Here's why everyone should watch Assassin's Creed - Part 2

In part one of this post I focused on the unintended consequences aspect of the energy transition problem that the world has. In this part, the focus is on the very intended consequences, otherwise known as the sacrifice of free will.

Bans all around

The UK has approved plans to ban the sales of internal combustion engine vehicles from 2030 as a means of reducing its emissions footprint. The EU has proposed plans to ban sales of ICE cars across the union from 2035. Now, to some, opposition to these plans would likely be compared to the opposition of American gun enthusiasts to any suggestion of a ban on personal firearm ownership. That, however, would be rather unfair.

Personal vehicles are a necessity for a lot of people, even in countries with excellent public transport systems such as the Netherlands. For many, such as myself, they are a question of convenience: I’d rather spend 20 minutes driving my daughter to school and going back home than sitting more than an hour in public transport. And for a great many people in the European Union, electric cars are entirely non-affordable.

Bulgaria is one of the poorest countries in the EU, locked in a permanent competition with Romania for the bottom spot. Most of the cars on our roads are second-hand, even relatively new ones. The great majority of people simply don’t have the money for new cars and a portion, myself included, do not set that great a store by having a brand new car especially with the now nearly ubiquitous planned obsolescence, not to mention the more recent problem of microchip shortages.

Despite our politicians’ enviable amount of enthusiasm, Bulgaria is unlikely to become as rich as Norway in the next 13 years, not least because we don’t have the oil or the cheap hydropower. So it is quite unlikely that significantly more people would be able to afford an EV unless EV prices go significantly down.

This is the plan, of course, and everyone is talking about how much cheaper EVs are going to get… or rather they aren’t anymore because of the latest price charts for lithium, cobalt and other battery metals. What these charts show is a market that has put its trust in the forecasts for rising demand for all these metals and minerals. And why shouldn’t it when politicians are so actively making sure that demand will, indeed, be rising. And so will be prices.

As always, intentions have been great: ditching gas guzzlers and switching to cleaner, easier to drive EVs that emit nothing and that everyone can afford because we’re bringing the cost of batteries down significantly.

The reality — if the bans survive, that is — is likely to look more like a place where a personal vehicle is a luxury only the few wealthy enough can afford. Some of a more conspiratorial nature than me would say that preparations for this reality are already underway. Take a look at this article, for example, in which the UK’s transport minister talks about how we need to ditch the "20th-century thinking centred around private vehicle ownership and towards greater flexibility, with personal choice and low carbon shared transport."

I am not of a conspiratorial nature so I would suggest that Trudy Harrison genuinely believes shared transport is a better alternative to personal car ownership from a climate perspective. I would also suggest, however, that most people do not share this climate perspective as an element of their default settings. Which is why these settings need to be adjusted, I imagine, by ditching the 20th century thinking that personal ownership is something good.

And here is the hilarious part. Eastern European countries spent about two generations and change in an environment where personal ownership of anything much was not exactly encouraged and neither was personal enterprise. With the fall of the Berlin Wall millions of people went on a binge of consumption and personal ownership, and the outlook is pretty stable, I’d say.

I’d also say people in Eastern Europe are not that much different from people in Western Europe when it comes to having the convenience of owning your own car. I mean the older generations, of course, the ones born before the digital era and social networks. Younger generations are more malleable and more likely to incubate the new 21st century thinking that personal ownership is obsolete.

Bans are the only logical solution to the problem that emission crusaders are facing from those older generations that would like to keep their petrol car because they like the sound it makes and would rather use their electricity for other purposes, thank you very much. Bans are also, incidentally, a form of free will amputation. With our best interests at heart, of course.

I remember when the smoking ban came into effect about 20 years ago. I and most of my friends were active smokers in their 20s, without a single care in the world, least of all care for our own health. Some of them gave up smoking after the ban. Some, including me, didn’t. Years later I switched to a much less damaging form of nicotine intake and I’m healthier and happier for it but it was the result of a personal decision and not something forced on me.

Of course, from a politician’s point of view waiting for everyone to realise just how big a problem exhaust pipe emissions are before they give up their petrol cars willingly is completely pointless as it would take ages. Bans tend to speed things up significantly and, what’s even better, after the initial sound and fury people tend to settle back into their lives and accommodate the ban. But here’s the big difference with the smoking ban: if you quit smoking, you save money. If you quit your petrol car you’re likely to spend more.

From my experience as a human being living among other human beings, most people are likely to surrender some of their freedoms if they get rewarded in a specific, tangible way. But the only reward that is being advertised with regard to the shift to wind, solar and EVs is a better future for the planet about a century from now. Of course, many would be thinking about their children and their children’s children as they decide to go along and switch to an EV but sadly, they would be falling for the fallacy — or rather a series of fallacies (take your pick) — that is the stated climate emergency and governments’ response to it.

This is how the erosion of free will could look like in the prevailing political climate, if you’ll excuse the attempt at a pun:

• We have messed up the planet. We must act to save it right now or risk dying out as a species before long. (Personally speaking, I don’t see how human extinction is bad for the planet but I guess what we have here is a cognitive dissonance between us being bad for the planet but deserving to survive nevertheless)

• The only way to save to planet is to stop emitting greenhouse gases and it is urgent. This will require a complete transformation of everything but we must do it whatever the cost because people are already dying from climate change. And it is urgent so we could talk about costs later, once we get emissions under control.

• In order to stop emitting greenhouse gases we need to stop driving oil-fueled cars and start driving electricity-powered cars. We also need to stop eating so much meat and switch to a more plant-based diet because animal farming is a huge contributor to emissions. We can do it and we must do it because it’s urgent.

• We are not transforming ourselves fast enough so we need to institute bans on oil-fuelled cars in order to help people realise how bad they are for the environment in this emergency that we are already experiencing. It is urgent and we must act now.

• We will be taking these fields formerly used for farming and building solar farms on them because the danger of the planet overheating is clear and present, and increasingly urgent, and we need to eat less anyway because excess consumption means more emissions.

• You can’t pay your electricity bill? We are sorry to hear this. We will need to take your EV as payment. Walking is good for your health, anyway.

The above is, of course, a purely hypothetical scenario. Yet in the past couple of years since the pandemic broke out there has been a lot of talk about freedoms and whether or not they are worth sacrificing for the greater good, etc. I’m not going to wade into that debate because I have a sufficiently strong sense of self-preservation but I would like to conclude this post with a reminder of what it means to have free will.

Free will means making your own decisions without undue interference from anyone or anything else. Of course, the defenders of this interference would argue that it is a very due sort of interference and it is for our own good. Unfortunately, whenever someone claims they are doing something unpopular for the good of those it is unpopular with, chances are it is not that good, except for the few who stand to profit from the unpopular thing.

Assassin’s Creed is not a brilliant movie. It’s got an excellent cast so there’s some good acting there but the plot is perhaps a little oversimplified. Still, this is not necessarily bad — it helps put the message across more clearly. And the message is this: even though we’re prone to violence/pollution and this violence/pollution often leads to tragedy, we are better off having free will. I’m sure this message would be debatable for many and the very fact it could be debatable is already dangerous.