Summits and Pathways: recognising tensions in mobility and climate action

Mount Snowdon: the highest summit in Wales, and taller than any in England

It was in the news over the last few years. The bustling tourism is starting to deliver significant damage to the mountain landscape.

Why? Certainly COVID played a big role, with people desperate to get away without leaving these isles. But, Snowdon’s success as a tourist hotspot is by long-term design. A variety of routes are available for differing levels of fitness. It was the Victorians who decided a trainline was the way forward, carrying passengers up to the summit since 1896. This now makes Snowdon one of the most accessible mountains for all abilities and inclinations.

As a Brit, I have climbed this many times. As a young child on a family holiday, with a minibus of undergrad students, with my Austrian partner who preferred to use the term “hill” to “mountain”.

Often, you are surrounded by other adventurers of differing levels of preparedness. From crampons to Crocs, regrets around the choice of mountain hardware were abound.

When you listen into their conversations, you hear several perspectives that are debated between parties. Broadly, they can be bundled up in the following way:

• Negative: how are we only here / why didn’t we pack more flapjack / I bet it will cloud over by the time we get there / the café will definitely be shut, it always is
• Positive: Wow, look how far we have come already / I feel so great, why don’t we do this more / It will be 5-10 mins and we will be at the top / I could run the rest
• “What ifs”: I wonder what the view would be from the crags route / I reckon I could run this / should we take the train to get down

Another observation - these arguments are always more heated when its later in the day and the nice weather is disappearing. Time is running out and desperation is setting in.

Summits and Pathways

These memories are the best analogy I can think of for where we are with climate action right now, especially in 2023 and especially in the world of transport.

Summits. Negative and positive attitudes stem from tackling the summit. We have a common one in climate action: at least a 50% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030. This is not being talked about enough. We are a long way away from this and already coming up to a third of the way through this “decisive decade”. Unlike hikers on Snowdon, most people didn’t choose this summit, but are being dragged along the way anyway.

Pathways. “What ifs” are about our technical and social pathways up to these summits: how do we want to get there? Do we do this altogether or is everyone taking a separate path? What support do we need for those less able?

To me, it feels like climate action tension is growing in 2023 due to the combination of conflicting attitudes towards the summit, conflicting attitudes of technology pathways and the unique stresses of the hard time limit.

Summit tension: celebrating or bemoaning progress to date

The electric vehicle world is great at measuring against milestones. Like celebrating every mile we climb up Snowdon, we celebrate EV adoption: one in seven new vehicles is now electric.

Flip it round: six in every seven vehicles we are building today is probably going to be emitting greenhouse gases for the next 10-20 years. That feels a bit rubbish. The research came from the IEA who also said that SUVs are now contributing almost a billion tonnes. That’s quite depressing, and can push you towards a scepticism of the sector and an apathy to change.

Pathway tension: The delay of the EU deal…

…to end the sale of combustion engine vehicles by 2035, by Germany is a great example. This delay is due to exploring a technical pathway for e-fuels to work with combustion engines.

There are several voices who are sceptical, anxious or concerned about prohibiting a technology.

Many are spreading anti-EV rhetoric either because they don’t believe the electric vehicle transition will benefit themselves or their line of work. There are also those who can sell stories and data to the former.

But others are bringing caution from two areas of evidence: one is the “picking winners” scenario where policy should “allow the market to decide” if you don’t want to repeat historic mistakes or you do want to follow specific economic theories. The other evidence is around science, and realising science-based pathways within that transition for maximising carbon emissions reduction.

Whatever the intentions of the arguments, the debate is hotter in 2023. A hot debate is sometimes needed but I fear this is getting more abusive too. A technology “ban” will break the business models of many industries. It will make the business models of many others. If your evidence and opinion is not influencing decision-makers positively, I can see why frustration will erupt.

But it’s not just "us versus them" in automotive.

Transport is very siloed, but the climate conversation is breaking down these barriers.

The “car-free” movement is growing; we have many actively advocating for neither electric nor combustion engine vehicles. The alliance of short-distance active travel and public long distance travel is becoming stronger. For those administering areas of high car-dependence, a push for a pathway that just doesn’t exist is frustrating.

Tension between summit and pathways

This weekend I listened to an episode of the brilliant Outrage & Optimism podcast where they raised this issue in the economy-wide context of conflict between corporate action and climate activism.

As the podcast name suggests, these are the experts on navigating this topic. One line from Christiana Figueres I took away:

“We are adamant about continuous improvement but that improvement needs a sense of urgency.”

This takes the phrase "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" and suggests we really need to celebrate the good, while focusing on getting to perfection asap.

What have I taken from this thinking?

We have to accept there is going to be tension on technical and social pathways to achieving decarbonisation of transport. We don't have time to not acknowledge that tension is there but we also probably don't have the time to get consensus.

But a focus on positive progress achieved via each pathway will help us move further towards our summit.

If the summit is 50% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 then this comes down to accurate and comparable carbon data.

This is what I am aiming for with Other Way, by unlocking carbon footprints for every vehicle on the planet, we can engage everyone in their transport pathways towards the summit.

Alexander

Thanks for reading but what do you think? Fancy a chat on carbon data for transport and Other Way's mission, I'd love to have one. Book a slot.