registered than diesel cars for the second month in a row in July, according to car industry figures.\u00a0 It is the third time battery electric vehicles have overtaken diesel in the past two years.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

That is surely great news.\u00a0 But as is usually the case in matters green, we are starting from a very low position.\u00a0 Much more will have to be done to raise the number of battery-only EVs from the current nine percent of registrations in 2021 to the planned 100 percent by 2035.\u00a0 Moreover, the current nine percent is a share of a dramatically depressed new car market\u2026 which is the real headline news in this story.<\/p>\n

Nobody is actively covering this up; but they are playing it down.\u00a0 According to the\u00a0BBC<\/em>\u00a0piece which celebrates the rise in EV sales:<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, new car registrations fell by almost a third\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Insofar as the wellbeing or otherwise of the car industry has been a measure of the health of the wider economy throughout the oil age, a 29.5 percent collapse in new car sales\u00a0ought<\/em>\u00a0to have been given far more prominence.\u00a0 This is particularly true insofar as this year\u2019s decline comes on the back of the massive lockdown-decline in 2020:<\/p>\n

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Instead we are treated to several implausible explanations for why this is nothing to worry about. \u00a0First, we are told, the decline is the result of people no longer wanting to buy diesel cars.\u00a0 Certainly, there has been a collapse in demand for diesels in the wake of the Volkswagen scandal and government increases in tax on diesel vehicles…<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Crisis hiding in plain sight Putting a positive gloss on the news is especially important as we attempt to recover from a pandemic.\u00a0 And if that positive gloss is green in colour, so much the better. And so yesterday we were treated to the\u00a0news\u00a0that: \u201cMore electric vehicles were registered than diesel cars for the second […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8475,13275,16000,391,29428,607,30640,31360],"class_list":["post-58916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-cars","tag-electric-vehicles","tag-evs","tag-growth","tag-lockdowns","tag-pandemic","tag-the-consciousness-of-sheep","tag-tim-watkins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58916"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58917,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58916\/revisions\/58917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}