Today’s messaging is going to be a smorgasbord. I am going to display for you a variety of items pertaining to several of the topics I cover. Transportation, insurance, real estate (primarily housing), water shortages and biodiversity.
Since the last few blogs have been about the auto industry let me start there. If there is still any doubt in your mind as to where the manufacturers are racing (pun intended) just look at the headlines from just this week alone. Links to the articles are included. And while you may be thinking that this is primarily about the luxury market, in almost every case, trends in the auto market (and computers and cell phones and…) start at the top and work their way down as economies of scale develop.
Rolls to drop models as new plans emerge
The ultraluxury brand is ending its coupe and convertible models next year, and an EV is under development.
Maserati’s Lineup is Growing with More Electric Power
Next year will be a key one for the brand, with several new cars or variants on the way.
September 27, 2021
https://www.autonews.com/future-product/maserati-future-product-more-electric-power
Lamborghini Taps Sibling Brands to Electrify
The supercar brand won’t have a full electric vehicle until sometime in the second half of this decade.
McLaren Moves to All-Electrified by 2026
McLaren Automotive now finds itself idling at a crossroad.
DBX Success Fuels Aston Martin Product Rush
Aston intends to be an all-electric brand by 2030
Taycan Success Spurs Porsche on EVs
Porsche is looking to peel away from flat-six engine power toward electric powertrains
Well, you get the picture. And more indicators about where the market is accelerating toward…
GM Building Giant Battery Development Lab in Detroit Suburb
BY | 10/06/2021
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eenews/2021/10/06/gm-building-giant-battery-development-lab-in-detroit-suburb-281618
General Motors Co. says it’s building a huge new electric vehicle battery lab in Michigan where scientists will work on chemistry to cut costs 60 percent over current vehicles and allow people to travel 500 to 600 miles per charge.
From Bloomberg Hyperdrive 9/30/2021
Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess took to Twitter to sketch out the car giant’s vision for a new government. His 10-point wish list includes calls to expand renewables, curb coal, raise the price of CO2 and scrap subsidies for gasoline and diesel fuel.
VW’s CEO openly trying to speed up the demise of the internal combustion engine would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. Diess’s posts represented a “key transitional shift in communication and lobbying,” Matthias Schmidt, an independent auto analyst in Berlin, told me this week.
Electric Vehicles: the Revolution is Finally Here
After years of talk from carmakers, the industry is rapidly being transformed as companies stake their future on EVs
Financial Times, 10/3/2021
https://www.ft.com/content/fb4d1d64-5d90-4e27-b77f-6e221bc02696?mc_cid=5186c243fc&mc_eid=8f4760cc57
This is a really cool article.
Trams, Cable Cars, Electric Ferries: How Cities Are Rethinking Transit
Urban transportation is central to the effort to slow climate change. It can’t be done by just switching to electric cars. Several cities are starting to electrify mass transit.
New York Times 10/3/2021
In a post from some time ago I mentioned that there was a new technology being developed that would eliminate the range anxiety hurdle to mass EV adaptation. Michigan is now actually about to try it out.
Michigan Plans to Build the Country’s First Wireless EV Charging Road
Grist 10/9/2021
https://grist.org/transportation/michigan-plans-to-build-the-countrys-first-wireless-ev-charging-road/?mc_cid=c9b517e7dd&mc_eid=8f4760cc57
Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced last month that the state will construct the nation’s first wireless electric vehicle charging road — a one-mile stretch in the Metro Detroit area.
A wireless EV road works like this: As a car drives over it, the vehicle’s battery is charged by pads or coils built under the surface of the street using magnetic induction.
Turning from Transportation this article is frightening and should wake you up to the dangers that we are creating.
We’re Living Through One of the Most Explosive Extinction Episodes Ever
New York Times Sept. 30, 2021
the collapse of biodiversity, the sum of all things living on the planet.
As species disappear and the complex relationships between living things and systems become frayed and broken, the growing damage to the world’s biodiversity presents dire risks to human societies.
The extinction of plants and animals is accelerating, moving an estimated 1,000 times faster than natural rates before humans emerged. Bugs on our windshields are no longer a summer thing as insect populations plummet. Nearly three billion birds have been lost in North America since 1970, diminishing the pollination of food crops. In India, thousands of people are dying of rabies because the population of vultures that feed on garbage is cratering, resulting in a huge increase in feral dogs that eat these food scraps in the birds’ absence.
This is a future where zoonotic diseases are becoming increasingly common and the world’s food security is imperiled.
The last two weeks I’ve sent out several articles about flood insurance like this one. It’s NOT just about people who live on coasts.
The Price of Living Near the Shore is Already High. It’s About to Go Through the Roof.
As FEMA prepares to remove subsidies from its flood insurance, a new assessment says 8 million homeowners in landlocked states are at risk of serious flooding because of climate change
The Washington Post 10/1/2021
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/10/01/price-living-near-shore-is-already-high-its-about-go-through-roof/?mc_cid=7c727b27f8&mc_eid=8f4760cc57
Climate change will affect people who weren’t threatened before. New technology that allows analysts to study the environs around each home led to a stunning find: 6 million homes in states such as Utah, Idaho, Vermont and Tennessee that didn’t require insurance because they were thought to be safe from flooding are actually at risk because of climate change.
And here are the real life consequences.
Flooded Tenn. Town Wrestles with How, Where to Rebuild
Let me leave you with this article. As the planet warms more moisture is going to be accumulated in the atmosphere leading to greater amounts of rain in certain places (drought in others) that will come down in more intense storms dumping unprecedented amounts of water in very short time periods leading to overwhelming flooding. And the world is not prepared for it.
U.N. Report Warns of Global Water Crisis Amid Climate Change
Much of the world is unprepared for the floods, hurricanes and droughts expected to worsen with climate change and urgently needs better warning systems to avert water-related disasters, according to a report by the United Nations’ weather agency.
Global water management is “fragmented and inadequate,” the reportpublished yesterday found, with nearly 60 percent of 101 countries surveyed needing improved forecasting systems that can help prevent devastation from severe weather.
As populations grow, the number of people with inadequate access to water is also expected to rise to more than 5 billion by 2050, up from 3.6 billion in 2018, the report said.
Among the actions recommended by the report were better warning systems for flood- and drought-prone areas that can identify, for example, when a river is expected to swell. Better financing and coordination among countries on water management is also needed, according to the report by the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization, development agencies and other groups.
“We need to wake up to the looming water crisis,”
If you’ve read this far you have seen the variety of articles relating to several different topics I cover. Hopefully some of them piqued your interest and made you more aware of the enormity of the changes that are occurring in the world around us. We are heading into unprecedented changes at a very high rate of speed. I hope that some of this information will help you better understand the upheavals we face and make you better prepared to navigate them.
