Earth Protect Blog

By Jack Ewing, Clifford Krauss and Lisa Friedman

The New York Times

TETON VILLAGE, Wyo.>> Like many people driving an electric car for the first time, Mikey Marohn had questions: Could he drive hundreds of miles to visit his father without stopping? Where would the chargers be? How did you turn it on?

“I’m anxious,” said Marohn, a 34-year-old carpenter, as he settled behind the wheel of a Chevrolet Bolt near Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.

But after a test drive with Alicia Cox, executive director of Yellowstone-Teton Clean Cities, a nonprofit group that promotes green transportation, Marohn had gone from skeptical to curious.

“I would consider it,” he said after Cox explained that he could save $3,000 a year in fuel costs if he replaced his Chevy Impala with a Bolt. “I’d like to save money and help the planet.”

Green energy and transportation have advanced faster than many experts thought possible a few years ago. But many hurdles remain, including efforts by conservative politicians to prolong the use of coal, oil and gas and campaigns by environmentalists and local residents to block new wind turbines, transmission lines and mines.

Just as important will be persuading people like Marohn that electric cars, renewable energy and electric heaters and stoves are practical, economical and exciting.

Cox, who travels Wyoming offering free rides in the Chevy Bolt, is part of a broad, and sometimes quixotic, retail effort to win hearts and minds in the fight against climate change, one person at a time. Biden administration officials are trying to highlight to voters the economic benefits of his energy and industrial policies. Corporations like General Motors, which makes the Bolt, are spending billions of dollars to build electric vehicles they hope to sell everywhere, even in conservative states like Wyoming.

In conversations with activists, policymakers and corporate executives, it becomes clear that a save-the-planet argument doesn’t go far. Most people won’t buy green technology unless it will clearly save them money and wows them with stunning designs or jaw-dropping performance.

Many, conservatives in particular, chafe at the prospect of the government forcing them to buy electric cars or ditch their natural gas appliances, polls show. That’s perhaps why those pitching the technology often avoid mentioning climate change. They emulate evangelists who don’t lead with Jesus when trying to win over nonbelievers.

A clean energy future will require painstaking and individually tailored persuasion campaigns. About half of Americans say they are not interested in buying electric cars, and a little more than half say they have not seriously considered solar panels, heat pumps or electric water heaters, a recent Pew Research Center survey found.

“I never expect anyone to adopt an EV on the first go of it,” Cox said. “They need someone walking along beside them as they are making the decision.”

Selling green energy Jae Landreth operates a solar installation business in Baldwin City, Kan., a rural town southwest of Kansas City. Although he believes in climate change, he said, he “learned the hard way” not to mention it when marketing solar panels to his neighbors.

“That’s not how you sell it,” he said over coffee at his home. “Nobody’s ever going to make a decision unless it benefits them in a money sense.”

The Inflation Reduction Act passed by Democrats last year allocated hundreds of billions of dollars in incentives for wind and solar manufacturing, electric vehicles and other clean energy.

Although no Republicans voted for the bill, much of the money has gone to GOP-led states in the South where many automakers, battery manufacturers and solar companies are building factories in part to take advantage of the law’s tax breaks.

Getting credit for the new jobs is a political imperative for President Joe Biden. That helps explains why his energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, spent part of July traversing the Southeast in a caravan of electric vehicles.

Granholm stopped at universities and elementary schools, a hardware store and a Baptist church. She made the case that federal investment in clean energy is creating thousands of jobs, saving consumers money and even protecting the nation against President Vladimir Putin of Russia, who has used fossil fuel exports to exert pressure.

Not on Granholm’s list of reasons to go green: climate change.

Sipping black coffee at a Starbucks outside Memphis, Tenn., Granholm said she liked to focus on how Biden administration policies were turning the region into a vibrant manufacturing hub. “It’s important to lean on the message that makes sense for people where they are.”

Jobs and savings

In North and South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee — states on Granholm’s itinerary — solid majorities accept that global warming is real, according to detailed polling by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. But there is widespread skepticism that humans are responsible.

“The climate has always been changing,” said Sue Burns, 59, at a gathering of Pontiac car enthusiasts in Murfreesboro, Tenn. “The left is out of control” in insisting that burning fossil fuels is causing a planetary crisis, Burns said.

Yet Burns drives a Prius that runs on an internal combustion engine and an electric motor. She said she had bought the car to save money on gas.

Among residents benefiting from the economic boost, attitudes may be softening. Outside Dalton, Ga., Qcells, a maker of solar panels, is planning to expand a manufacturing plant. The factory is in the congressional district represented by Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican who has called fossil fuels “amazing” and climate change a “scam.”

William Turner, 49, one of Greene’s constituents, said he didn’t “really buy in to that stuff” about global warming. But, he added, “I don’t have anything against solar, especially if it’s creating jobs.”

The true test of public opinion will come when the promised factories are up and running, said Jason Walsh, the executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, a partnership of unions and environmental groups.

“Political messaging and press announcements” will not convince anyone, Walsh said. “But a paycheck might.”

Not “Mission: Impossible”

In Wyoming — where coal, oil, natural gas and souped-up pickups are cherished — Patrick Lawson is fighting a lonely campaign.

A member of the Northern Arapaho Tribe, he tries to get local businesses to install charging stations. He takes out his Tesla Model Y and Ford F-150 Lightning as an Uber driver at night, less to make money than to drum up interest in electric vehicles.

Once a year, he participates in the Rocky Mountain Rebels Car Show in Riverton, which adjoins his reservation. “I just want to change the perception that electric cars are not as good as big, noisy muscle cars,” Lawson said.

It’s a tough sell. During a Friday night “cruise parade” that opened the show, Lawson’s mother, Susan Lawson, drove a red Tesla Model X, its distinctive wing doors open. As she waited in a lumber store parking lot for the parade to start, a middle-age woman approached.

“Wow, it’s a Tesla, beautiful car,” said the woman, who identified herself only as Cheryl, “a patriot and small business owner.”

But then her tone shifted. “I don’t believe in electric cars,” she said. “The government could turn them off. The government controls our electricity.”

A few bystanders on the parade route commented favorably about the Tesla’s looks. But there were brickbats, too. “They’re on their way to Jackson,” someone said, referring to the liberal resort town. “Good luck getting over the pass in that thing,” shouted another.

After the Lawsons parked in front of the local Elks lodge, a man pretending to hold a machine gun fired a spray of imaginary bullets at the electric vehicles.

That kind of reaction doesn’t deter Patrick Lawson, 42, who manages the tribe’s internet company along with his small charging business, Wild West EV.

When Lawson arranged $174,000 to match a federal grant to install charging stations at the city hall and airport, the Riverton City Council declined the money. The one public charging station in town is often blocked by trucks, sometimes deliberately parked horizontally to make charging impossible.

Lawson remains optimistic. “I’m in it for the long haul,” he said. “It’s not ‘Mission: Impossible.’ ”

Ford Motor, GM and dozens of other companies are investing hundreds of billions of dollars to refit factories and build new ones to produce electric vehicles. They don’t want to make cars that only Democrats buy.

One company confronting the marketing problem is Polaris, a Minnesota company that builds four-wheel off-road vehicles used by hunters and farmers.

In April, Polaris began selling a $25,000 electric vehicle called the Ranger XP Kinetic. Advertising barely mentions the environment, instead stressing its performance.

The initial production run sold out two hours after Polaris began taking orders.

“We knew the target customer,” said Josh Hermes, vice president for electric off-road vehicles at Polaris. “We really focused in on the benefits of the product.”

There are tentative signs that conservative opposition is wavering.

The Republican-controlled Legislature in Alabama, where Mercedes-Benz makes electric cars and Polaris builds the Kinetic, has allocated $1 million a year for a campaign to encourage residents to buy electric vehicles.

“We want to make sure we embrace the jobs and economic opportunities that accompany this new generation of vehicles,” Kenneth Boswell, director of the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs, said in a statement.

Republican lawmakers in Missouri have sought to block Quinton Lucas, Kansas City’s Democratic mayor, from raising the minimum wage, making buildings more energy-efficient and restricting gun ownership. But they have not tried to block Kansas City from buying electric cars and trucks, Lucas said.

Building inspectors and supervisors in the fire department drive electric cars. At the city-owned airport, electric tractors deliver baggage, and electric buses shuttle passengers. The technology saves the city thousands of dollars per vehicle in maintenance and fuel costs.

“They usually notice everything new that we do and often try to preempt it,” Lucas said of the Legislature. “And so what that tells me is, actually, I don’t see this being a flash point.”