Apocalypse When?

Date: 05‑08‑2021

Source: Project Syndicate by Diane Coyle

Diane Coyle, Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge, is the author, most recently, of Markets, State, and People: Economics for Public Policy. 

System change is required to avert potential catastrophes such as climate change‑induced weather events, declining agricultural productivity, and future pandemics. But it is difficult to get people to tackle such threats in concert when most perceive only a slow deterioration.

CAMBRIDGE – In his elegiac memoir The World of Yesterday, which he wrote while in exile from the Nazis, the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig observed that most people cannot comprehend the prospect of catastrophic changes in their situation. Things can get incrementally worse for a long time without prompting a reaction. Once catastrophe strikes, it is too late to act.

Dramatic changes are occurring in our times, too, and we must hope that it is not yet too late to address them. Unfortunately, sufficiently urgent, coordinated, and decisive action will likely be difficult to mobilize when most of us – like the proverbial slowly boiling frog – perceive change to be incremental. So, it is worth asking what we might be facing if the worst happens.

The lost history of the electric car – and what it tells us about the future of transport

Date: 04‑08‑2021

Source: The Guardian by Tom Standage

To every age dogged with pollution, accidents and congestion, the transport solution for the next generation seems obvious – but the same problems keep coming back

In the 1890s, the biggest cities of the western world faced a mounting problem. Horse‑drawn vehicles had been in use for thousands of years, and it was hard to imagine life without them. But as the number of such vehicles increased during the 19th century, the drawbacks of using horses in densely populated cities were becoming ever more apparent.

In particular, the accumulation of horse manure on the streets, and the associated stench, were impossible to miss. By the 1890s, about 300,000 horses were working on the streets of London, and more than 150,000 in New York City. Each of these horses produced an average of 10kg of manure a day, plus about a litre of urine. Collecting and removing thousands of tonnes of waste from stables and streets proved increasingly difficult.