Carbon emissions

A decade ago, when I first started contributing to the New York Times’s annual “52 Places to Go” list, the top user comments were about the destinations: Why was Calcutta chosen but not Chattanooga? This year, in a sign of the times, the most popular comments suggest that we should all just stay home to save the planet. The climate-obsessed among us are falling out of love with travel, particularly with the idea of exploring far-off places where your carbon footprint is greater. If their movement gains steam they won’t save the world, but they might well wreck the global economy and deprive themselves and others of much-needed perspectives and experiences that make the world a better place.

It’s chic to look down on big trucks and their drivers. Former president Donald Trump’s photo op with truckers in 2017 was immediately lampooned on social media and by liberal journalists. It would be fitting, then, if the trucking industry provides the example that kills the push to rapidly move developed economies to “net zero” greenhouse gas emissions. The fact is that any serious attempt to make Western economies “net zero” will be costly, technologically difficult and extremely disruptive to our way of life. Nothing captures these inconvenient truths better than the effort to force the electrification of the trucking industry. Trucks are to the modern economy what the circulatory system is to the body.