Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.
I’m now using Substack as a blogging platform, and for my monthly email newsletter. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack. You can also follow me on Mastodon here.
John Quiggin 
BYD Seagull
For light relief, try looking up`one of the many videos on YouTube of test drives of the BYD Seagull small electric car. (Just Google “YouTube BYD Seagull test drive”). It’s on sale in China and a few Latin American countries, but not in the USA, Australia, or the EU, though it’s likely to arrive in the latter two in the course of the year.
I think we are looking at a revolutionary car, at the level of the Ford Model T or the Volkswagen Beetle. Like them, it cannot boast any radical technical innovation. It’s state of the art, not beyond it. What BYD has done is put it all together in a very attractive package for the unbeatable price in China of 69,700 yuan, or $US 9,700 – cheaper than the ICEV competition.
To get below the $10,000 benchmark, the base model has a cut-down battery. The extra $2,300 for a 400 km range on the Chinese standard and 300 km on the European one looks essential for very many buyers. Even the base model is well-equipped, with nice handling, airbags, good seats, and a decent driving assistance package including a rear-view camera. It’s a much better car than the competition. There may be niche manufacturers with models of similar quality, but limiting the comparison to major manufacturers, BYD are clearly well ahead.
It is conceivable that BYD are selling the Seagull at cost or below during the ramp-up, but not for long. They are in a position to drive costs down by economies of scale, especially as they make their own batteries. Cars are increasingly computers on wheels, and the marginal cost of software per car is zero.
Small cars (Segments A and B in the European classification) accounted for 22% of all new cars in Europe in 2022 (source ACEA): the largest share by size, seeing that the SUV category is a catch-all not a size. Segment A, tiny urban runabouts, is insignificant outside Japan and segment B, proper 4-door 4-seaters, is what counts. The global market share is probably higher, but to be conservative, let’s say the potential market is 20% of 77m a year, or 15.4m. BYD are going to make millions of Seagulls, the people’s electric vehicle.
The CEO of BYD is Wang Chuanfu, net worth >$10bn. You haven’t heard of him or his wife. He shows up at the office and confines his public statements to matters affecting his company. Tesla might try this.
A hopeful New Year to all, and thanks to our host for hosting our commentary along with his own. It’s a civilised idea other public intellectuals could emulate.
The evolution of electric vehicles, a necessary component to decarbonisation, has also created a formidable force of disruption.
After decades of collusion, falsification, govt handouts and complacency all the big auto makers are looking at destruction. This will have an enormous impact on countries like Germany, which has an economy centred around auto manufacture and Japan, which has already forced the merger of Nissan, Honda and Mitsubishi. Toyota said nyet to EVs and will also pay the price. The US still struggles with its big SUV mentality.
Tesla was the first to innovate and China has stepped up and is also innovating and producing EVs on a massive scale. It’s like a tsunami, it’s unstoppable and it’s consequences will be profound.
Anonymous is me.
Hurray, you’re back, James!!
It is good news about the Chinese ev. I think this sort of thing is going to be key – certain people here like to talk about decreasing the amount of driving, but I think that will be a heavy lift. (Though my mind is still slightly open … ) The people who care are already driving less. (Though, soon, I think, everyone will care. It won’t be avoidable. So, that will be good.)
I hope I won’t have to wait too long for a US equivalent. I doubt those little cars will be allowed to sell here.
Who knows. I am a dinosaur though and still hoping for someone to sell me a sock to put on the tailpipe. And speaking of dinosaur, I don’t want an internet connected car. And, I must must must have a normal radio, with knobs. (Did I already complain here, about how I couldn’t work the radio in my last rental? I know I’m not Einstein, but even with the manual, I couldn’t do it. I don’t ever see myself paying major $ for that sort of struggle. Nope. The rental company people didn’t know how to work it either. And they’re all 20.)
We here in the US will have to fix a lot of our politics, to make the transition. It isnt even just the incoming administration. We have this thick layer of kludge. It adds thousands of dollars to all the new green tech. (Anecdotal, based on an NYT piece on heat pumps.) It is slowing us down.
So, I need all the good news I can get.
Had GM stuck with EVs they could have been a global market leader. But they made the mistake of sacrificing long term innovation for short term gain.
”Despite favorable customer reception, GM believed that electric cars occupied an unprofitable niche of the automobile market.[107] The company ended production of the EV1 in 1999, after 1,117 examples were produced over its tenure of under three years.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F#Oil_companies
I suppose in the last few days of semi-sanity in this world we might or might not want to speculate about what comes next. Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 47th president of the United States on 20 January. What happens then?
The tech bro billionaires have already given us a preview of what might happen. They seem to be falling over themselves to fall into line with Trump. The death of fact checking presages the death of facts altogether. At the same time, some of the Trumpist bromances last about a week as the Musk-Farrage tiff demonstrates. The thought bubbles from the Don himself become more and more unpredictable. It seems he wants the US to conquer the Panama Canal and Greenland. At the same time all hell must be unleashed to get the remaining Israeli hostages back (as if it has not been unleashed already) but Russia must be permitted to conquer Ukraine and drag up all the communication lines in the Baltic sea. Trump’s silences are as eloquent as his pronouncements. But they seem to speak only of anarchy and chaos.
So, what happens next? I am certain I cannot predict anything except that none of it will be good for 99% of the human race.
Addendum to above:
https://www.thecut.com/article/president-trump-second-term-2024-agenda-dangers-risk.html
Americans are fond of talking about their rights, their freedom and their democracy and are keen to export these elements to those in need. But their form of democracy lacks equality; the President is elected by an electoral college and the executive arm of government is appointed by the President, as are judges to federal and supreme courts.
Each President takes an oath to uphold the constitution but the constitution is flawed, it places barriers on the rights of the masses yet places few limitations on the President.
The next President will exercise almost complete control over the parliament and the judiciary, he will be above and beyond the law.
The US democracy is not a model democracy.
Whenever has anything been good for the 99%? Horrible history, putrid present, forlorn future. So it goes.
Not all Americans see it that way. The rulers of that nation state are keen to export something rather different whether it is needed or not, wanted or not, in so far and for so long as it is useful and profitable for them to do so.
Jimmy Carter dead at 100.
Former US president, Nobel Peace Prize recipient, and said like Trump (guaranteed similar future laurals) to not have started a war. There’s been loads of msm eulogizing, mostly in praise of the man. There’s some praise of his time and accomplishments as president as well as recall of some of his failures. It is hardly surprising that there is scant mention of his biggest policy failure and the blowback still unfolding and far from finalised. A policy Carter began on 3 July 1979, before the USSR in December that year sent troops into the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in response to long repeated calls for such aid from that government. A policy then carried on and expanded throughout all subsequent administrations through to Clinton before being defunded and left to its own by then significantly grown internal resources and other contributors. A policy always backfiring on the US empire and its rich five eyes client states and fellow colonising NATO friends.
Zbigniew Brezezinski, Carter’s Russophobe grand chessboarding Mackinderite national security adviser formed a plan commencing in Afghanistan to thrust a “Spear of Islam” into the underbelly of Russia by funding, training, training trainers, and arming local and foreign mujahadeen fighting the Afghan government and their supporting USSR forces. The plan ultimately played only a tiny part in the dissolution of the USSR some fourteen years later, but did play a large part in consolidating Russia and Putin’s power over following decades. The Afghan government of Najibullah in Kabul fell in 1992 after the cessation of Soviet aid that followed a losing hardline coup attempt in Moscow that ushered in Yeltsin’s chaotic presidency with its desolation of Russia and the so-called end of history.
However, the thrusting of “Spear of Islam” local and foreign fighters did not cease at all. It has not ceased. It moved on and on: to an Afghan civil war, to the Balkans, to Europe, to the Stans, to Indonesia, to the USA, Back to Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Australia, to Western China, to the Gulf States, to the Philippines, through the caucuses to Moscow, to the Indian subcontinent, to Israel, to Palestine, to Jordan, to Syria and the broader Middle East, the Arab Spring, to North Africa, to recent and rapid national government changes further south across sub-Saharan Africa and rejection there of the US and Colonial West one state quickly after another – in all, four there now and two more teetering on the edge of change that will make for a band stretching coast to coast, with Russia and China replacing the banished colonialists. Further south yet, in Equatorial Africa, that spear of Islam continues on the path of attrition, destabilisation and regime change without let up.
The policy developed by Brezezinski, adopted by Carter and those administrations following, jointly ran by the ISI, MI6, CIA and Mossad, with over $3bil of funds in cash and kind contributed by US, UK, Saudi, Israel, China, various Gulf States, and numerous Islamicist sources up to Carter’s time, has seen central Eurasia – the Heartland of the World Island – far from collapsing into easy US pickings instead become consolidated in the hands of others, notably US rivals Russia and China. The African continent is moving rapidly that way, and even way out on the periphery, where the US sits wondering what the hell has happened, and where since James Monroe it has considered the Americas its exclusive domain, the emergent World Island rulers now have an expanding foothold.
The policy has been a spectacular failure. It has led to war after war, wars upon wars, and wars within wars causing global pathological horror, terror, and fear, shifts to extremism, sectarianism, racism, curtailment of liberalism and increasing autocracy. It has caused a growing toll of immense global suffering, and untold millions dead. It has cost the US dearly too in blood and treasure, in large adverse unwelcome, unintended geopolitical shifts, in lost hard and soft power, in lost prestige, and in lost economic heft that stretches now even to its own underbelly in the Americas and lately again on its own soil.
Not a bad effort for a Nobel peace laureate and nice bloke who began no war!
I did find some msm reference to it all in a small way in one obit piece here:
BREAKING: Jimmy Carter dead at 100 Fox News Dec 30, 2024www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nXLS2HWt-8&t=357s
I found the focus there to be cute, that of Carter being critical of a fellow Nobel peace prize winner, Obomber (go figure), concerning the issues of mass drone strikes, and not tackling ISIS early…
ISIS was a direct outcome of the continuing mujahadeen Spear of Islam policy of Carter and Brezezinski et al through all susequent decades! Likewise for Obomber’s innumerable war crime drone strikes supposedly raining down with precision on only those the policy continues to inspire and unleash!
“The European Copernicus climate service, one of the main global data providers, said on Friday that 2024 was the first calendar year to pass the symbolic threshold (of 1.5C), as well as the world’s hottest on record.” – BBC
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd7575x8yq5o
“Global average temperatures for 2024 were around 1.6C above those of the pre-industrial period – the time before humans started burning large amounts of fossil fuels – according to Copernicus data.
This breaks the record set in 2023 by just over 0.1C, and means the last 10 years are now the 10 warmest years on record.
Last week UN chief António Guterres described the recent run of temperature records as “climate breakdown“.” – BBC
[Emphases added.]
Now, less than two weeks into 2025 we are seeing the extraordinary LA fires. These are fed by high fuel loads and high oxygen delivery courtesy respectively of:
(1) the California floods from December 31, 2022 to March 25, 2023 – “Periods of heavy rainfall caused by multiple atmospheric rivers in California between December 31, 2022, and March 25, 2023, resulted in floods that affected parts of Southern California, the California Central Coast, Northern California and Nevada.” – Wikipedia; and
(2) Record high speed, hot, dry Santa Anna winds, in LA’s two month “winter”, rapidly drying out vegetation and pushing multiple, uncontrollable fire fronts after ignitions.
The conditions have overwhelmed all firefighting responses but it seems evacuations have gone relatively well despite the chokepoints of LA’s poor road and transport systems.
Points 1 and 2 taken together can be understood as “hydroclimate whiplash”, a term new to me this week, but a phenomenon which I think can be understood as part of, and a kind of amplification of, “press and pulse” phenomena in climate change’s stressing of ecosystems and human civilization. Hydroclimate whiplash can basically be understood as “floods, droughts then fires”. Press and pulse, when combined, destabilise system equilibriums more effectively than either one occurring individually.
We can see in the techniques of Sumo wrestling that the press or push is combined with powerful slaps and heel of the hand blows (the pulses) to destabilise the opponent. There are also twists, throws and changing of the point of force. Without pressing (or pulsing) the analogy too far, I think we can see that climate change is indeed inflicting all of these effects on society, economy and civilization. The destabilising effects are already severe and will get worse.
We are beginning to see how climate change, via hydroclimate whiplash and general press and pulse effects will incrementally damage, destroy, shake apart and disintegrate our social-economic and infrastructure systems. The process is and will be far more dynamic and destabilising than most of us have envisaged to date.
People thus affected so often talk of “rebuilding” and that is a natural reaction. But one senses that they mean, in the main, rebuilding the same, in the same ways in the same places and within the same system (our current socioeconomic system). This is not going to work. This will simply mean setting up the same tenpins (to change metaphors) to be knocked down again by the same and new ever-worsening phenomena.
What has to be understood is that climate change is now (incipiently) fully unleashed. Of course, we have to cut CO2 emissions. But we also have to build and re-build intelligently. The rules and regulations for building and re-building will need a complete overall in all countries. Of course, this will happen or not happen depending on the country. The risk analysis tasks will dwarf the issues of a Y2K style imbroglio and be of far more import. Perhaps we purblind humans, can turn our eyes and minds downrange and see the new main “game”; the survival of civilization itself. On our current path our survival is greatly in doubt. Blind “rebuild, rebuild” will be about as useful (that is to say totally disastrous) as the incoming Commander in Chief’s “drill baby drill”.
Ikonoclast: – “People thus affected so often talk of “rebuilding” and that is a natural reaction. But one senses that they mean, in the main, rebuilding the same, in the same ways in the same places and within the same system (our current socioeconomic system). This is not going to work.“
Rebuilding the same way, in the same places won’t work in a warming Earth System that’s on a trajectory towards a climate incompatible for sustaining human civilisation. Humanity is not tackling the root cause of the problem.
In the YouTube video published on 8 Jun 2023 titled A True Paradise: WHERE WE ARE HEADING – Kevin Anderson, duration 0:16:25, climate scientist Kevin Anderson warns that continuing on our current path could result in a 3-4°C temperature rise by the end of the century, a catastrophic outcome to be avoided at all costs. He cautions against believing the political rhetoric about progress in the fight against climate change and calls on us to push for bold policy changes. Kevin Anderson says from time interval 0:00:52:
“If we think about where we’re heading, let’s be clear, we are over 30 years, 32 years now, since the first major scientific report on climate change that came out in 1990, and so I think when we judge where we are heading, we have to say, what have we done since 1990, where we’ve watched emissions go up year after year after year. They’re now over 60% higher per year than they were in 1990. So, there is lots that you will hear, lots of rhetoric, lots of good words, lots of optimism about the future. But given we’ve known about this subject, and apparently been working on it for 30 years, the trend line tells us that we are heading towards 3 to 4 degrees Centigrade of warming across this century – an absolute climate catastrophe, and it’s a catastrophe for all species, including our own.“
Berkeley Earth published on 10 Jan 2024 their Global Temperature Report for 2024. It included (bold text my emphasis):
Per the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, the 2-year average GMST has also exceeded the +1.5 °C threshold. 2024 was the warmest year for all continental regions, except Antarctica and Australasia.
As the Earth System continues to warm lethal wet bulb temperatures (i.e. ≥30.5 °C – see Fig. 4) become an increasing risk for equatorial and mid-latitude locations. A Mean Annual Temperature (MAT) >29°C is an important threshold as beyond this point, humans are exposed to historically unprecedented levels of heat, with an increased frequency of potentially lethal maximum temperatures over 40 °C and physiologically challenging wet bulb temperatures (WBT) over 28 °C, posing serious threats to health and survival. See the gif showing the ‘Human Climate Niches’ in green and and regions of Mean Annual Temperature >29 °C (MAT >29 °C) in purple.
“Humanity is not tackling the root cause of the problem.” – Geoff Miell.
I take it that “root cause of the problem” means human generated greenhouse gas emissions (mainly CO2 and CH4) and the total accumulation of them in the atmosphere. We could add in the further feedback emissions from factors like increased wildfires and increased methane emissions from melting permafrost and seabed methane clathrates.
I fully agree the above is the immediate cause of the problem: our failure to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and our failure to prevent greenhouse gas concentrations increasing in the atmosphere. But what is the cause of this cause? What is/are the causes of our failure to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and even move rapidly to the negative emissions which are now necessary to counter feedback emissions in the natural system?
These further causes of the immediate physical-chemical cause of climate change are no doubt complex. I would number among them;
Each of the above need further explanation. I will try to shorthand it here.
In speaking of the “momentum” and “lock-in” of our system I refer not to basic physical momentum but to our entire commitment to surviving in our current manner. This commitment is not only attitudinal and ideological it is also logistical, it is our complete dependence on the network and processes of our current production and supply system.
As to geostrategic competition, there are many people and nations, perhaps a large majority, perhaps all, who would in the extremis of existential threat to themselves always countenance the death of unknown others for their own survival. This might seem a bleak view. It is really just an evolutionary view. It’s how we are evolved. Most of us would much rather avoid such course of actions and would suffer serious or even debilitating PTSD and conscience crises if surviving into an aftermath which provided any time for contemplation. This is all to say that geostrategic security may well in practice be priorities over climate change prevention security even though this is the less wise choice.
We could regard point 3 as referring to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. These are listed from base to apex as physiological needs, safety and security, love and belonging, self-esteem and self-actualization. I am not sure that self-esteem and self-actualization are fully separable. They could be combined as status and power. Status and power confer self-esteem and the ability to “self-actualize”. What people finally seek personally, socially and professionally is status and power. This too is an evolved behaviour. In a social mammalian species, status and power are joy, life and survival.
The above is not to say that people cannot pursue enlightened self-interest. Indeed they can. But Maslow’s top level is idealised. Do we think that morality, creativity, spontaneity, acceptance, purpose, meaning and inner potential are pursued in an enlightened manner by all for all? The evolved (and enculturated) variety of humans do not all evince these qualities.
All this is simply to point out the immense problems we face in getting people to understand that they need to live more frugally to save the planet. It has clearly not been enough to explain matters logically and scientifically to people. Probably a majority of people on the planet do not understand these explanations or do not want to and actively pursue denial and forgetting. They are aided and abetted by the misinformation and disinformation system. A lie can run around the world before the truth pulls its boots on.
So, what could possibly work? I suggest people will only countenance and indeed clamour and demonstrate for effective action en masse when they are existentially terrified and angry en masse. Of course, I am not advocating this. I am simply describing or predicting what will happen when matters get bad enough. Nature will do the work of changing people’s minds. We need a set of policies ready for that juncture while not giving on the hope that educating people will help too.
We need contingency policies for proceeding under continuous collapse conditions: policies that will seek to ameliorate and arrest the collapse at some point and save a proportion of positive civilization, by which I mean an equitable, cooperative, sustainable civilization. We not only need these plans as a contingency but they are the plans we will most likely need. They need to be open and democratic, not secret and not exclusionist.
Ikonoclast: – “I take it that “root cause of the problem” means human generated greenhouse gas emissions (mainly CO2 and CH4) and the total accumulation of them in the atmosphere.“
Climate change is but one of the nine planetary boundaries that’s a symptom of overshoot. William Rees wrote in a 2023 paper:
In 2009, 28 internationally renowned researchers identified and quantified a set of nine planetary boundaries within which humanity can continue to develop and feel good in the future. If we cross these limits, abrupt or irreversible environmental changes can occur with serious consequences for humankind. The 9 planetary boundaries include:
Climate impact scholar Johan Rockström offers the most up-to-date scientific assessment of the state of the planet and explains what must be done to preserve Earth’s resilience to human pressure, in the YouTube video published on 15 Aug 2024 titled The Tipping Points of Climate Change — and Where We Stand | Johan Rockström | TED, duration 0:18:35. On consequences, Johan Rockström said (from time interval 02:32):
“We’re seeing bigger and bigger invoices being sent by the Earth System onto societies across the entire world, in droughts, floods, heat waves, disease patterns, human-reinforced storms, scientifically attributed to human-caused climate change.
Forty degrees Celsius of life-threatening heat across all continents, occurring in 2023.
Fifty-two degrees Celsius hitting the over 1,000 who lost their lives at the Hajj pilgrimage in June in Mecca.
Three times higher climate change risks now attributed to our cause of climate change.
2023, up to 12,000 deaths, 200 billion US dollars of cost, just in the US, up to 100 billion US dollars. This is seriously causing economic costs.
We have scientifically, in the past, shown that this could cost a few percent of global GDP of the climate impacts caused by us.
I can tell you that the latest scientific assessment is what you see on the screen here. An 18-percent loss of GDP by 2050 if we now follow the current path. This is equivalent to 38 trillion US dollars of loss per year in 2050.
It’s starting to hurt. Both in human social costs and an economic cost. And this is happening at 1.2 degrees Celsius of global mean surface temperature rise. And we’re following a pathway that takes us to 2.7 degrees Celsius in only 70 years.
And we’ve had a 10,000-year period where our civilisations have developed, where we’ve had an enormous privilege of a planet at 14 degrees Celsius, plus or minus 0.5 degrees Celsius. That’s the Holocene since we left the last ice age.
And if you look three million years back, we never exceeded two degrees Celsius. That’s the warmest temperature on Earth during the entire Quaternary. The coldest point, minus five degrees Celsius, Ice Age. I call this the ‘Corridor of Life.’“
In the YouTube video titled Prof. Johan Rockström issues dire warnings at #COP16 Riyadh – Do not cross planetary boundaries, published 5 Dec 2024, duration 0:08:10, included from time interval 0:00:21:
“We’re following, as you know, a pathway that will take us, in terms of global warming, to over 3 degrees Celsius over just the next 75 years. This is a pathway that unequivocally leads to disaster. There’s absolutely no scientific evidence that we can support a world population under such conditions.“
Geoff,
Yes, I have read about all of those issues. I accept they are real death and extinction issues for humans and many, many other species: hundreds of thousands of species at least.
I was writing about the complex causes of our human failure and political economy failure to take any substantive action.
It is very difficult to suggest what will work and every attempt at educating and waking up people has to be made. My thesis finally is that the only thing that will work on people will be the catastrophic, soon-to-be continuous and absolutely terrifying events we now face from earth’s highly disrupted natural systems as we cross the boundaries. I hope our governments have their (and our) global, national, regional and local emergency plans ready. I hope people have their own plans in place without being extreme preppers (which won’t really help them or anyone). Forlorn hopes.
Ikonoclast: – “I take it that “root cause of the problem” means human generated greenhouse gas emissions (mainly CO2 and CH4) and the total accumulation of them in the atmosphere.“
Geof: – <i>”Three times higher climate change risks now attributed to our cause of climate change. … An 18-percent loss of GDP by 2050 if we now follow the current path. This is equivalent to 38 trillion US dollars of loss per year in 2050.“</i>
All this and the rest is true enough though 18% seems fanciful. But nothing short of a large asteroid impact soon is going to stop the tipping already underway. Such an extraordinary bang on the head might shake things up and knock some sense into the ruling class and their flunkies.
Net Zero/2050 Fantasy or Reality?
– Robert Hunziker, CounterPunch, January 10, 2025
http://www.counterpunch.org/2025/01/10/net-zero-2050-fantasy-or-reality/
<i>”The WMO statement (Record Carbon Emissions Highlight Urgency of Global Greenhouse Gas Watch, World Meteorological Organization – WMO- November 2024) implies another 25 years of rising temperatures before Net Zero takes effect. Can society weather 25 years of increasing temperatures like what’s happened over the past couple of years?”</i>
The Amazon is as good as dead and won’t be petrified or otherwise fossilised. From the article:
Amazonia as a carbon source linked to deforestation and climate change | Nature
Jimmy Carter sent Zbigniew Brzezinski to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to give a pep talk to some Afghani mujahadeen groups selected by the Pakistani ISI in 1979. (note, the Taliban formed including from some of those present around a decade later, though Al Q was already up and running and present.) Let the games begin. Fraser climbed aboard and we missed the Olympic games the following year.
Zbigniew Brzezinski Taliban Pakistan Afghanistan pep talk 1979 – YouTube
ObL apparently seen there just behind Ziggy’s left and paying close attention. “God is on your side.”