I. The Scene

On the evening of June 12, six of America’s most serious political journalists gathered before a live studio audience to mark a milestone. The United States was approaching its 250th anniversary, and Washington Week convened a special edition to take stock: the state of democracy, the durability of founding principles, and the question of whether the republic was experiencing, in host Jeffrey Goldberg’s formulation, a head cold, a nervous breakdown, a midlife crisis, or a terminal illness.

The conversation was serious, well-informed, and conducted in good faith. It was also, in its method, a document of the very problem it sought to diagnose.

The most clarifying moment came not from the theoretical discussion but from a road trip. Ashley Parker, White House correspondent at The Atlantic, described driving across the country in 2014, talking to voters ahead of the midterms. What she found were not angry extremists but recognizable citizens — patriots across party lines — who had done everything right. They had worked hard, saved carefully, and bought the house the banks told them it would have been irresponsible not to buy. Then the people who crashed the economy paid no price, and these voters did. Their verdict, Parker noted, was: burn it all down. They did not yet have a vehicle for it. Two years later, they did.

What the panel observed but did not fully name was the asymmetry that followed. Trump and then the Republican Party became martyr-champions of that grievance, giving it political form — a clear enemy, a decisive break, and a promise that this time the people at the top would pay. The Democratic response to the same grievance was to explain it, contextualize it, and paper over it. That difference in political method — one side converting rage into form, the other managing it into abstraction — is not incidental. It is structural. And it is why, a decade later, discontent with Trump does not translate into support for Democrats. The grievance has not been answered. It has been administered.

The panel’s method — deliberation, norm-invocation, appeals to founding principles and Tocqueville — is not wrong. It is the right way to conduct a serious conversation about democracy. But it is also, precisely, the mode of political engagement that a significant part of the electorate has decided no longer works on their behalf. The panel was, without quite meaning to be, a demonstration of its own thesis.

Two theorists — one a German philosopher who died in 2015, the other a German jurist who died in 1985 — would have found the evening instructive. They would have drawn opposite conclusions.

Subscribe now

II. Habermas: The Architecture of Legitimacy —
and Its Self-Inflicted Wounds

Jürgen Habermas spent the better part of six decades building a theory of how democratic societies produce legitimate authority. The core argument, articulated most systematically in Between Facts and Norms (Faktizität und Geltung, 1992), is deceptively simple: law derives its binding force not from sovereign will or procedural correctness alone, but from its communicative genesis — from being traceable to a process in which those affected could, in principle, have had a genuine voice. On this account, democracy is not a counting mechanism. It is a talking one.

The institutional architecture this requires is specific. Civil society deliberates; political parties — as articulated in Article 21 of the German Basic Law — participate in the formation of political will (mitwirken bei der politischen Willensbildung), shaping and articulating rather than merely transmitting or manufacturing; parliaments enact under conditions of public justification. Each link in the chain must remain permeable — open to the discourses circulating in the public sphere and responsive to the normative claims of those it represents. When the chain holds, legislation carries legitimacy beyond its numerical majority. When it breaks, law retains its formal force but loses its claim on conscience. People comply because they must, not because they recognize the authority behind the demand.

By this measure, the chain in the United States has not merely been strained. It has been severed at multiple points simultaneously. Shared epistemic ground — the common baseline of fact from which deliberation proceeds — has fragmented. Political parties have undergone what the Habermasian tradition would call internal colonization: captured by media logic, donor networks, and the imperatives of permanent campaigning, they have ceased participating in civil society’s normative formation and have begun to manage and manipulate it. Institutions that once served as arenas of public justification are now widely seen as instruments of factional interest. Tim Alberta, on the Washington Week panel, named this precisely: the crisis is not primarily epistemological. It is a crisis of trust, and the epistemological chaos is downstream of it.

But the Habermasian account has a harder edge that the panel did not reach. The deliberative infrastructure did not collapse solely under external pressure. It was already compromised from within — by deliberation that tiptoed around its hardest questions. The social contract that globalization’s winners offered to its losers was never subjected to the rigorous communicative scrutiny the Habermasian tradition demands. The failures were real: the financialization of the economy, the offshoring of industrial livelihoods, and the gap between the procedural correctness of liberal governance and its substantive hollowness for large parts of the population. These were administered, managed, and explained. They were not honestly deliberated. Democrats learned to tally success in dollars spent rather than in outcomes achieved; layer after layer of programmatic response, each announced as a solution, none closing the gap. A communicative process that excludes its own most consequential failures from serious examination is not, on Habermasian terms, legitimate — regardless of how correctly its procedures were followed.

This is the self-inflicted wound. The pro-democracy coalition is now calling for the repair and defense of a deliberative framework that was already failing the people whose support it needs. The building’s foundations were cracked before the storm arrived. The architects had the inspection reports. They chose not to circulate them.

Share

III. Schmitt: The Logic That Is Winning

Carl Schmitt would not have been surprised by any of it. This is, in itself, worth pausing on.

The German jurist, writing in the fractured democracy of the Weimar Republic, offered a precise and unsparing account of what liberal proceduralism conceals. Beneath the deliberation, the invocation of norms, and the parliamentary negotiation lay a question that liberalism could not answer on its own terms: who decides when the normal order no longer suffices? His answer, stated with the economy of someone who had thought it through completely, was this: sovereign is he who decides on the exception.

The exception is not an emergency in the administrative sense — a crisis to be managed within existing rules. It is the moment when the rules themselves are suspended, when the legitimacy of the existing order is put to the test, and when authority reveals itself not as procedure but as decision. For Schmittian analysis, this is not a pathology of political life. It is its foundation. In normal times, procedure conceals the sovereign decision that underlies it. Crisis merely makes it visible.

Alongside this sits the concept that does the most political work in the current moment: the friend-enemy distinction. On Schmitt’s account, politics is not the management of competing interests within a shared framework. It is the identification of who belongs to the political community and who stands outside it, who is friend and who is enemy. This is neither a moral distinction — Schmitt is explicit on this point — nor a personal one. It is existential. The enemy is not evil; the enemy is other, in a way that is politically consequential. A political formation that cannot draw this line is not, in the Schmittian analysis, a political formation at all. It is an administration.

This is not merely an external analytical observation. The Hard Right has done its reading. Adrian Vermeule, Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard and the most prominent theorist of Catholic integralism in the United States, draws explicitly on Schmitt — combining the priority of sovereignty over legality with a program to subordinate the state to the Church's ends. When Vice President Vance told the New York Times columnist Ross Douthat in May 2024 that 'these guys have all read Carl Schmitt — there's no law, there's just power,' he was describing the opposition. He was also, whether he intended to or not, describing the operating logic of his own political moment. That Vance's mentor and benefactor, Peter Thiel, has been equally drawn to Schmitt suggests that the appeal of decisionism extends well beyond the Catholic political Right — bridging, with some tidiness, the gap between Christian political theology and Silicon Valley techno-authoritarianism.

Viewed through this lens, the MAGA movement is not a malfunction of democratic politics. It is a coherent, internally consistent political project operating on premises that its opposition has largely declined to examine. It has identified its enemy with clarity. It has produced a sovereign figure willing to decide — to act, to break, and to suspend the norms the existing order treated as inviolable. It has offered the voters Ashley Parker met on her road trip not an explanation of their grievance but a form for it: a clear line between those who caused the damage and those who suffered it, and a promise that this time the exception will be made on their behalf.

This is why the polling asymmetry that has persisted through the Trump era resists the explanations most commonly offered for it. Discontent with Trump is real and measurable. Its failure to translate into support for Democrats is not a communications problem or a policy gap that a better-designed program would close. The Schmittian analysis points to something more structural: a significant part of the electorate is not, at this moment, seeking better deliberation. It is seeking decision. It is seeking a political form that takes its grievance seriously enough to name an enemy and act. The side that offers a clear friend-enemy line and a figure willing to bear the cost of the exception will continue to outperform the side that offers a more rigorous process for reaching consensus — not because voters are irrational, but because the offer is categorically different.

There is one further observation the Schmittian analysis yields, and it is the most uncomfortable. The pro-democracy coalition experiences the current moment as a crisis of democracy. The MAGA movement experiences it as democracy finally working — as the corrupt procedural order being cleared away to reveal and restore the authentic will of the people. These are not two interpretations of the same event. They are two different political ontologies, operating on incompatible premises about what politics is for and where authority comes from. No amount of improved deliberation bridges that gap, because the gap is not about the quality of deliberation. It is about whether deliberation is the right activity at all.

Subscribe now

IV. Where the Two Theories Meet

Habermas and Schmitt are not simply opposites. That framing is too comfortable — it suggests a debate to be refereed, a synthesis to be reached, and a position somewhere between them that a reasonable person might occupy. The actual relationship is less tidy and more instructive.

They are diagnoses of the same crisis, grounded in incompatible premises. The Weimar Republic, which formed the backdrop of Schmitt’s sharpest work, was precisely the kind of deliberative democracy that the Habermasian tradition would recognize as structurally legitimate — and it collapsed. Schmitt drew from that collapse the conclusion that liberal proceduralism was constitutively incapable of defending itself against the exception, and that the friend-enemy distinction would always, in the end, overwhelm the talking mechanism. The Habermasian response — developed across the long postwar arc of West German democracy — was to argue that the lesson of Weimar was not the failure of deliberation but the failure of deliberation to go deep enough, to build the communicative infrastructure and the epistemic common ground that genuine legitimacy requires.

Both positions are, at this moment, empirically defensible. The deliberative infrastructure of American democracy is collapsing — the Habermasian diagnosis stands. The political force that has abandoned that infrastructure is winning on its own terms — the Schmittian anatomy is accurate. Holding both as simultaneously true is uncomfortable. It is also, this piece would suggest, the only intellectually honest position available — which does not make it more comfortable.

What the Habermasian tradition offers that the Schmittian analysis does not is a direction — not a guarantee, but an orientation. On Habermasian terms, the collapse of communicative legitimacy is not irreversible. It points precisely to what would need to be rebuilt: not procedure alone, but the substantive conditions under which procedure becomes meaningful again. Shared epistemic ground. Institutions whose claim to represent the public interest is earned rather than asserted. Political parties that participate honestly in the formation of political will, not manage it instrumentally. And, most critically, deliberative honesty about what went wrong — not the management of failure, but its acknowledgment.

This is where the “save democracy” coalition faces its most demanding challenge, and where the Habermasian framework is most useful as a diagnostic rather than as a source of comfort. The coalition is, structurally, conservative. It is defending institutions, norms, and procedures whose legitimacy a significant part of the population has already withdrawn. Defending them in their current form — invoking their historical importance and warning of what their loss would mean — does not answer the prior question of why they lost their purchase. Until that question is answered honestly, the coalition is asking people who felt abandoned by the existing order to fight for its restoration. That is not, as Ashley Parker’s road-trip interlocutors might have put it, a compelling offer.

Rising to the occasion, in this context, is not restoration. It is construction — the harder, less certain work of building the communicative conditions under which a new legitimacy becomes possible. That requires, first, admitting that the old legitimacy was more fragile than its defenders acknowledged and that its fragility was not only the result of bad-faith attack. Some of it was self-inflicted. The inspection reports existed. The deliberation that might have acted on them was deferred, softened, and ultimately avoided.

That admission is not a concession to the Schmittian position. It is a precondition for answering it.

Share

V. Closing

Washington Week closed with Ronald Reagan.

Jeffrey Goldberg, wrapping the evening, quoted the 40th president’s farewell address: because we are a great nation, our challenges seem complex, but as long as we remember our first principles and believe in ourselves, the future will always be ours. It was a generous note on which to end. It was also, in its structure, the panel’s method stated as a credo: invoke the tradition, affirm resilience, trust the republic. The evening had offered considerable evidence that this might not be enough. The panel noted this too, and then quoted Reagan anyway.

Reagan’s America had things the current moment does not. A functioning epistemic commons — not perfect, not without its distortions, but sufficiently shared that deliberation could proceed from a common baseline. A Cold War adversary that drew the friend-enemy line from the outside, clarifying national identity without requiring it to be constructed internally. And an institutional inheritance whose legitimacy, however contested at the margins, had not yet been systematically targeted by either of the two parties charged with sustaining it.

None of those conditions obtain today. The panel knows this — it spent an hour saying so. Yet the closing gesture was Reaganite: faith in the tradition, confidence in resilience, and reassurance that we have been here before. It is not wrong to draw on that. It becomes a problem when it substitutes for the harder reckoning the evening’s evidence demanded.

The question this piece has been circling is not whether American democracy has the capacity to repair itself — de Tocqueville's formulation, approvingly cited at the panel's opening. It is what rising to the occasion requires when the framework for rising has itself become the object of political contestation. When one side has concluded that the rules are the problem and has built a coherent political project on that conclusion, defending the rules is not sufficient. It does not answer why the rules lost their authority or what it would take to rebuild it.

That is not a question the Habermasian tradition answers with a program. It answers it with a demand: be honest, first, about what broke and why. The deliberation urgently needed now is the one that was deferred — about the social contract, about who the existing order was actually serving, and about the gap between procedural legitimacy and substantive accountability.

The reader who has followed the argument this far will not find the demand reassuring. It is not meant to be. The Schmittian analysis is accurate about the present. The Habermasian tradition is necessary for what comes after. The distance between those two positions is the work.

Subscribe now

Epilogue: Where This Piece Began

This piece did not begin with Habermas and Schmitt. It began with a new pope.

When the College of Cardinals elected Robert Francis Prevost as Pope Leo XIV in May 2025, several things were immediately noted: his American formation, his affiliation with the Augustinian order, and his reputation as a careful institutional man. What received less attention in general coverage, but was not lost on those watching the American Hard Right, was the implicit contrast with the current United States vice president’s Catholic politics. J.D. Vance’s Catholicism is conspicuous, combative, and theologically specific. It draws, whether consciously or through the intellectual currents in which he moves, on a strand of Catholic political thought that has been gaining significant influence in American conservative legal and policy circles: integralism, the view that political authority is properly ordered toward — and ultimately subordinate to — the ends of the Church.

That convergence — a new pope, a Catholic vice president, and a Hard Right increasingly fluent in the vocabulary of political theology — led back to a text that has quietly circulated in certain intellectual circles for years. Carl Schmitt’s Römischer Katholizismus und politische Form, published in 1923, is not a long book. It is, however, a precise one. Its argument is that the Roman Catholic Church embodies a political form that liberal modernity cannot replicate and has never understood: the complexio oppositorum, the capacity to hold opposites together within a single institutional structure; Repräsentation, the ontological mediation between an idea and its concrete historical embodiment; and a juridical authority whose claim to legitimacy precedes and exceeds democratic consent. For Schmitt, the Church was not merely a religious institution. It was the last surviving example of genuine political form in a world being flattened by economic rationalism and technical administration.

The American Catholic integralists who have adopted this argument are, for the most part, not misreading Schmitt. They are inheriting a contradiction that was present in his work from the beginning. Schmitt admired the Church precisely because its institutional architecture disciplined and channeled decisionist energy — because the exception, in Catholic political form, was managed by an institution with civilizational time horizons, diplomatic patience, and the capacity to hold irresolution together rather than force it to a premature conclusion. What the integralist program constructs is Schmittian authority without Roman Catholic institutional patience: the exception without the institution capable of managing its consequences.

The Holy See, meanwhile, is doing something that looks quite different from the integralist program carried out in its name. It mediates. It waits. It holds contradictions. It operates on a time horizon that makes electoral cycles look like rounding errors. The diplomatic record — the Beagle Channel, the US-Cuba normalization, the quiet backchannels that precede every public breakthrough — reflects an institution that understands complexio oppositorum not as a theological curiosity but as a practical method. Pope Leo XIV, formed in that tradition, represents something closer to that inheritance than to the integralist architecture being constructed in American courts and think tanks.

The distance between Vance and Leo — two Catholics, one vocabulary, two entirely different theories of political time — is not a footnote to this piece’s argument. It is where the argument began. That the sitting Vice President and the newly elected Pope, both American, should mark the opposing ends of a Schmittian contradiction is, on reflection, the kind of thing that could only happen now. Or possibly in Weimar.

I am curious to hear your opinion.

Leave a comment

Thanks for reading rising.
Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Author’s note: This essay expands on a letter I submitted to The Economist in response to their June 1st leader, "Ukraine is now Europe's war." The letter prompted a generous response from the magazine's Europe editor. This is the expanded argument.

A Habit of Looking Away

Europe is finally taking its own security seriously. Not because it chose to, but because the alternatives — a US president with designs on Greenland, a Russian intelligence service conducting assassinations on European soil, and a land war on the continent’s eastern edge — have made complacency impossible to sustain.

Yet the moment also exposes something Europe has preferred not to examine too closely: that its capacity to act was always thinner than its rhetoric, and that the habits that made it thin run deep.

They were visible long before Russia’s full-scale invasion. The names alone form an indictment: Grozny. Transnistria. Tbilisi. Crimea. The Donbas. At every turn, Europe watched, issued statements, and returned to business. When the Yugoslav wars brought ethnic cleansing back to European soil, it took American air power to end them. When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Europe’s response was a sanctions package calibrated not to inconvenience too many shareholders. When the evidence of Moscow’s imperial trajectory was already written across a decade of proxy wars, cyberattacks, assassinations on European soil, and state-sponsored disinformation, Germany was still building Nordstream II — and calling it commerce.

This was not naivety. It was a repeated choice to treat Russian aggression as a problem that could be managed, deferred, or handed to Washington. That assumption is now gone — not temporarily suspended by an aberrant administration, but structurally in question. The United States is reordering its strategic priorities. Europe cannot bank on a return to the pre-2016 normal because that normal was already a convenient fiction. It was maintained by not looking too closely at what European armies could actually achieve on their own against a peer adversary.

It turns out: not enough. Not by a long shot.

This is the context in which the EU’s accession framework for Ukraine must be understood — not as a bureaucratic process proceeding at its natural pace, but as an institution designed for a different era, measuring the wrong things, at the wrong speed, against the wrong standard.

Thirty-five negotiating chapters. Democracy and rule of law. Competition policy. Financial services. Agricultural standards. The architecture was built for candidates joining a stable club in a favorable security environment: Central European economies converging toward Western norms, with time to spare and NATO holding the perimeter. It was never designed for a country simultaneously fighting an existential war, rebuilding its state, and arriving at the door more capable — in the domain that now defines European security — than most of the members already seated inside.

The waiting room was built for a different applicant. The one who showed up has already walked past it.

The Examiner Is the Student

Ukraine did not arrive at the EU’s door as a supplicant. It arrived as a country that had spent three years doing what no European military has been asked to do in living memory: fighting a full-scale land war against a nuclear-armed peer adversary, absorbing catastrophic losses, adapting in real time, and continuing to fight.

The results are not merely heroic. They are instructive.

Ukraine has developed and deployed drone warfare at a scale and sophistication that has rewritten battlefield doctrine. It has mastered electronic countermeasures under live fire — not in exercises or simulations, but against an enemy actively trying to eliminate it. It has built a domestic defense industry capable of iterating weapon systems in weeks rather than years. Sweden’s defense minister said the quiet part aloud: testing arms in Ukraine produces innovations in weeks or months that would take years or decades at home. He was not paying a compliment. He was describing a capability gap.

That gap runs in an uncomfortable direction. It is not Ukraine that lacks what Europe has. It is Europe that lacks what Ukraine has — and urgently needs.

It is this inversion that the accession debate has yet to fully absorb. The standard model assumes a gradient: advanced members, convergence criteria, and a candidate that spends a decade demonstrating it can meet the club’s standards. Ukraine disrupts that gradient in the one domain where the stakes are now existential. On defense — on doctrine, technology, industrial capacity, and the hard-won operational knowledge on which European security now depends — Ukraine is not below the threshold. It has set the benchmark.

No EU member state has met that benchmark. Most are not even close.

The implications are awkward but unavoidable. Europe is engaged in an accession process in which it is simultaneously the examiner and, in the matter that matters most, the student. Pretending otherwise — continuing to frame Ukraine as a country that must prove itself worthy of European standards — is not just condescending. In the current threat environment, it is strategically illiterate.

Russia is not waiting for Europe to finish its paperwork. It is watching to see whether Europe can organize itself into a force capable of deterring Russia. So far, the answer is no. That makes the question of what to do with Ukraine’s accumulated battlefield knowledge not an accession footnote but the central European security question of the decade.

The framework needs to reflect that. Currently, it does not.

The 36th Chapter

There is a structural fix available if Europe has the imagination to use it.

The EU should co-develop with Ukraine a 36th negotiating chapter dedicated to defense, security, and military capability. Not as the final item on a long checklist — a reward offered after the real work is done — but as one of the first, establishing from the outset that this accession is different in kind, not just in scale, from those that preceded it. The sequencing is the message.

That chapter would not be written in Brussels. It would be co-authored with Kyiv — drawing on three years of operational knowledge that no think tank, no war college, and no European defense ministry currently possesses to the same depth. Drone doctrine. Electronic warfare. Rapid industrial iteration. Distributed command under sustained attack. These are not theoretical competencies. They are the lived curriculum of a country that has been stress-testing its military against a nuclear-armed adversary while the rest of Europe was still debating procurement timelines.

The inversion this creates is deliberate and necessary. Ukraine would not be measured against a European standard in this chapter. It would set that standard. Other member states — current and future — would be expected to rise toward it. It would be an acknowledgment, embedded in treaty architecture, of where capability actually resides.

The ambition should not stop at the EU’s current borders. Europe’s security problem is not coterminous with EU membership, nor is the solution. A defense chapter co-authored with Ukraine is the seed of something the EU has gestured toward for thirty years without ever seriously building: an integrated European security and military alliance with real treaty weight, operational doctrine, and a shared threshold of capability. Call it a European Treaty Organization — not as a replacement for NATO, but as the European pillar that NATO has always lacked and that European strategic autonomy has always promised but never delivered.

The logic extends beyond any single partner. Britain brings defense weight and a bilateral relationship with Ukraine that survived Brexit intact. Norway faces an Arctic frontier where Russian pressure is already felt and NATO’s reach is only partial. Moldova lives with a Russian garrison — Transnistria — already on its soil. Greenland has become, almost overnight, a theater of great-power competition that Europe currently lacks the architecture to address. A European Treaty Organization that can accommodate partners without demanding full EU accession is not a workaround. It is a more honest map of where European security actually begins and ends.

The EU has the institutional precedent for structured differentiation. What it has lacked is the catalyst — a moment urgent enough and a partner capable enough to force the architecture into existence. Both are now available.

Europe has spent thirty years building defense cooperation through committees. Ukraine has spent three years building it out of necessity. The difference shows. The 36th chapter is about how Europe stops treating that difference as an awkward asymmetry to be managed and starts treating it as the foundation for something worth building.

The Cost of Caution

The standard objection to moving fast is risk. A big country, a poor country, an institutionally imperfect country — the argument writes itself. Rushing Ukraine in, the cautious voices say, would strain EU cohesion, distort agricultural subsidies, overwhelm structural funds, and import corruption into the union’s bloodstream. These concerns are not invented. They are simply no longer the most important.

Europe is not choosing between a tidy accession and a messy one. It is choosing between two kinds of risk: the manageable institutional disruption of bringing Ukraine in and the existential strategic exposure of leaving it outside. An embittered Ukraine — war-weary, powerful, in possession of the continent’s most battle-hardened army and most innovative defense industry, and excluded from the club it bled to join — is not a neutral outcome. It is a failure mode with consequences that dwarf any subsidy dispute or corruption index score.

The 36th chapter, and the European Treaty Organization it begins to build, is not an act of generosity toward Ukraine. It is an act of strategic self-interest by a continent that has spent three decades deferring the construction of its own security architecture and has now run out of time to delay it further. Grozny, Transnistria, Tbilisi, Crimea, the Donbas — the pattern was always there. Europe chose not to read it. It cannot make that choice again.

Ukraine has already paid the price of admission in the hardest possible currency. What it is asking for in return is not charity. It is recognition — and a seat at the table it has already earned in every meaningful sense.

Europe’s choice is not whether to embrace Ukraine. It is whether to do so before or after it fully grasps what it stands to lose.

The answer should not require this much deliberation.

This essay expands on a letter I submitted to The Economist, which prompted a generous response from their Europe editor. I am curious to hear your opinion.

Leave a comment

I learned this in an unlikely place: the German Bundestag, watching the Green Party’s first national coalition government take shape in the late 1990s. I was a member. We had spent years being dismissed — moralistic, anti-growth, naive. Then we won enough seats that we could not be ignored. Our opponents did not love us. Many openly hated what we stood for. But they could no longer pretend we were not there, and more importantly, they could no longer pretend our arguments were not real. That grudging respect — earned through consistency, competence, and a willingness to accept constraints on our own power — turned out to be more durable than affection ever is in politics.

I have been thinking about that lesson a lot lately, watching the Bay Area tech industry in the last few years.

The industry is mighty, and it knows it. It has changed how humans work, communicate, and understand the world. It has also, in the process of doing so, accumulated a level of economic and political power that it has not yet learned to carry with any particular grace.

That combination — transformative capability paired with institutional immaturity — is not new in American history. It is exactly what the railroad barons had in the 1880s, and what the automakers had in the 1950s. Both industries assumed that because they were creating real value, the terms of their legitimacy were self-evident. Both were wrong.

What is striking in 2026 is how many bets are coming due simultaneously. AI is the loudest story, and potentially the most disruptive — but autonomous vehicles have been promising to transform urban mobility for a decade while neither improving traffic nor safety thus far. Ed tech attracted billions on the premise of democratizing learning and closing opportunity gaps; much of it has simply collapsed, not from bad intentions but from the older, less forgivable failure of chronic overpromising. In each case, the technology may have been real. The trust was not.

The backlash, when it comes, rarely arrives as a rational policy argument. It arrives as a mood — a diffuse resentment that something important is being decided somewhere else, by someone else, according to rules that were written for someone else’s benefit. By the time that mood crystallizes into regulation, antitrust action, or political realignment, the window for shaping it has usually closed.

The window has been open for a while, and it is closing.

I spent over a decade helping rebuild the German automotive industry’s reputation after it had been written off — literally called a “dinosaur” by its own government. The industry was facing a version of what tech faces today: a world that had decided it was a problem to be managed rather than a force to be reckoned with.

What worked was not a better communications narrative — even though that was my job description. What worked was a combination of two interconnected, more fundamental factors.

The first was epistemic credibility without arrogance. The German auto industry had deep engineering expertise — deutsche Ingenieurskunst — and a sense of superiority, using data and technical knowledge to dismiss criticism. That is the wrong move in a low-trust environment. Expertise deployed as a weapon reads as contempt. Instead, we worked to make that expertise a shared resource: rigorous, transparent, and genuinely useful to regulators, journalists, and civil society — even when they used it to criticize us. That shift — from defending the industry to informing the debate — changed the terms of engagement. Critics still disagreed. But they had to engage with the substance.

The second was taking ownership of the transition rather than downplaying its premise. The question was not whether mobility was changing. It was whether the industry would be a protagonist in that change or a casualty of it. Accepting and claiming that framing — genuinely, not rhetorically — created room for a different kind of conversation.

Both of these moves required something engineering culture finds genuinely difficult: accepting societal limits on technical dominance as a precondition for legitimacy, not as a defeat.

Share

The specific challenge facing Bay Area tech right now is that it is operating in an environment where trust is not built the way it used to be.

There is no shared public arena anymore — no set of broadly accepted institutions, no common media, no agreed-upon experts — where you can make your case and expect it to land on even ground. Instead, every major tech story is processed through dozens of incompatible realities, each with its own facts and its own thresholds for credibility. In that environment, a coherent narrative strategy is nearly useless. What travels is behavior — consistent, legible, and recognizable across all those different contexts simultaneously.

This is why the industry’s instinct to “communicate better” about AI, or about its economic contributions, or about its philanthropic commitments, is likely to underperform. Not because the messages are wrong, but because in a fragmented public sphere, messages are easy to dismiss. Behavior is harder to argue with.

The question I would put to anyone building at scale in the Bay Area right now is not “What is our story?” It is: “What would it look like if we named the asymmetries honestly?” The asymmetries between who benefits from AI productivity gains and who bears the adjustment costs. Between autonomous vehicles that log millions of test miles in public space and the host communities that have yet so see a public benefit. Between ed tech platforms that raised hundreds of millions on the promise of transformation and the teachers watching academic performance, interpersonal skills, empathy, and focus slip.

Naming those asymmetries does not require self-flagellation. It requires something more disciplined: precision about what you know, restraint about what you claim, and a genuine willingness to be accountable to people who did not choose to be affected by your decisions.

The Green Party earned respect through epistemic credibility and institutional maturity. That transition from opposition party to coalition partner was uncomfortable, and some members never forgave the leadership for making it. But it was the only path from moral authority to actual power.

The German automotive industry association I worked for later survived the Dieselgate scandal because we had earned the standing and reputation among stakeholders needed to weather the fallout, and because we managed the crisis with the same rigor and transparency.

Tech has power in abundance. It has vision, capital, and genuine capability. What it does not yet have is the institutional discipline to carry that weight in a way that earns trust rather than demanding it. It does not have authority.

The backlash, when it arrives, will not care about the industry’s intentions. It will reflect the gap between what the industry promised and what people actually experienced — and whether anyone in a position of power ever acknowledged that gap honestly.

That acknowledgment is still possible. It will not be easy, and it will not be fast. But it is the only thing that builds the kind of trust that lasts: not warm, not comfortable, but grudging — and real.

First, a word about names.

In 1947, the UN Partition Plan spoke of “Jews” and “Arabs” living in Palestine — because that is what they were. There were no Israelis yet, and no Palestinians in the current sense. Everyone living under the British Mandate carried a Palestinian passport. The Jerusalem Post was called the Palestine Post. Jewish fighters were, formally, Palestinian Jews.

The identities we use today — Israeli and Palestinian — crystallized out of the conflict itself. That is not a conspiracy; it is how national identities are always forged, especially in war. But it is worth remembering, because it quietly undermines the claim that Palestinian identity is ancient and fixed rather than historically constructed — just as Israeli identity is. Both peoples invented themselves, in the crucible of 1948, into who they are now. That shared origin is rarely acknowledged by either side.

There is a further irony in the naming. The people then called Palestinian Jews became Israelis, and today’s Israel includes roughly 20% Arab citizens, who are also Israelis. The people then called Palestinian Arabs became Palestinians — exclusively Arab, in current usage. History reshuffled the names, and almost nobody notices.

The story as usually told begins in motion.

Israeli forces advancing. Villages emptying. Families fleeing with whatever they could carry. The British departing. The world watching. It is a story of things happening to Palestinians — a catastrophe descending on a people who had been living their lives when history, violently, intervened.

Every element of this account is accurate. And yet the account is not honest, because it begins precisely at the moment when Palestinian agency — the most consequential Palestinian agency in modern history — disappears from the frame.

Here is what happened before the catastrophe.

In November 1947, the United Nations voted on Resolution 181: a partition plan dividing Mandatory Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jewish Agency, representing the Zionist movement, accepted it. The Arab League, Palestinian leadership, and surrounding states rejected it categorically, completely, and with the promise of military force to prevent its implementation.

The partition terms were genuinely unequal. Jews comprised roughly a third of the population but were allocated a larger share of the land, including more of the fertile coastal regions. Palestinian resentment of those terms was understandable. But the alternative on offer was not a better partition. It was war — a war that Arab states promised to win, and catastrophically lost.

The 1948 Arab-Israeli War was the direct consequence of that rejection. The Nakba was the direct consequence of that war. There was a fork in the road in 1947, and Palestinian leadership, under pressure from Arab states and under the influence of a maximalist, all-or-nothing political culture, chose the path that led to the catastrophe they now annually commemorate.

To mourn the Nakba without remembering this decision is to mourn the consequences of a door that was open, and that Palestinian and Arab leaders chose to close.

This is not victim-blaming. It is history.

Acknowledging that a catastrophic decision was made does not erase the suffering that followed. It does not retroactively justify every act of violence committed during the 1948 war, some of which were genuine atrocities. It does not mean Palestinians deserved what happened to them.

And here is a point that matters deeply and is almost never made: the Palestinian families who fled in 1948 had no vote on the Partition Plan. They did not choose Amin al-Husseini as their leader. They did not ratify the Arab League’s decision to go to war. They were ordinary people — farmers, merchants, teachers, families — who found themselves on the wrong end of decisions made by unelected men who would bear none of the personal consequences.

This is a distinction that ought to be at the center of Nakba commemoration, and almost never is. The suffering of those families deserves full acknowledgment. The decision of their leaders deserves full acknowledgment too. Conflating the two — treating the leaders’ choice as the people’s fate, and the people’s fate as justification for their descendants’ perpetual political identity — is where honest grief curdles into something else.

Current generations of Palestinians are not responsible for 1947. But they are being asked to organize their entire political identity around it — by leaders who benefit enormously from keeping that wound open.

The war created two refugee populations. History remembers only one.

This is perhaps the most consequential omission in the standard narrative, and it is rarely discussed outside specialist circles.

The 1948 war — and the broader regional conflict that followed over the next two decades — displaced not only Palestinian Arabs but also roughly 850,000 Jews from Arab and Persian countries: from Iraq, Egypt, Morocco, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, Algeria, and Iran. In several cases, notably Iraq in 1941 and Libya in 1945, this displacement was accompanied by organized pogroms. Many of these communities were ancient — Iraqi Jews had been present for 2,600 years, since the Babylonian exile. Most lost homes, businesses, and property would never be recovered.

Nearly all of them ended up in Israel, absorbed into a young, poor, struggling state without becoming a permanent international cause. They did not remain in camps. They did not pass refugee status to their children and grandchildren. They built lives.

The contrast with Palestinian refugees is not a coincidence. It is a political choice — made not by Palestinians themselves, but by the Arab governments who hosted them, kept them stateless, and found them far more useful as an open wound than as citizens. Jordan is a partial exception; most others are not.

Two refugee populations. One became a symbol of permanent, intergenerational victimhood maintained by political design. The other largely disappeared from history — because they were not kept as refugees. The difference tells you something important about which leaders were serving their people, and which were serving themselves.

The victimhood narrative has powerful beneficiaries, and they are not the Palestinian people.

This is where the analysis becomes uncomfortable, because it requires asking who profits from the perpetuation of total, everlasting, intergenerational victimhood as the organizing principle of Palestinian political identity.

The answer is not ordinary Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank, whose daily lives would be immeasurably better under almost any political settlement that involved a functioning state of their own. The answer is the leadership class — and most nakedly, Hamas — for whom the unresolved wound is the source of all legitimacy, all power, and all funding.

Hamas does not want a Palestinian state alongside Israel – or any Jews, for that matter. It has said so, plainly, in its founding charter and in the statements of its leaders. What it wants is the perpetuation of a struggle that keeps it in power, keeps international sympathy flowing, and keeps the question permanently open. A resolved conflict, even one that delivered Palestinians genuine sovereignty, would be an existential threat to Hamas’s reason for existing.

The martyrdom culture that has grown around Palestinian suffering serves this agenda precisely. When death becomes not a tragedy to be prevented but a symbol to be celebrated — when a killed fighter is a martyr and a killed child is a martyr and every funeral is a political rally — it removes the moral incentive to protect life and replaces it with an incentive to produce sacrifice. It is a culture that makes peace psychologically impossible before it becomes politically impossible.

This is not unique to Palestinians. Martyrdom cults have appeared wherever a leadership class has needed to maintain a population in a state of permanent grievance — from the Troubles in Northern Ireland to the Serbian nationalism that weaponized the 1389 Battle of Kosovo for six centuries. The pattern is always the same: the wound must not heal, because the wound is the power.

What honest commemoration would look like.

It would look like the Greek mourning of the Asia Minor Catastrophe of 1922 — another mass displacement, another genuine tragedy — conducted within a framework that also acknowledges the Megali Idea, the Greek military adventurism, the hubris that made the catastrophe possible. Greeks can hold both things: “we suffered enormously” and “our leaders overreached fatally”. That dual awareness is what eventually made reconciliation with Turkey possible.

It would look like German acknowledgment of the postwar expulsion of Sudeten Germans — real suffering, genuinely mourned — within a framework that does not pretend those expulsions occurred in a historical vacuum.

An honest Palestinian commemoration would be able to say: “In 1947, there was a partition plan. It was imperfect and arguably unjust. Our leaders rejected it. Arab armies invaded and lost. We paid the price. We have been paying it ever since.”

And then — and this is the part that the current commemorative culture makes almost impossible to say — it would add: “Those were not our decisions. We are not bound by them. We can choose differently.”

That is not a betrayal of the dead. It is the only thing that separates grief from a prison. The families who fled in 1948 deserved a state. Their grandchildren deserve one too — not as the heirs of a permanent catastrophe, but as the founders of something new. That future cannot be built on a foundation of unending victimhood managed by leaders whose power depends on the wound staying open.

The Nakba happened. It was a catastrophe. Palestinians deserved better — from the international community, from the Arab states that pressured them toward war and then abandoned them, and from their own leaders, who chose maximalism over statehood at the worst possible moment.

Remembering all of that is not a betrayal of the dead. It is the only form of remembrance that might, eventually, serve the living.

For those of us who work with words and narratives professionally, this is also a sobering reminder: stories have consequences. The right ones can open doors. The wrong ones — told long enough, with enough conviction — can seal them shut.
What are your thoughts?

Leave a comment

Last week, the Supreme Court handed down Louisiana v. Callais and lit a fuse. Within hours, Louisiana’s Republican governor suspended the state’s primary to redraw congressional maps. Mississippi announced a special session. Tennessee Republicans began maneuvering to eliminate the state’s sole Democratic congressman. The scramble was immediate, coordinated, and entirely predictable — because it had already been underway for nearly a year.

This is where we are: the most sweeping mid-decade redistricting effort in over a century, accelerated by a 6-3 court that has now effectively told states they may draw maps to advantage any political party they choose, so long as race isn’t the stated rationale. The Voting Rights Act’s Section 2 has been rendered nearly irrelevant. The implicit message from the majority — authored by Justice Alito, joined by five colleagues — is that partisan gerrymandering is not the Court’s problem.

It is, however, ours.

Last fall, I voted No on California’s Proposition 50. The measure asked Californians to disenfranchise neighbors and family members for the sin of living in a Republican-leaning district. I called it a stand without a strategy. Prop 50 passed. It is now in federal court, with the U.S. Justice Department arguing alongside the California Republican Party — the irony — that the new maps violate the Voting Rights Act.

The redistricting arms race is now the operating condition of American democracy heading into the 2026 midterms. Virginia’s newly drawn, voter-approved map was just thrown out by the state’s Supreme Court. Alongside California, Florida, Texas, Ohio, North Carolina, Missouri, Tennessee, and Utah all have redrawn maps in effect. As of this writing, Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, and Maryland are planning to redraw theirs. This gerrymandering race will spread beyond the midterms and beyond just federal elections.

This is war. A war of the institutions — presidents, governors, legislatures, courts — by means of redistricting, executive orders, judicial appointments, legislative procedure — against the foundational institution they are meant to serve: the government of, by, and for the people. The candidates are choosing the electorate.

Share

The campaign for Proposition 50 told Californians something true: our state has a unique opportunity to defend democracy nationally. That appeal was genuine, and it worked — voters responded to it. The problem was never the ambition. It was the method.

Leading the nation means doing what California has done before — setting a constitutional standard that others are compelled to follow. We amended our own Constitution over a decade ago, against the explicit opposition of the state Democratic Party, to create an independent Citizens Redistricting Commission. That was a triumph of civic principle over party advantage. Proposition 50 reversed it. We know better. We should do better.

A strong majority of Americans, independent of party preferences, oppose gerrymandering. That is not a minor policy preference. It is a latent civic consensus waiting for a cause to organize around. The “No Kings” protests this spring demonstrated that a broad, middle-American resistance — not tribal, not partisan — is available to be mobilized. It needs an audacious idea to carry.

Every successful democratic movement in American history has been animated by one: abolish slavery, enfranchise women, and end segregation. The fight for representative democracy today needs its own.

I propose one: a constitutional amendment to abolish gerrymandering.

The case for a constitutional amendment is no longer the province of idealists. Last Friday on PBS NewsHour, conservative commentator David Brooks put it plainly: “This is just how democracy ends.” He didn’t stop there. “What we need,” he continued, “is some sort of constitutional amendment, so this is taken out of the democratic process.” His co-panelist, Ruth Marcus of The New Yorker, agreed, adding that the Supreme Court’s 2019 decision to wash its hands of partisan gerrymandering was the original sin that unleashed what we are living through now. A conservative and a liberal, on public television, arriving at the same conclusion. The debate is over. The question is whether anyone will actually propose the amendment.

Someone should. Here it is.

The Equal Rights Amendment never passed. The movement it generated changed America anyway. A serious campaign for fair representation would reframe the national conversation from tribal escalation to democratic principle — making support for independent redistricting a litmus test for candidates across the political spectrum, for the midterms and every cycle beyond. It would give the opposition to autocratic Trumpism something it currently lacks: not a “no,” but a democratic vision.

The Supreme Court has told us it will not solve this. Congress will not solve this on its own. The parties, left to their own incentives, will gerrymander until the institution collapses under the weight of its own illegitimacy.

Only the people can close that loop. We have done it before.

The Prop 50 campaign was right that California must lead. It was right that the stakes are national. It was right that the moment demands more than opposition — it demands action. What it got wrong was the scale of the ambition. Matching Republican gerrymandering, state by state, is not leadership. Abolishing gerrymandering, for every American in every state, is.

That is the California way. Let’s act like it.

Leave a comment

Dirk O. Evenson is a communications strategist working on campaigns to strengthen democratic participation and restore trust in public institutions. The views expressed here are solely his own as a citizen, communications professional, and political scientist. They do not represent the views of any past, present, or potential client or employer, nor do they advocate for or against any political party.

For all the energy that defines the opposition to Donald Trump, it remains curiously hollow. It knows what it stands against—authoritarianism, demagoguery, cruelty—but not what it stands for.

Trumpism, by contrast, tells a story. It offers its followers not just a platform but a purpose: that America has been betrayed by elites, that the old order was a lie, and that only a strong hand can restore dignity to those left behind. Its vision is ugly—authoritarian, nihilistic, and often racist—but it is, unmistakably, a vision.

The anti-Trump coalition, from liberal activists to Never Trump conservatives, has built its politics around negation. “No to Trump.” “No to MAGA.” “No to the end of democracy.” These are necessary stances, but not sufficient ones. The movement’s implicit promise is restoration: a return to the status quo before Trump. Yet that status quo—complacent, self-congratulatory, and too often blind to its own failures—was precisely what made Trump possible.

By the mid-2010s, America’s institutions were already fraying. The social contract had become a tangle of performance and self-interest. On the left, moral absolutism replaced pluralism; on the right, economization replaced moral values. The bipartisan consensus of the late twentieth century—globalization, free markets, deregulation—left millions behind. Trump’s genius, if one can call it that, was to turn their resentment into his power.

Subscribe

Current attempts to regain ambition fall flat. The “abundance agenda” invokes the grandeur of the New Deal but remains trapped in 1990s-style neoliberalism. Its flagship policies—like YIMBY housing deregulation—may please markets, but do little to make housing affordable, and the result is more speculation, not more stability.

California’s Proposition 50, which would reintroduce partisan gerrymandering, is presented as a way to counter Republican manipulation elsewhere. To that end, it would be insufficient. But it would further erode trust in institutions and entrench one-party dominance—undermining the very democratic legitimacy its sponsors claim to defend.

If Trumpism is revolutionary in its destructiveness, its opposition must be revolutionary in its imagination. It must offer a moral vision of renewal, not restoration—a picture of what the nation could look like five years from now if democracy prevails.

The “No Kings” protests have shown the outlines of such a movement: a broad, civil, middle-American resistance that rejects autocracy not out of tribal loyalty but civic conviction. But every successful movement in American history has been animated by an audacious idea—the abolition of slavery, the enfranchisement of women, the end of segregation. The fight for democracy today needs one too.

A national movement for equal representation—a constitutional amendment to abolish gerrymandering—could be such a cause: tangible, unifying, and moral in its simplicity. It would reclaim the principle that every vote should count equally, that politicians should not get to choose their voters, and that power should be accountable to the governed.

Democracy cannot be defended by nostalgia. It must be renewed through imagination. The fight against Trumpism will not be won by rewinding history—but by writing a future that makes him irrelevant.

This article is by no means a definitive, conclusive reply to the moment. By sharing my thoughts, I ask for your comments and insights.

Leave a comment

As always, thanks for reading. Share to invite others to weigh in.

Share

Subscribe if you enjoy reading lengthy newsletters from time to time.

Subscribe

The views expressed here are solely my own reflections as a communications professional and political scientist. They do not represent the views of any past, present, or potential client or employer, nor do they advocate for or against any political party.

Then, a lawyer friend of ours wrote an op-ed for his local bar association. His choice of format inspired me to respond in kind: first, by describing the situation as I see it; then, by suggesting ways to meet the moment.

Status Quo

Things are not normal.

Cancelling long-standing public programs without congressional consensus is not normal. Deploying federal security forces into local communities in ways that bypass established norms is not normal. Weakening institutions by sidelining professional expertise or punishing those who publish inconvenient facts is not normal. Reducing transparency, curtailing oversight, and eroding trust in the international order are not normal. Pressuring private institutions or companies for political or financial gain is not normal. The list goes on.1

These are not routine policy shifts. They represent structural disruptions that alter how our government functions, how our economy distributes power, and how our society maintains accountability. In other words, this is not business as usual—it is a period of profound institutional transformation.

Systemic Change

These changes matter in two ways.

First, they alter the structures of governance themselves. Concentrating power in the executive branch while diminishing congressional oversight erodes the separation of powers. Weakening consumer protections and industry regulations shifts economic weight from the public toward concentrated private capital. Restricting the collection of and access to reliable data on climate, health, and crime undermines the very foundation of democratic discourse: shared facts. Asserting control over museums, the arts, and architecture curtails civic expression.

Second, they redefine roles within these structures. Traditional ideological boundaries no longer align neatly with actions taken in office. Policies once considered the domain of one ideology2 now coexist with tactics associated with its opposite.3 The combination creates confusion, disorientation, and a weakening of civic trust.

This is what systemic change looks like.

Lessons from History

Periods of disruption alter the identity of all political actors.4 No institution or party emerges unchanged. History shows us that once structures shift, they do not simply revert to a previous state. Attempts to fight for a status quo ante often fail, because that earlier condition is precisely what allowed the disruption to take hold in the first place.

For political institutions that aspire to remain relevant, the task is not restoration but reinvention of themselves, their narrative, and their relevant, compelling vision of tomorrow.5

What Not to Do

• Don’t look back. The comfort of past assumptions can cloud clarity about the present. Even if you are not directly affected yet, you are living in the fading shadow of what is already the past.

• Don’t normalize the abnormal. A core challenge in times of disruption is resisting the temptation to treat extraordinary events as ordinary. Small acts of acknowledgment—a calm statement of disagreement, a refusal to adopt misleading language—can slow the slide into normalization.

• Don’t assume institutions are fixed. The endurance of elections, parties, and even the two-party system is not guaranteed. Relying on courts might prove futile; Congress could rediscover its responsibilities. Preserving or resurrecting them requires deliberate effort.

The Role of Communication

As a communications professional and political scientist, I see a unique responsibility for my field. Lawyers, soldiers, and civil servants swear an oath to the Constitution. Communicators don’t—but we wield influence over public opinion, consumer choices, and civic behavior. Communication forms the connective tissue between society and the political system: media, advocacy groups, parties, unions, churches, online discourse, and everyday debates.

That means we must use our tools wisely:

• Channel strategy matters. Not all platforms are equal. Some amplify dialogue; others amplify division. Work with clients to choose channels that build trust and discourage those that actively erode civic life.

• Distinguish sources. Journalists, commentators, and influencers are not interchangeable. Journalists generally follow professional ethics, some influencers hold themselves to similar standards, and the integrity of our communications depends on recognizing that distinction.

• Language shapes reality. Those attempting to change systems often begin by redefining words.6 Communicators must be vigilant in choosing terms for their accuracy and implications, resisting inversion, misnomers, or euphemisms – even if those terms have become common.7

When nothing is normal, nobody’s business is business as usual. Our work must not contribute to democratic erosion.

Defining the New American Idea

Whatever the future of our party system, one truth remains: organizations that aspire to lead must articulate a new narrative that matches the scale of today’s challenges. They must deliver measurable results, restore trust, and create an identity that is not defined by what they oppose, but by what they build.

Three priorities stand out:

1. Unity as a democratic value. E pluribus unum—from many, one—is not a relic; it is an imperative. Governing for the broad middle, while ensuring inclusivity, strengthens civic trust and steers clear of divisive culture wars. E pluribus is meaningless without unum for open societies.

2. Economic renewal. Social mobility is at historic lows, while economic instability is high despite national wealth. Rebuilding an economy that allows all families to thrive—to earn decent and stable incomes, be able to afford good housing in stable communities, have access to excellent healthcare and education—is not just policy; it is the American Idea in practice.

3. Results through responsiveness. Citizens reward leaders and institutions that deliver. Effective governance is measured not by the size of budgets but by the visible impact on people’s lives. This requires empowering, not stifling, public service. Nothing spells competence of government and effectiveness of political systems more than delivering tangible results, with a significant positive impact on most constituents, at speed—meaning within legislative periods. Transparency and accountability provide the necessary checks on power without paralyzing action.

Conclusion

The task ahead is not to restore the more comfortable past but to define the new promise. Each of us has a role to play. For communicators, that means refusing to normalize the abnormal, choosing channels and language responsibly, and ensuring our work strengthens democratic resilience. For institutions, it means reinventing themselves with unity, economic renewal, and responsiveness at the core.

In times of disruption, persistence matters more than loudness. Even small, consistent acts of resistance to normalization reinforce the Idea of America—what it includes, and what it rejects.

This article is by no means a definitive, conclusive reply to the moment.
By sharing my thoughts, I ask for your comments and insights.

Leave a comment

As always, thanks for reading. Share to invite others to weigh in.

Share

Subscribe if you enjoy reading lengthy newsletters from time to time.

Subscribe now

The views expressed here are solely my own reflections as a communications professional and political scientist. They do not represent the views of any past, present, or potential client or employer, nor do they advocate for or against any political party.

The Crisis

The SFMTA, in charge of San Francisco’s transit (Muni) and streets, faces a $50 million budget deficit this July, projected to grow to $320 million by June 2026. Senators Wiener and Arreguín's SB 63 would put a regional sales tax measure before voters in November 2026 to fund operations for Muni and other transit systems. Even if passed, related funding would come too late for at least the upcoming fiscal year. Governor Newsom’s “May Revise” state budget proposal doesn’t even include the proposed measure and instead slashes existing transit funding.

Muni recovered 75% of pre-COVID ridership last year, while car use is nearly back at pre-pandemic levels. The Bay Area Return to Office report shows a higher share of on-site work, but a prevalence of employees driving rather than riding. Employers cite scheduling and frequency, along with security and safety concerns, as the primary inhibitors to using transit. Yet, transit service levels track ridership and are therefore below pre-pandemic levels.

Lack of money, slow ridership recovery, reducing service, ceding of modal share to cars: This was not the plan.

Fifty-three years ago, San Francisco implemented a transit-first policy, and the city’s 2021 Climate Action Plan sets a target for 80% of all trips to be low-carbon (transit, walking, biking) by 2030. (Meanwhile, California’s plan to transition to zero-emission cars and trucks is under federal attack.)

Pecunia sine qua non, the agency is finalizing a plan to raise revenue and cut costs, relying mainly on the above tax increases and further service reductions to meet its goals.

However, tax hikes require citizen approval, and shrinking services is an unproven way to nurture a system back to health.

On the current trajectory, a death spiral of reduced utility for riders, leading to reduced utilization by riders, is more likely.

City leaders should not relinquish the 2030 transit goal. Instead, they should not let this crisis go to waste.

Subscribe now

The Opportunity

The SFMTA’s numerous efforts to enhance the ridership experience have led to record passenger satisfaction, gauging the sentiment of existing riders.

However, improving the experience while reducing service will not achieve the 2030 goal.

For that, many more people will have to ride many times more than ever in history.

For that, San Franciscans need to buy into the 2030 transit vision, directly, quickly, literally.

Three favorable preconditions:

Few public services can create as much universal impact or achieve as rapid, visible, and tangible results as transit. Muni is already iconic and beloved.

More San Francisco employees are returning to the office, at least on some days of the week. If there was ever a time to influence modal choice, it is now.

Mayor Lurie, Chief of Infrastructure, Climate and Mobility John-Baptiste, and Transportation Director Kirschbaum are three new, ambitious, and capable city leaders well-positioned to carry the torch for transit.

With everything from civil liberties to climate action under attack, citizens seek common causes, engagement, unifying leadership, and better results more than ever. The time is ripe for civic renewal.

To realize that potential for Muni, leadership must do three things:

1. Stop framing mass transit as a social service.
   Framing transit as a charity fosters public support but deters personal transit choice. Once city leaders think, talk, and treat Muni as the universal, valuable mode for everyone, San Franciscans of all backgrounds will start making Muni the go-to choice. (It takes nothing away from accessible transit measures.)

2. Assert the 2030 transit vision with bold confidence.
   It’s as self-evident as it is essential: if leaders don’t express and embody the future they envision, few will follow. It’s also easy: Universal transit isn’t science fiction; it is a reality, just not here yet. The Bay Area, and especially San Francisco, is best positioned to change that.

3. Make more people ride more.
   Yes, the cold, hard world of sales. Improving Muni’s subpar farebox recovery ratio—fare revenue compared to operating expenses—is a goal worthy of its own. Yet no increases in fares are required, only in riders and rides.

Share

How to Make More People Ride More Muni

A campaign to unite and activate San Franciscans’ support has three prongs.

A new Annual Membership Pass is the occasion and focus of the call to action.
Muni currently doesn’t offer annual fares, minimizing cannibalization. It also reflects the required commitment, as does “membership,” indicating a stronger bond, similar to a gym. (And like a gym membership, it subtly keeps nagging to be used.)

Partnerships to maximize credibility, reach, and engagement.

Mayor Lurie purchases the first membership and urges his Partnership for San Francisco members to follow suit, including with their organizations and employees. Further business, cultural, and community partnerships extend to a city-wide, multi-pronged testimonial campaign.

Promotion through journalistic and owned media (including fleet and stations) keeps costs low and visibility high.
Through social (earned) media, the campaign engages and reflects the beauty and diversity of the Citizens by the Bay. It establishes a distinct voice and strong visuals for Muni, enhancing effectiveness.

The benefits of such a campaign are clear:

• Unlike tax increases, membership provides immediate, personal benefits.

• A campaign that encourages personal action affords more opportunities for creative and grassroots engagement than any “Vote Yes on X” rally.

• More tickets in phone wallets, along with nudges, transform holders into riders.

• Corporate Muni memberships boost downtown recovery and support sustainable transportation.

• Just selling ~15,000 memberships raises ~$15M, avoiding non-Muni cuts proposed in Package C, or 65% of cuts to Muni considered in Package D by the Muni Funding Working Group. That would be the first of many milestones.

• Rather than risking the system to save it, it enhances transit use and farebox recovery. It builds on current operational and customer satisfaction gains.

The current crisis should be used to build on recent Muni achievements, not jeopardize them, and reach beyond optimizing the existing toolbox.

City leaders should seize this opportunity to unite citizens behind a common cause. The benefits to the city and community would extend beyond transit, contributing to civic renewal.

Daimler Trucks (which owns Mercedes-Benz, Freightliner, Thomas Built and other brands) unveiled battery-electric eActros2 LongHaul truck concept prototype. Traton Group’s MAN (Scania, MAN, Navistar, Volkswagen) presented the fully battery-electrified truck prototype eTruck, scheduled to arrive at customers in two years. Newcomer Nikola and partner IVECO started taking orders for the Nikola Tre BEV Heavy-Duty Truck (and showcase the FCEV prototype). You get the pattern.

This is a remarkable development. As recently as four years ago, at the last IAA Commercial Vehicles show (pre-pandemic), manufacturers hedged their bets by pursuing some variant of multi-pronged approach including “advanced” diesel technology, natural gas vehicles, battery-electric (including those with pantographs for overhead catenary cables), and fuel-cell electric vehicles. Especially heavy trucks were deemed all but unfit to be battery-electrified, both for reasons of weight and reach – especially in the long-haul segment.
The common refrain until very recently: Langsam, it’s too early to settle on one technology. Now it’s a near unanimous “Electrify!” love fest.

This seemingly3 monumental shift begs two questions:

1. What happened?

2. What could possibly go wrong?

To find answers to these questions, I did some research, and interviewed people smarter and more knowledgeable than me. I thank Kerstin Andreae and Dr. Jan Strobel of BDEW, the German Association of Energy and Water Industries, and Professor Dan Sterling, Founding Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis.

1. What happened?

Two things happened. First, advancements in battery technology put paid to the batteries-are-not-for-trucks adage. Prices have come down, capacity has gone up, and BEVs are now the first choice globally for Zero Emission Vehicle technology4.

But this development, sans internalized environmental cost, did not happen by market forces. It’s not driven by the intrinsic needs of the transportation sector (which would entail increasing load factors, multi-modal efficiency etc), but by the all-encompassing climate crisis, which is to ¾ an energy sector problem5.

Electrification is neither mandated by the EU, nor the US6. But zero emission vehicles (ZEV)7 increasingly are: California requires new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the state to be zero-emission by 2035. (12+ states typically follow California’s regulatory lead, constituting about a third of the US market – usually enough to influence manufacturers’ sales strategy for the entire country.) The EU is poised to also mandate that by 2035, all new passenger cars and vans sold in the EU are zero-emission vehicles (ZEV)8.

It’s hard to overestimate the power of ZEV mandates: Requiring a manufacturer to produce a car without exhaust is a radically different regulatory approach to just limiting pollutants: it asks to create a new, not an improved or amended technology9.

As a regulatory tool, it’s relatively new to the EU, but an old hat in the US:
The California Air Resources Board CARB10 pioneered ZEV regulation in 1990. The ensuing struggle was later documented in the film Who Killed the Electric Car?

All current ZEV passenger vehicle models available to purchase or lease are BEVs. Given the tight deadline, it seems highly likely BEVs will constitute the vast majority of passenger vehicles sold after 2035.

ZEV Regulation fuels the transition to BEVs, leading to increased investment, advancement and intellectual property accrual in battery technology.

But passenger car regulation and battery development alone could not have predetermined the choice of zero emission technology for commercial vehicles. The world has a long history of treating these very different segments very differently: for decades, gasoline was for cars, and Diesel was for trucks, which also reflected in different sets of regulation.

The second thing happening: Commercial vehicle regulation followed passenger car regulation – and that was just the first step.

California’s current Advanced Clean Trucks (ACT) Regulation of 2019 established a ZEV phase-in starting in 2024, broken down to different vehicle segments. For 2035 and beyond, the regulation mandates sales percentages of 55% (for classes 2b – 3), 75% (for classes 4 – 8), and 40% (for classes 7 – 8)11.

ATC all but guarantees that the entire range of medium-duty vehicle sales would be majority-ZEV by 2035, and thus accelerated the decision-making process in automotive headquarters. Following the precedence of cars, BEV tech for trucks is on the rise.

But CARB this year drove the point home by proposing an Advanced Clean Fleets (ACF) Regulation. It includes a ZEV sales percentage requirement for all medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, beginning 2040: 100%. And even though ACF is about fleets, CARB makes it abundantly clear what “all” means: “This requirement impacts all fleets and individuals who purchase medium- and heavy-duty vehicles in California.”
Dan Sperling points out, that ACF would have minimal effect by itself. But it supercharges ATC.

And in the EU? Until this year, the EU did not have ZEV regulation, it remained content to tighten emission regulation for pollutants, and efficiency regulation, limiting GHG emissions. But as we have seen above, they introduced a – nominally tech-neutral – ZEV mandate for passenger cars in their Fit-for-55 package.
This year, a review of the existing CV regulation is on the books; it’s too early to say whether the EU will follow California’s ZEV lead, again. According to The International Council on Clean Transportation ICCT, it should – at least if it were to meet its climate goals. The proposed phase-out date for ICE trucks: 2040.

What happened? Regulation, that’s what happened. Between the technologically ambiguous IAA 2018 and the more ambitious IAA 2022, regulation in the transatlantic truck market went from limiting to outlawing pollutants and GHG emissions. Manufacturers look to electric propulsion to meet that mandate.

2. What could possibly go wrong?

Obviously, a lot. Supply, infrastructure, political and societal support, and plain economics all need to align for decarbonization of transportation to happen, at scale. Let’s look at the necessary conditions for success:

Adequate Energy Supply, Grid and Infrastructure

“Electrify everything + decarbonize the grid” is the prevailing mantra of energy transition experts across the globe. Yet “decarbonize the grid” means

1. generate more carbon-free electric energy,

2. upgrade the grid to handle more intermittent, and more decentralized, renewable power generation including storage, and additional demand from transportation including managing new peaks, and

3. build the infrastructure to deliver energy to the vehicles.

Putin's weaponization of energy supplies laid bare the failures of Germany's energy and russia policy of the last 15+ years: the upcoming winter might lead to blackouts and/or gas shortages12, while citizens and companies are being priced into bankruptcy.

natural gas*: +480%.

butter: +49%

prices in Germany compared to a year ago. *new contracts

This is a major crisis that not only calls for immediate and robust intervention to alleviate the worst, but also might very well have detrimental, long-term social and economic impacts. Both Germany’s industrial leadership and societal cohesion might be at stake.

Yet federal government and energy industry alike see this as a call for accelerated transition to sustainable energy (in face of a very vocal, and very angry, opposition that demands the opposite).

I asked BDEW which kind of upgrades they deemed necessary to supply, grid, and infrastructure as both passenger and commercial vehicles were transitioning to electric propulsion. After all, these had been bottlenecks to electrification for years.

The answer of Dr. Strobel was testament to the momentous shift the current crisis has brought about: “The transformation in Germany is ongoing and not driven by the future electrification of the transportation sector but ahead of it.”

Whatever transformational aches & pains the transportation sector might experience: they pale in face of the acute energy crisis. The supply of renewable energy will be ramped up regardless, as will the production of green hydrogen.

Similar developments can be seen across the Atlantic: The Inflation Reduction Act includes the most substantial investments in and incentives for renewables in US history. The impact could be even greater than already anticipated: according to The Atlantic, reporting on an assessment by Credit Suisse, “the climate economy Is about to explode.”

California just decided to let its nuclear power plant run a little longer, but only to support its path to “electrify everything + decarbonize the grid”. California’s grid already handled a historically extreme heat wave exceptionally well, while being well on track to become 100% renewable by 2045.13

Prediction: The energy transition is happening, and will continue to happen at an accelerated pace. Chances are: these developments will include supply, grid and infrastructure for transportation.

Continued Political and Societal Support

Of course, the above phrase and will continue to happen at an accelerated pace can seem premature. The current and possibly upcoming mandates set targets at a massive scale14. A necessary condition for any progress is for these mandates to stand. Any regulation, in order to be effective, must be

1. designed in a way that ascertains the desired outcome once implemented

2. enforced (and possibly improved upon) once signed into law,

3. survive changes in government, and

4. adopted by even more states and countries15. (Repeat.)

The current laws and regulations, and those in process, are all more ambitious, far-reaching, and with more teeth, then what we’ve seen in the last two decades. We see this both on the state and national level in the US, and in the country and European level east of the Atlantic.

California will vote in a month’s time. It will most certainly remain majority-Democratic, with Gavin Newsom – even more ambitious and decisive after the a recall – remaining at the helm. The state seems to have no appetite to relinquish its climate policy leadership.

The US midterm elections might bring the end to Democrat’s supermajority on the national level, with the House turning Republican, and the Senate a toss-up. But the president remains Biden for the next two years, and IRA is already the law of the land.

The EU’s standing, regulatory ambition and policy power has de facto increased after Brexit, and during the pandemic. Fit-for-55 will most likely pass, and will be the most muscular and far-reaching climate action by the union ever. The EU’s also more comfortable today to enforce EU regulation in case she finds member states’ actions lacking.

In Germany’s 3-party government, the ambitious and competent Greens16 are in charge of economic, climate and environmental policy. But they operate under the directive authority of the more cautious chancellor of the Social Democrats and have to find common ground with the center-right Liberal finance minister. Despite some kerfuffles, there are no signs of the coalition breaking up or becoming ineffective. Since it has another three years to go, the "Energiewende" should continue.

This comes with a caveat: Russia’s war on Ukraine, and by proxy the West, might shift public opinion, or political necessities, into unforeseen territories – as is clearly Putin’s intend. So far, he has achieved the opposite, but the most recent survey has painted a bleaker picture (it didn’t specifically ask about support for Germany’s energy policy).

Prediction: Sufficient societal and political support should remain for decarbonization, including that of transportation.

Economics and Technology

Short of regulatory roll-back, there’s the possibility that a technology other than electric propulsion would emerge that would allow us to reach the mandate’s goal more economically. Proponents of eFuels argue that creating carbon-neutral fuels for ICE vehicles could achieve that – and faster, since these fuels might also be compatible with existing fleets (which otherwise would take 20+ years to be phased out).

Yet a viable path to have eFuels ready at scale and at the time needed – disregarding for a moment that they are highly inefficient and not pollutant-neutral – is not in the offing. The necessary precursor – green hydrogen – is already in short supply, currently expensive to produce, and more effective if used directly in FCEVs. FCEV are already part of some manufacturer’s plan for the most demanding versions of heavy-duty trucks.

eFuels are the only semi-viable option for internal combustion engines to survive the energy transition17, and to stymie electrification. The status quo – technical or otherwise – has tremendous staying and political power, especially if the new doesn't significantly improve direct use experience or results. A lot can change in just a few years, and manufacturers’ transition to electrification is – bar for newcomers like Nikola – not locked-in. But as of now, IAA seems to point one way.

If electrification will prevail there are a few variants worth noting:

– Electric Road System Vehicles (ERSV)

OECD/ITF posits that ERSVs “have the potential to be the most cost-competitive technologies in Europe” to decarbonize road transport18. Efficiency is an important business driver in the transportation sector, but cost-competitiveness with Diesel ICEVs might not matter once they're effectively outlawed.

As of now, this technology gets persistent, yet limited traction – and mostly in Europe: Daimler declared, as a globally operating company, it would not pursue this technology further. Scania will. It might be too early to call it off entirely.

– Battery Swapping

Battery swapping, as originally championed by Shai Agassi’s Better Place, has found its reincarnation in Nio (as a proprietary service for Nio passenger cars), and Ample19 (a modular, manufacturer-agnostic), which also focuses on fleets.

There are some valid arguments to be made for swapping: Charging batteries independent of vehicle operations might be easier on the grid if charging large fleets. ELMS, a clean commercial vehicle startup, cooperates with Ample for their vans. As an aftermarket solution, a modular swapping solution allows for mixed fleets, which many are (Uber is a partner).

– Bundles

Nikola adapted Tesla’s business model to commercial vehicles: Nikola provides both the vehicles as well as the infrastructure for BEV and FCEV (and also hydrogen generation). As many fleet operators are used to have their own energy (gasoline/petrol and diesel) supply at their premises, this seems to be a sensible approach – and even more monetizable than Tesla’s charging network.

Prediction: “Electrify everything” via BEV, and for some cases via FCEV, will prevail. Energy and its delivery might become a service beyond the charging station.

So, all is good? We’ll decarbonize our grid, move everything to become electric, and make a killing with new business models because of it? Of course it's not that simple. None of this will happen unless unless we marshal the resources necessary, unless we push forward relentlessly on an urgent time schedule, unless we remain steadfast in face of obstacles, unless we choose a better future over the complacency of today.

We have the once-in-a-generation chance to create all the necessary conditions in a way that we weren’t available to us before. Decarbonizing transportation, at scale, is within reach like it hasn’t been in decades. It’s a chance we shall not waste.

This newsletter is called rising to remind us, that we always have the option to rise to the challenge, to seize the opportunities, and to create the future we want to live in. That spirit, that drive is the sufficient condition of success. There’s also nothing wrong with a shot of fast-forward optimism, n’est-ce pas?

Thanks for reading, and your patience to stick around until the end. Please share your thoughts. Subscribe if reading too-long newsletters once in a while is your thing.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

5

19

Ample’s logo even looks like a reconfigured Better Place logo.

Now, three months and 2.5 billion Euro federal subsidies later, Germany tries to understand why it did so and what it could learn from the experience. It’s not looking promising.

Let’s look at three What’s: What is the 9-Euro-Ticket? What is the intend and impact of the 9-Euro-Ticket? What comes after the 9-Euro-Ticket – and what should?

What is the 9-Euro-Ticket?

First, let’s celebrate and applaud Germany, as the country did something incredible: 64 separate German transport associations (comprising a total of 434 companies) with different tariff systems (types of tickets, pricing, methods of validation etc.), all offered a 9-Euro-Ticket, and accepted said ticket from any other transport association on any local or regional bus or train at any time within a given month.
That is a level of integration not seen since Star Alliance introduced the Round the World Ticket – and it’s a lot more consequential.

The speed of it all was nothing short of science fiction: it took 8 weeks from idea to parliamentary vote, and only 12 days to implementation. For comparison: it takes Berlin 10+ years to study whether it would be feasible to build a bike path under the viaduct of the raised tracks of an underground – not to build, mind you, but study.
Aliens abducted the Republik in Aspik and replaced her with Starship Enterprise.

Even more astonishing: the country of bureaucracy, processes and rules neutered by exceptions and inaction, resembles, at its worst, a triangle lovechild of Groundhog Day, Brazil, and Kafka’s Trial. But Germany can also be beautifully creative and straight-forward, and the 9-Euro-Ticket is nothing short of the efficient and elegant simplicity of Bauhaus, the Braun mixer, or Beethoven’s Bagatelle No. 25.

In short: The 9-Euro-Ticket is a marvel of integration, speed, and simplicity.

What is the intend and impact of the 9-Euro-Ticket?

As part of the broad Tax Relief Act, its primary intend was to alleviate the burden of rising fuel costs (due to Russia’s war on Ukraine) for the German public. It was also to attract new customers to public transit (still with lower ridership due to pandemic), and – as a result of drivers switching to become riders – to reduce CO2 emissions: all part of the Verkehrswende.

The primary intend – alleviate costs – at least partly explains the dirt-cheap price tag of the 9-Euro-Ticket: switching to public transport was supposed to be no-brainer-level cheaper than using the car.
The price point is also powerful political messaging: we hear you, and we take care of you: it made for strong headlines, and signaled that government was taking action.

The response was enormous: 38 million tickets were sold to a population of 83 million. Rail traffic increased by a whopping 42%. 23 of 26 cities reported decreased rush hour traffic. A survey in Munich indicated that 35% of people used public transport more often.1

Given the massive influx of additional passengers to already strained systems, disruptions were few. This is mostly due to the nothing-short-of-heroic efforts of transit workers at every node of Germany’s extensive transit systems. More memorable remained the Punks showing up on Sylt Island (Germany’s Martha’s Vineyard) and cramping the style of affluent regulars.

Yet, according to above Munich survey, only 3% of people used their cars less often. That is not indicative of the modal shift that some had hoped for. It does seem to indicate a rise in induced traffic – which nobody wants. While the three-month test drive for the 9 €/month pass is ongoing, as is research about the effect, the political battle about whether to follow-up with a successor is in full swing.

In short: As of now, the 9-Euro-Ticket didn’t make people switch – which also means it didn’t make people save money (primary goal) or lower CO2 emissions (secondary goal). It induced traffic (not great), made more people experience transit (not bad).
It also did wonders in terms of PR for the government (that, of course, was never a stated goal).

What comes after the 9-Euro-Ticket?

The current debate in Germany centers around whether, when and to which conditions (price and scope of validity) to introduce a successor to the ticket.
Let’s look at each of these in reverse order:

Price

While nobody is arguing to keep the dumping price of 9 Euro, the price is square and center of the debate – after all, it’s named after it. The debated price points range from 29€ to 69€. At the lower end, this would still be a significant rebate to current prices of monthly transit passes: Berlin’s BVG charges between 86€ and 107€ for a regular fare monthly pass.

Discussions about cheaper fares abound, and Vienna’s 365-Euro yearly pass made a lot of splash when introduced in 2012, leading to a massive increase in sales in yearly tickets. But by 2018, ridership had hardly increased, and lagged population growth. Sales of yearly passes remains at record levels, but is mostly accredited to more restrictive parking policies.

As any marketing professional will tell you: price is a very effective motivator, especially when using rebates to drive sales. It’s also the bluntest, dumbest tool in the box. Attractive price points drive sales. But they don’t drive sustained change in behavior.

Scope of Validity

Nationwide transit – that’s almost a contradiction in terms: public transport is usually understood to be urban, local or at best regional. Countrywide validity in countries like the US would mean I could use my monthly pass both in NYC and LA. But I would not be able to get from one city to another. But in a densely populated country with overlapping regional networks, people can actually travel the entire country, albeit at a reduced speed and with more stops.

Most think this gimmick to be of little practical value to the average rider but of significant cost to the associations. Some, like the socially and ecologically minded VCD, now suggest to create large, somewhat overlapping zones, with monthly or yearly passes either for one of these zones, or for all of Germany.

Along with optional add-ons, differentiating between local and regional transit, and reduced fares for students and recipients of social welfare, they end up with 10 different tariffs. That’s a significant increase of options, and also of prices (monthly ranging from €30 to €135). But it’s still a simpler and cheaper fare structure, within larger zones, than traffic associations provide today.
VCD’s stated intend for this proposal: make mobility more accessible for all, but also ensure sufficient funding from ticket sales for traffic associations.
Both are sensible arguments, and the improvement over the current state sans 9-Euro-Ticket are apparent (albeit with lots of similarities).

But this proposal falls short of the radical simplicity of the 9-Euro-Ticket, and at the same time is much more far reaching: The 9-Euro-Ticket was an add-on to otherwise unchanged fare structure of the 64 traffic associations. This proposal would largely replace the regional tariff structures, and would, in the long run, probably force the associations to reshape themselves along the eight new zones.
That is a massive undertaking, with a bazillion of different legal entities involved. This would also involve time, political capital, money, and a lot of bruised egos.

When

Proponents for a quick successor argue that with so many more people having experienced public transport now, one ought to seize the momentum and follow-up quickly before the summer of 9-Euro-tickets fades into memory and everybody reverts to their old patterns.

Others argue that research and analysis and learnings of the experiment should take precedence, and should inform any future plans – especially since patterns don’t really have to seem changed much.

Current dynamics seem to favor finding a successor sooner than later.

Whether

Even though current debates focus on How and When rather than If, it’s far from certain that a meaningful successor is on the books:

• The 9-Euro-Ticket was funded by federal government. Constitutionally, local and regional transit are matters of state. (As the Tagesspiegel pointed out, states routinely get the federal government to foot most of the bill.)

• For that very reason the finance minister (and because he likes to position himself as the reasonable fiscal hawk in a coalition of spending-spree green ideologues) argued against a “free-for-all-mentality”.
  (The transportation minister of the same party was very happy to take credit for the ticket, but favors, like his fellow party member, goodies for car owners instead –Verkehrswende be damned.)

• It was born out of a perceived urgent political need to ease financial pain of constituents due to high oil prices. As the low switch rate implies: 97% chose to take additional trips instead, raising questions about both the actual pain and the remedy.

Finally: What should we do?

Here are three recommendations for the road ahead:

1 Focus on goal: modal shift

If we are to create a successor, it’s important to define what the successor should be for: The main goal for the 9-Euro-Ticket was to alleviate rising fuel and energy costs for the public. That, it turned out, was neither successful nor needed.

The secondary goal was to lure drivers to become riders. That worked only halfway: drivers became also riders. This goal – to reduce CO2 emissions via modal shift as part of the Verkehrswende – remains as important as urgent. Make many more people make public transit their chosen mode of transport for all or most trips instead of cars – that should be yardstick and litmus test for any successor.

2 Keep it simple

We know that a dirt-cheap price tag drives sales. But, as we’ve seen, even in combination with sky-rocketing fuel prices it doesn’t do the shift-trick. Yet current debate seems to center around a future price tag (and how to pay for it).

The debate misses the biggest insight: Apart from the price tag, most people praised the simplicity of the ticket. As anybody arriving in a new city can attest to: the biggest hurdle to hop on a bus or tram is figuring out the route including mode changes, the ticket machines and the available passes to get to where you need to go. A taxi, on the other hand, works pretty much the same in any city and rarely leaves you stranded.

Users of the 9-Euro-Ticket loved the simplicity, as it removed the hurdle of complexity: the entire public transport system of Germany suddenly is your oyster, free to explore and roam, and with no fear of getting lost, having a wrong or expired ticket, or the hassle to even concern yourself with the local tariffs and ticketing systems.

The power of simplicity is often overlooked, because “simple” is deemed shallow and unsophisticated. Nothing could be further from the truth: reducing complex, intricate systems to intuitively navigable interfaces made Google beat pioneer Yahoo to become the near-monopoly it is today, and it allowed Apple to grow from niche to the most valued company on Earth.2

The 9-Euro-Ticket is simple AF. That feature is arguably more important than the blunt, dumb and corrosive tool of dumping pricing: cheap stuff gets sold. Simple stuff gets used. Had the ticket been cheap to buy but complicated to use, we would still have seen sales, but not the massive surge in rides.

Keep it simple:3 One single fare nationwide, plus maybe a regional one if zoning is introduced, in addition to existing fares and tariffs.

3 Make it easy…

Simplicity is a powerful attractor. Luckily, simplicity is not only a function of tariff systems. The ease, reliability, speed, safety and comfort of getting from any A to any B are equally strong attractors.

Today’s transit systems have been under-financed and under-invested in, and therefore under-innovated on, for decades. Only in the last years we’ve seen a welcome uptick in public investment and maintenance. Due to prior neglect, this in some places amounts to rebuilding, and less to expanding service.

As a result, and despite the heroic efforts of those working for and in public transit, services today fall short on multiple fronts: they can be unreliable, unavailable, unsafe, uncomfortable, and slow. Public transport today beats driving your own car on 2.5 fronts: it’s cheaper, you don’t have to drive yourself, and you don’t have to service it when it breaks down.

Of the above “un’s”, the unavailable is the most pressing: public transport too often just doesn’t get you anywhere, or at anytime, you need or want to go. Once your only reasonable – aka safe, speedy, flexible, convenient – alternative seems to be a car, you’ll pretty sure be using it for most or all trips.

Transit agencies are starting to fill in the gaps, either by filling in their own network in space and schedule, or by inviting micromobility, carsharing, taxis and others onto their platform, or both. Innovations like on-demand services, automated shuttle services further serve to increase the quality, and therefore attractiveness, of the service. All this is great and sorely needed. And nothing beats the high-speed, high-capacity backbones of light rail, of which we need much more.

That costs tons of money for investments and improvements, and even more to run. It also takes mountains of political capital because, inevitably, you can only spend each Euro or Dollar once, and there are limits to how many modes can co-exist on the same square meter, as any bus driver behind a parked car on the bus lane can attest to.

Make it easy to choose transit over car use: That translates to massive investments in public transport with focus on increasing quality, access and ease of use.
Quality of service is what scientist time and again identify as the single biggest driver of modal shift to transit.

… and harder

The stick equivalent to the better transit carrot is making car ownership and use increasingly uneasy. Imposing parking restrictions, congestion pricing and other measures might get pushbacks from voters, but there are good justifications to charge for use of public land one way or another. They are also comparatively easy and quick to implement.

But remember: What makes cars so attractive – and at times necessary – is that they are virtual anytime-everywhere machine, that also double as mobile living rooms. We’ve spend a century building a global infrastructure that lets you get anywhere at any time with a car, and all in the comfort of your own, personal space.
Just making driving less attractive is no substitute for making transit more attractive, which should be first priority.

4 Keep the pace

The speed of implementation of the 9-Euro-Ticket was impressive, and Germany would be well-advised to keep the momentum, especially as a safeguard against falling into old patterns that include asking whether bike lanes are feasible.

Yet there’s no need for an immediate follow-up: we don’t want more induced traffic on already overstretched transit. Introducing a successor swiftly, e.g. in Q1 of 2023, would still make good use of the current momentum while giving time to refine strategy for a more effective successor, as more data comes in.

Please feel free to let me know why I’m wrong or what you’d like to add:

Leave a comment

If you like what you read, feel free to subscribe or share:

Subscribe now

Share

Noch im Dezember nannte Siemens Energy-Chef Christian Bruch die Koalitionspläne in der ZEIT “richtig und wichtig” und begrüßte den Umsetzungsfokus der Ampel. Gesamtmetallchef Stefan Wolf sah im SPIEGEL die Chance, einen Ruck durch das Land gehen zu lassen. Laut FAZ begegnete “die Wirtschaft … der Ampel mit großer Offenheit” (wenn auch nicht mit Vorfreude).

Heute sieht Ursula Weidenfeld im Tagesspiegel die Ordnungspolitik unter der neuen Regierung in Gefahr. Michael Sauga wittert im Spiegel einen faulen Zauber einer neuen Industriepolitik. Und Ulf Poschardt, true to form, ruft in der Welt bereits die Bundesclownspolitik aus.

Drohen Planwirtschaft und Staatskapitalismus?

Das sind, nach noch nicht einmal 100 Tagen im Amt, schwere Geschütze. Der Unmut fokussiert insbesondere das Wirtschaftsministerium. Der “Hort ordnungspolitischen Denkens und Handelns” heißt nun Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz1.

In der Financial Times hat Staatssekretär Sven Giegold skizziert, wie das neue Ministerium wirtschaftliche Transformation und Klimaziele umsetzen will. Das Skizzierte alarmiert Ursula Weidenfeld, es würde eine “Steuerungsbehörde” kreieren. “Ein ganzer Instrumentenkasten werde am Ende die marktwirtschaftlichen Prozesse steuern und einfrieden”.2 Ohne es so zu nennen: Ursula Weidenfeld zeichnet das Bild einer Planwirtschaft.

Michael Sauga wiederum warnt die Ampel davor, den Weg des “Staatskapitalismus” einzuschlagen, und plädiert für eine “kluge” Rollenverteilung: “Der Staat ist meist ein schlechter Unternehmer, und die Unternehmer verstehen in der Regel zu wenig von Politik.” Im Fokus seiner Warnung: die Mission Economy à la Mariana Mazzucato.

Klimakrise vs Marktwirtschaft

Ordnungspolitik hat in der Bundesrepublik Verfassungsrang: 109 GG, Art. 2 verpflichtet den Staat auf ein Gesamtgesellschaftliches Gleichgewicht – das “magischen Viereck” aus Preisstabilität, hoher Beschäftigung, außenwirtschaftlichem Gleichgewicht und angemessenem Wirtschaftswachstum.

Das “magische” am Viereck: die vier Dimensionen sind gleichwertig und stehen in einem Spannungsverhältnis zueinander. So setzt Ordnungspolitik Leitplanken. Der wirtschaftliche Wettbewerb schafft Innovation und Lösungen, der Markt entscheidet über Erfolg. Konkrete Zielvorgaben sind der Ordnungspolitik fremd. Das Ergebnis bleibt offen.

Dekarbonisierung ist weder gleichwertig, noch gleichartig. Sie ist nicht gleichartig, weil das Reduktionsziel eindeutig, messbar quantifiziert und terminiert ist. Das ist das Gegenteil von ergebnisoffen. Durch diese konkrete Zielvorgabe ist sie nicht auch nicht gleichwertig – zumindest solange nicht, bis das Ziel der Klimaneutralität erreicht ist.

Ein noch magischeres Fünfeck würde nicht funktionieren. Die Klimakrise ist ein kolossales Marktversagen. Gemeinkosten kennt der Markt nicht. Wechselkosten (Lock-in-Effekte durch Infrastruktur und Wertschöpfungsketten) kennt der Markt umso mehr. Das ist die Tragik der Allmende. Der Markt steht energisch für den Status quo. Nicht für den notwendigen Fortschritt. Was heißt dies für die Ordnungspolitik in Zeiten der Klimakrise?

Mehr Müller-Armack, weniger Erhard

Die bundesrepublikanische Soziale Marktwirtschaft3 war bislang weder bestrebt, interventionistisch nationale Champions nach französischem Vorbild zu formen, noch das Gemeinwesen nach US-Vorbild einem alles-verökonomisierenden Turbokapitalismus zu unterwerfen. Alle Nachkriegsregierungen haben sich – mal stärker Richtung allgemeinem Wohlstand, mal stärker Richtung unternehmerischer Wertschöpfung – daran orientiert.

“Wir sprechen von ‚Sozialer Marktwirtschaft‘“, so der geistige Vater der Sozialen Marktwirtschaft Alfred Müller-Armack, “um diese dritte wirtschaftspolitische Form zu kennzeichnen. Es bedeutet dies, dass uns die Marktwirtschaft notwendig als das tragende Gerüst der künftigen Wirtschaftsordnung erscheint, nur dass dies eben keine sich selbst überlassene liberale Marktwirtschaft, sondern eine bewusst gesteuerte, und zwar sozial gesteuerte Marktwirtschaft sein soll.”

“Dritte wirtschaftspolitische Form … bewusst gesteuerte Marktwirtschaft” – das sind für Anhänger Erhards und Euckens gegebenenfalls provokante Formulierungen. Doch sie gehören ebenso zum wirtschaftspolitischen Kanon der Bundesrepublik wie die Freiburger Schule: Ein ganzer Instrumentenkasten steuert bereits die marktwirtschaftlichen Prozesse (friedet sie aber nicht ein).

Wenn die neue Regierung also ankündigt, “die Ideen des deutschen „Ordoliberalismus“ aufzugreifen und … weiterzuentwickeln”, und zwar zu einer Ökologisch-Sozialen Marktwirtschaft, dann ist das zwar kühn. Es schließt aber an eine wirtschaftspolitische Tradition der Bundesrepublik an.

The Mission: klimaneutral bis 2045

Eine “bewusste Steuerung” marktwirtschaftlicher Prozesse ist bundesrepublikanische Tradition und Grundlage der Sozialen Marktwirtschaft. Die Warnungen vor Planwirtschaft und Staatskapitalismus wiegen dennoch schwer: Eine Mehrfachrolle des Staates als Regelmacher, Schiedsrichter und Marktteilnehmer erscheint schwer mit marktwirtschaftlichen Prinzipien und Gewaltenteilung vereinbar.

Mariana Mazzucato hat ihren Ruf nach einer aktiveren Rolle des Staates als “Mission Economy” bezeichnet. Dieser Name bezieht sich auf die mittlerweile sprichwörtliche Mondlandung (moonshot mission) der USA in den 60ern. Diese Mission war nicht nur ein seltsames, exhaltiertes, geniales Projekt. Sie war auch der ultimative, nicht-militärische Wettstreit während des Kalten Krieges – the final frontier4.

Es lohnt sich, Kennedys Rede vor dem dem US-Kongress zu lesen. Vor der heute allbekannten “man on the moon”-Formulierung findet sich folgender Absatz:

“I believe we possess all the resources and talents necessary. But the facts of the matter are that we have never made the national decisions or marshalled the national resources required for such leadership. We have never specified long-range goals on an urgent time schedule, or managed our resources and our time so as to insure their fulfillment.” John F. Kennedy, 25. Mai 1961

Kennedy beschreibt nichts anderes als gutes Projektmanagement:

1. Entscheiden (= nicht nur wollen oder wünschen oder müssen),

2. führen, alle Ressourcen mobilisieren (= keine Vorbehalte, Konditionierungen),

3. konkrete, messbare Ziele und engen Zeitplan setzen (= Klarheit und Ungeduld),

4. Ressourcen und Zeit so nutzen, dass Zielerfüllung gewährt ist (= zu erreichendes Ergebnis bestimmt Ressourcen und Einsatz, nicht umgekehrt).

Missionen sind Projekte, die aufgrund ihres Ausmaßes und Umfangs, aber auch aufgrund ihrer Kühnheit, nur von Staaten geführt werden können. Sie stellen sich, wie jeder große Durchbruch, nicht nur eine inkrementell verbesserte, sondern eine neue Welt vor. Sie lassen Science-Fiction Wirklichkeit werden.5

Doch Missionen sind begrenzt – durch Zielerreichung. Diese Begrenzung – gerade angesichts ihrer fast alles berührenden Mächtigkeit – ist wichtig.

Wirtschaftliche Mobilmachung: Mission, aber richtig

Die Entscheidung für eine klimaneutrale Wirtschaft bis zum Jahr 2045 ist sowohl von Ausmaß und Kühnheit, als auch von Messbarkeit und Zeitplanung missionstauglich. Doch im Vergleich zur Mondlandung ist das Ziel deutlich allumfassender und unübersichtlicher. Es handelt sich nicht um den Bau von Raumfahrzeugen, sondern um den Umbau einer Volkswirtschaft. Darin liegt die besondere Herausforderung.

NASA hat Armstrong nicht alleine auf den Mond geschickt, sondern auch alle notwendigen Ressourcen privatwirtschaftlicher wie öffentlicher und wissenschaftlicher Herkunft genutzt. Aber – und das ist der Unterschied zu einer rein ordnungspolitischen Rahmensetzung – NASA hat das Projekt geleitet.

Der Staat wird die Dekarbonisierungsmission leiten. Die Umsetzung wird, bewusst gesteuert durch einen ganzen Instrumentenkasten, hauptsächlich dezentral und privatwirtschaftlich stattfinden. Doch in zwei Bereichen ist der Staat nicht nur in der Steuerungs- und Zielüberwachungs-, sondern auch in der Umsetzungsverantwortung: Infrastruktur und Beschaffung.

Infrastrukturen – Trink- und Abwasser, Energie- und Datenleitungen, Straßen, Brücken, Gleise und Häfen – sind natürliche Monopole. Sie leiden, wenn sie unreguliert in privater Hand sind, sie dienen allen am besten, wenn sie reguliert und/oder staatlich betrieben werden.

In Transformationszeiten wirken bestehende Infrastrukturen und Wertschöpfungsketten selbst in marktwirtschaftlichen Sektoren hemmend. In all diesen Bereichen erfolgt Wandel nur mit – und teilweise durch – den Staat. Im Bereich Elektromobilität hat Norwegen den Beweis geführt.

Auch Dienste wie ein funktionierender ÖPNV gehören zu den natürlichen Monopolen6. Dort liegen unter anderem auch die Beschaffungshebel des Staats: Es ist ein Verrat an der Entscheidung zur Dekarbonisierung bis 2045, heute noch Busse mit Dieselantrieb zu erwerben.7

Natürlich hat Weidenfeld recht wenn sie fordert, dass Beschleunigung und Vereinfachung nicht nur für den Energiesektor, sondern für Wirtschaft und Politik insgesamt gelten müssen. Wir brauchen eine generelle Mobilmachung im Kampf gegen die Klimakrise (und darüber hinaus), nicht nur im Energiesektor.

Natürlich hat Sauga recht, wenn er staatlich protegierten Champions eine Absage erteilt. Größe ist kein Wert an sich, National oder European Champions sind kein Ziel, sondern Ergebnis von Vorsprung in innovativer Lösungsfähigkeit und Qualität. Auch seine Warnung vor Subventionen sind wohlbegründet: die wirksamsten, nachhaltigsten Instrumente sind meist andere – und sei es, das Geld dort abzuziehen, wo es der Dekarbonisierung entgegenwirkt.

Doch insbesondere bedarf die Dekarbonisierungsmission eines kreativen Ungehorsams: Ein Fokus auf Umsetzen und Ergebnis. Wo Prozesse ihren Zweck verfehlen, kann Transparenz (ohnehin ausbaufähig) übergangsweise an ihre Stelle treten.8 Auch das ist Teil guten Projektmanagements.

Wir haben die Entscheidung getroffen, im Jahr 2045 klimaneutral zu sein. Die Mission Economy kann – richtig gemacht – dies beschleunigen, ermöglichen und das vor allem: sicherstellen, dass wir das Ziel erreichen. Nehmen wir unsere Entscheidung ernst, und handeln wir entsprechend. Dazu braucht es eine Ökologisch-Soziale Marktwirtschaft. Und Ungeduld und Chuzpe.

Please feel free to let me know where I’m wrong.

Leave a comment

I’ll occasionally publish new ideas and thoughts here. Currently in the pipeline: Energy Delivery in Future Mobility, How Micromobility Complements Transit.

Subscribe now

Over the last two months, I published proposals to a future German government on how the automotive industry would remain or become

• competitive: technologically leading and globally successful,

• sustainable in production and products,

• providing good employment and high value added in Germany.

Put another way: how can government – while radically transforming mobility, transportation and urban space – avoid collateral damage, but strengthen Germany’s industrial base and inventiveness? Here’s the summary of these proposals, for emphasis, written in second person:

Decarbonize – lead it, nobody else will.

1. Create the charging infrastructure of the future today. Stop the folly of following demand: your task is to induce demand. Infrastructure is your most powerful tool to drive change.

2. Keep robustly incentivising, regulating, building for change. Don’t plan for an ephemeral tipping point, but continue to adapt measures and tools according to progress.

3. Evaluate whether BEVs really fit all global use cases and needs – especially of lower-income or disadvantaged communities. If not: repeat 1. and 2. for a second powertrain/energy source-combo, or create even better alternatives.

Last tips: Disregard calls for market-driven solutions; market failure – the tragedy of the commons – got us here. Act decisively, as well as responsibly:

• You’ll be meddling with a highly integrated, globalized, important and successful sector – seldom economists’ first choice. Be transparent and responsive. That’s your industrial policy responsibility.

• You’ll also be affecting mobility access to millions of people. Don’t incentivise the rich while second-guessing the needs of the less privileged. That’s your social responsibility.

Read the full arguments here.

Digitise – and competitiveness will follow.

1. Again: Infrastructure is both your tool and responsibility. Germany’s digital infrastructure and digital capabilities (directly related) are simply not competitive. Don’t accept anything less but world-best.

2. Digitalraum Mobilität – don’t mess it up: it’s Europe’s the chance to prove that GDPR doesn’t hinder global success, it’s Germany’s ticket to retain leadership in future mobility. Don’t modellprojekt it, but moonshot it.

3. While we have great minds and startups, DAX remains a club of Gründerzeit companies. Don’t preserve legacies, but foster competitiveness. Create conditions conductive to scale and speed: Venture capital is what you need.

Last tips: Unleash the strongest market forces of all: demand and competition. Digitization is the last area you’ll want to shield legacy systems from disruption.

• Be fiercely ambitious, use your government’s heft. A market-driven approach works best when even government act like any other purchaser: demand the best – you owe it to the taxpayers, too.

• The incumbents are not your only option. The Land of Ideas needs not only new ideas, but also new companies, unencumbered by the impulse to protect existing revenue streams.

Read the full arguments here.

Do – fast, creatively, and focused on results.

1. Radically speed up planning, implementation. Don’t over-engineer, over-control, over-plan. Instead, focus on goals, milestones, benchmarks and results. Decentralize, distribute authority, delegate decisions to those in charge.
   Favor transparency and real input over performative pseudo-participation.

2. Unless you’re contemplating interstellar travel, ditch Machbarkeitsstudien. Within the laws of physics and ecological boundaries, things are doable. While at it, ditch Modellprojekte, Schaufensterprojekte etc. Instead, combine procurement and leap innovation: think DARPA and NASA.

3. Allow for competition and pockets of creative disobedience. Rules are human-made, invented to assure better results, not to prevent them. If they don’t serve that purpose, or even hinder progress or better outcomes: ignore them.

Last tips: Be biased towards action, enforcement, and results. Simple is your friend, as is creativity. Effectiveness is a better measure than efficiency. The future is worth taking risks.
Read the full arguments here.

Some Last Words and Housekeeping

The proposals above should help navigate industrial policy in the age of climate crisis. While climate is paramount, it’s not the only topic, and above proposals don’t assume to exhaust the entire subject. Some additional topics to consider:

• The future government will need to ensure global trade and access to raw materials, while ditching the “Wandel durch Annäherung”-fairy tale. Human and civil rights, rule of law, democracy and open, vibrant societies need active fostering and collaboration.

• The disruptive challenge of transformation lies in qualifications, working methods, and job allocation – but not in a net loss of jobs. Demographic change will lead to net labor shortage in Germany. Further training, lifelong learning, immigration and longer working lives – better management of transformative displacement and investment in people – will ensure prosperity.

As mentioned at the beginning of this short series: a robust automotive industry policy is no substitute for an equally ambitious mobility and transportation policy. But without it, social and economic disruption will evaporate all political capital needed for progress.

German version from here on. Please comment below.

Eine Kurzanleitung für den Fortschritt

In den letzten zwei Monaten habe ich Vorschläge an eine künftige Bundesregierung unterbreitet, wie die Automobilindustrie

• wettbewerbsfähig: technologisch führend und weltweit erfolgreich bleibt,

• nachhaltig in Produktion und Produkten wird,

• und weiterhin gute Beschäftigung und hohe Wertschöpfung in Deutschland bietet.

Anders ausgedrückt: Wie kann die Regierung – bei radikaler Umgestaltung von Mobilität, Verkehr und Stadtraum – Kollateralschäden vermeiden, und die industrielle Basis und den Erfindergeist Deutschlands stärken? Hier ist die Zusammenfassung dieser Vorschläge. Zur Betonung, ist sie in der zweiten Person Singular geschrieben:

Dekarbonisiere – führe an, niemand sonst wird es tun.

1. Schaffe heute die Ladeinfrastruktur der Zukunft. Höre auf, der Nachfrage hinterherzulaufen: Deine Aufgabe ist es, die Nachfrage anzukurbeln. Die Infrastruktur ist Dein mächtigstes Werkzeug, um den Wandel voranzutreiben.

2. Setze weiterhin starke Anreize, reguliere, baue den Wandel. Plane nicht für einen vermeintlichen Markthochlauf, aber passe Maßnahmen und Instrumente weiterhin der jeweiligen Entwicklung an.

3. Prüfe, ob BEVs wirklich für alle globalen Anwendungsfälle und Bedürfnisse geeignet sind – insbesondere für einkommensschwache oder benachteiligte Gruppen. Falls nicht: Wiederhole 1. und 2. für eine zweite Technologie, oder entwickele noch bessere Alternativen.

Letzte Tipps: Ignoriere den Ruf nach marktgesteuerten Lösungen; das Versagen des Marktes – die Tragik der Allmende – hat uns hierher gebracht. Handele entschlossen, aber auch verantwortungsbewusst:

• Du wirst dich in einen hoch integrierten, globalisierten, wichtigen und erfolgreichen Sektor einmischen – selten eines Ökonomen erste Wahl. Sei transparent und aufmerksam. Das ist deine industriepolitische Verantwortung.

• Du wirst auch den Zugang zu Mobilität für Millionen von Menschen beeinflussen. Schaffe keine Anreize für die Reichen während Du die Bedürfnisse der weniger Privilegierten in Frage stellst. Das ist deine soziale Verantwortung.

Lies die vollständigen Argumente hier.

Digitalisiere – und die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit wird folgen.

1. Auch hier gilt: Infrastruktur ist sowohl dein Werkzeug als auch deine Verantwortung. Deutschlands digitale Infrastruktur und Fähigkeiten (da besteht ein direkter Zusammenhang) sind schlicht nicht wettbewerbsfähig. Akzeptiere nichts Geringeres als Weltspitze.

2. Digitalraum Mobilität – vermassele es nicht: Es ist Europas Chance zu beweisen, dass die DSGVO den globalen Erfolg nicht behindert, es ist Deutschlands Ticket, um die Führung bei der Mobilität von morgen zu behalten. Das ist kein Modellprojekt, sondern einen Moonshot-Projekt.

3. Wir haben kluge Köpfe und tolle Startups, aber der DAX bleibt ein Club der Gründerzeitunternehmen. Bewahre nicht das Erbe, sondern fördere die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit. Schaffe Bedingungen, welche Skalierung und Geschwindigkeit fördern: Risikokapital hilft.

Letzte Tipps: Entfessele die stärksten aller Marktkräfte: Nachfrage und Wettbewerb. Die Digitalisierung ist der letzte Bereich, in dem Du Überkommenes schützen möchtest.

• Sei sehr ehrgeizig, nutze das Gewicht der Regierung. Ein marktorientierter Ansatz funktioniert am besten, wenn die Regierung wie jeder andere Einkaufsabteilung handelt: Verlange das Beste – das bist Du auch den Steuerzahlenden schuldig.

• Etablierte Unternehmen sind nicht Deine einzige Option. Das Land der Ideen braucht nicht nur neue Ideen, sondern auch neue Unternehmen, welche nicht auf bestehende Einnahmeströme Rücksicht nehmen müssen.

Lesen Sie die vollständigen Argumente hier.

Handele – schnell, kreativ und ergebnisorientiert.

1. Beschleunige radikal Planung und Umsetzung. Man kann auch über-konstruieren, über-planen, über-kontrollieren. Konzentriere dich stattdessen auf Zielsetzung, Etappenziele, Benchmarks und Ergebnisse. Dezentralisiere, verteile Befugnisse, delegiere Entscheidungen an die Zuständigen. Bevorzuge Transparenz und echten Input gegenüber performativer Pseudo-Beteiligung.

2. Solltest du nicht gerade interstellare Reisen planen, vergiss Machbarkeitsstudien: Innerhalb der Gesetze der Physik und der ökologischen Grenzen sind die Dinge generell machbar. Vergiss Modellprojekte, Schaufensterprojekte etc. Kombiniere stattdessen Beschaffung und Innovationsförderung à la DARPA und NASA.

3. Erlaube Wettbewerb und kreativen Ungehorsam. Regeln sind von Menschen gemacht, sie wurden erfunden, um bessere Ergebnisse zu gewährleisten, nicht um sie zu verhindern. Sind sie diesem Zweck nicht dienlich oder behindern gar Fortschritt oder bessere Ergebnisse: ignoriere sie.

Letzte Tipps: Sei handlungs-, durchsetzungs- und ergebnisorientiert. Einfachheit ist dein Freund, ebenso wie Kreativität. Effektivität ist ein besseres Maß als Effizienz. Für die Zukunft ist es wert, Risiken einzugehen.

Lese die vollständigen Argumente hier.

Einige letzte Worte und Hausarbeiten

Die oben genannten Vorschläge sollen helfen, die Industriepolitik im Zeitalter der Klimakrise zu steuern. Das Klima ist zwar von zentraler Bedeutung, aber es ist nicht das einzige Thema, und die obigen Vorschläge erheben nicht den Anspruch, das gesamte Thema zu erschöpfen. Einige zusätzliche Themen sollten berücksichtigt werden:

• Die künftige Regierung muss den Welthandel und den Zugang zu Rohstoffen sicherstellen und sich dabei vom Märchen "Wandel durch Annäherung" verabschieden. Menschen- und Bürgerrechte, Rechtsstaatlichkeit, Demokratie und offene, lebendige Gesellschaften bedürfen der aktiven Förderung und Zusammenarbeit.

• Die disruptive Herausforderung des Wandels liegt in der Qualifikation, der Arbeitsweise und der Arbeitsplatzverteilung – aber nicht in einem Nettoverlust von Arbeitsplätzen. Der demografische Wandel wird in Deutschland zu einem Netto-Arbeitskraftmangel führen. Weiterbildung, lebenslanges Lernen, Zuwanderung und längere Lebensarbeitszeiten – ein besseres Management der Transformationsverschiebung und Investitionen in Menschen – werden den Wohlstand sichern.

Wie eingangs zu dieser kleinen Serie erwähnt: Eine robuste Automobilindustrie-Politik ist kein Ersatz für eine ebenso ambitionierte Mobilitäts- und Verkehrspolitik. Aber ohne sie werden die sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Verwerfungen das politische Kapital, das für den Fortschritt benötigt wird, zunichte machen.

Thanks for reading. As always: please tell me where I’m wrong.

Leave a comment

Also: share and subscribe if you liked what you read. Thanks!

Share

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

I’ve advocated for a decidedly non-market approach to electrification in part 1, and a decidedly market approach to digitization in part 2, both with infrastructure at the core of each proposal. Today, I’ll discuss how to get better results quicker, both as society and state.

This might sound fuzzier than the climate crisis- and tech-driven topics of decarbonization and digitization. But it’s the conditio sine quo non of progress on either topic.

Do – fast, creatively, resolutely.

I’ve written (ranted) about the “Republik in Aspik” – Germany’s preference for the status quo while playing pretend when it comes to progress – before: here and here. IPPC released a loud report, NASA a picture of quiet urgency below. The Federation of German Industries – no friend of the Greens by any measure – recently chimed in.
Therefore, I will keep it short:

A future-proof industry thrives best in an environment that treats change not as a risk to the status quo, but as an opportunity, and even necessity, for a better future. Ideally, that environment includes a government biased towards action, enforcement, and results, while also placing a premium on transparency, communication, and empowerment.

Here are some tips on how to get things done:

1. Radically speed up planning, implementation. Ditch feasibility studies, model projects, demonstration projects, and bridge technologies – anything that is not the real thing – especially, if it has been done before.1 Don’t modellprojekt it, but moonshot it.2

2. Keep it simple and clear: Don’t over-engineer, trying to determine every little bit in advance. Decentralize, distribute authority, delegate decisions to those in charge and on the ground. Keep information and interaction flowing.3

3. Allow for competition and pockets of creative disobedience. Rules are human-made, created to assure better results, not to prevent them. If they don’t serve that purpose, or even hinder progress or better outcomes: ignore them.4

4. Favor maximum transparency and real input over performative pseudo-participation. Be clear about roles and responsibilities: only governments is accountable to the general public.5

5. Combine procurement and leap innovation: procure what you need, even and especially if it doesn’t exist yet. Governments are the biggest purchasers around – use that clout for progress. Think DARPA and NASA.6

6. Don’t outsource the future, but built internal capabilities and organizational memory. Commission only what is clearly outside of government’s scope and responsibility.7

7. Don’t start before you’ve determined your goals, planned your milestones, established benchmarks, and defined how you’ll measure progress, results and success.8

Obviously, these seven suggestions go beyond automotive industrial policy in Germany. They are also short on detail.9 But let me give you an automotive industry-related example of how we talk too much about how things ought to be, and do too little to make them reality:10

Just yesterday, the German newspaper Tagesspiegel published a short review of the current transportation minister’s performance. Astonishingly, both minister and author measured ministerial performance in legislative acts – even though a federal minister is part of the executive branch. When government and parliament both trade in legislation, who’s in charge of executive action and results?

One of the minister’s legislative accomplishments: this years’ Act on Autonomous Driving. He rejoiced: “(We are) first country worldwide where this is possible. With this, we are setting international benchmarks… With the new Act, we ensure a leading position for Germany.” Other countries,11 as well as Waymo, Tesla and others with millions of miles of actual self-driving experience under their belt, might be forgiven for thinking otherwise.

Weiter so? Or results.

In future-proofing Germany's automotive industry until 2030 (e.g., via decarbonization and digitization), as well as anything else, only results count.
The next government will not only need the right strategies, but also the executional mindset and capabilities, to deliver progress.

The current parties in federal government have been in power for 16 and 12 years, respectively, since 2005. All promise progress, delivered with the soothing comfort of “weiter so”, or continuation, in varying colors.
They all warn against the destructive insanity of those advocating for a better future through more ambitious, progressive change. Here, Einstein’s witticism comes to mind: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

The German car industry will showcase their vision of the future next week at IAA Mobility. Germans will cast their votes for federal parliament on September 26.
Both will predetermine the route for future-proofing the automotive industry, and Germany: continuation, or change.

Thanks for reading. As always: please tell me where I’m wrong.

Leave a comment

Also: share and subscribe if you liked what you read. Thanks!

Share

Subscribe now

In the first segment we discussed, why the switch from one ubiquitous system (fossil fuels/ICE cars) to an evolving alternative (renewable electricity/BEVs) simply can’t happen via market forces. Calls for a level playing field are nothing but calls for the status quo. Without robust and sustained incentives and regulations, BEVs, or any other alternative, will remain an arcane oddity. Hence, governments have to take the drivers’ seat, and especially regarding infrastructure.

Luckily, different to electric mobility, there’s an actual, real, premium-paying demand for digital services: advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), automated and connected functions, provide direct safety and comfort benefits to the individual owner. And, as decades of ADAS like ABS to ESC have shown, these technologies over time trickle down from premium to the mass market, making everybody safer.

If this were all there’s to it, the German car industry would do just fine inventing its way out of legacy systems and into the brave new world of the digital age – and paying for it through their handsome profits along the way. The route from ADAS to a future fully automated, integrated intelligent transport and mobility system would be one smooth road.

But there’s a reason that new solutions, and those that provide them, are increasingly found in Silicon Valley (e.g., Nvidia, Microsoft, Intel, Waymo) and Israel (e.g., Mobileye, Gett, Moovit). Germany, the self-proclaimed Land of Ideas, doesn’t lack talent. But it severely lacks in infrastructure and, as a result, in widespread digital competencies.

Half as fast, four times as costly…

The speed of household internet connections in Germany have been a matter of stoic despair for many years. The average consumer gets about half the speed of their Rumanian counterpart – not an unfair benchmark, to put it mildly. To add insult to injury, Rumanians pay about a quarter compared to Germans.

How, as a world-leading economy, or as the largest European society, become a leader in digitization when the very basis – infrastructure is lacking? Infrastructure is the foundation of innovation, technology, demand and solutions. That digital divide we keep talking about – Germany as a whole is on the wrong side of it. (Few other industrialized countries used fax machines to track Covid-19.)

… and only a third as powerful.

Industry becomes future-proof, competitive, creates employment and added value, through digital innovations. For this, we need a top-performing infrastructure. The German automotive industry needs an environment – customers and workforce – with digital competence, expectations and aspirations. In short: a highly competitive market.

In this field, the German government falls short, despite digital infrastructure since 2013 being the domain of the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure. (Yep, it’s right there in the name.) The upside: a powerful, high-performing digital infrastructure wouldn’t only benefit the car industry. It would benefit everything and everyone. This makes it particularly sad that we seem to be so content without one.

Share

Putting the cart before the horse

While the foundational digital infrastructure in Germany is as necessary as it is deficient, the government gaily charges ahead with some promising projects:

• Gaia-X – an initiative to design the next generation of a federated European data infrastructure, intended to create a digital ecosystem to ensure that companies and business models from Europe can be competitive.

• Digital Motorway Test Bed – an upgraded stretch of 140 km freeway intended to offer providers of connected and automated driving or intelligent infrastructure the opportunity to develop and test technologies.

• Mobility Data Space – an initiative to create a data marketplace where equal partners in the mobility sector can exchange data in a self-determined manner to enable innovative, environmentally and user-friendly mobility concepts.

A commonality to all these projects: they try not to step on anybody’s toes. The list of what Gaia-X should not be (not a cloud service provider, not a cloud management platform, not a competition to existing offers), is at least as long as the list of what it should become (see above). The “test bed” is just that: a laboratory to enable industry and research to test and develop technologies. It does not foresee any ambition or role for the state beyond this. And then there is the Mobility Data Space (MDS).

The Wise Men of Gotham

The MDS is obviously loosely linked to the Gaia-X project, and is, at first glance, one of the most promising initiatives1:

1. Germany, and the EU, is packed with diverse mobility data from train and transit authorities, cars and buses, MaaS and other mobility providers, cell phones and other sources.

2. Germany, and the EU, sport the world’s leading consumer privacy protection legislation: GDPR. It’s been emulated in California and elsewhere.

3. Germany, and the EU, could use a boost of world-leading, people-centric mobility tech – last, but not least, as home to the world’s leading car brands.

4. Germany just reformed the Passenger Transportation Act, granting cities more power over urban mobility, and obliging any commercial carrier (public transit, taxi, ridesharing etc) to share their data.

In short: Germany has all the resources, and should have all the motivation, to prove that GDPR is no hinderance for great, world-leading products and services in mobility and beyond. The key word here is should.

Because it doesn’t. The MDS, by its own words, “is supposed to be a sharing community for all stakeholders who want to help shape the mobility of tomorrow. … Users have unique opportunities here to participate in the value creation potential of their data.” It’s the most vanilla, most unambitious proposition conceivable.

Also, before even getting off the ground, the government just undermined the very law obliging companies to share data: Now, public transit authorities only have to share their schedules, but no dynamic data. In Germany, this is called a “Schildbürgerstreich”. In England, the wise men of Gotham feigned idiocy to avoid the consequences of a royal visit.

In October, in time for the ITS World Congress in Hamburg, the Mobility Data Space is scheduled to be “implemented2”. Maybe, all will come to fruition, and MDS will fully live up to its potential. But, as of now, I’m doubtful.

We can do better …

To future-proof Germany's automotive industry until 2030, the government

1. needs to ensure a top-performing digital infrastructure. It doesn’t need to built it, but it does need to take all measures to fix this asap. This is a necessary condition – for the entire country, and not only in economic terms.

2. should seize the opportunity of the upcoming Datenraum Mobilität – but with entrepreneurial ambition and the concrete goal to reinvent public transport. This would create the sufficient condition for future mobility innovation.

In short: the country has to stop playing pretend, start taking digitization seriously, and become fiercely ambitious and competitive about it.

I’d like to end on a more positive note: A lot has been about innovation conditions in Germany and Europe, or rather the lack thereof. The good news: they are improving. 25% of annual mobility startup deals are now happening in Europe. That’s still lower than the shares of Asia and North America, but it’s a move in the right direction.

… and some of us are

Still, German tech startups today rarely make it to the scale their international counterparts do: most DAX 30 companies hail from the 19th century Gründerzeit3. But, for once, I’m optimistic: Venture capital will eventually flock to Europe as soon as Europe’s governments become as ambitious as their US or Chinese counterparts. Because, as NASA, DARPA and others have shown: ambition begets ambition, opportunity, prosperity.

But that’s the topic of the upcoming third segment. Thank you for reading.

Please feel free to let me know why I’m wrong.

Leave a comment

If you liked what you read enough, feel free to share or subscribe.
The next part will be about progress: how to get things done, faster.

Subscribe now

• 9/11 – aus Hamburg heraus maßgeblich geplant und durchgeführt? Vergessen.

• NSU? Erst durch Selbstmord und Bekennerschreiben nicht erkannt.

• Cum-Ex-Skandal? Milliardensteuerbetrug jahrelang durch Behörden ignoriert.

• Diesel-Betrug? Musste erst die USA aufdecken – und verschleppt hier.

• Pandemie? Wird mit Faxgeräten und Arbeitsverweigerung (KMK) bekämpft.

• Überschwemmungen? “Warninfrastruktur hat geklappt”

Das letzte Zitat stammt von Armin Schuster, Leiter des Bundesamtes für Bevölkerungsschutz und Katastrophenhilfe BBK. Der NRW-Innenminister Herbert Reul sieht “keine großen grundsätzlichen Probleme”. Das sehen die Hinterbliebenen der 163 Toten (Stand heute) gegebenenfalls anders.

Armin Schuster und Herbert Reul sind natürlich inkompetent. Doch unser Problem liegt nicht in einzelnen Personen. Es beschränkt sich auch nicht auf die aktuelle Hochwasserkatastrophe. Der Kommentar des Deutschen Wetterdienstes DWD “Wir haben getan, was zu tun war” gibt einen Hinweis:

Tätigkeitsnachweise statt Ergebnisse, Modellprojekte statt moonshot projects sind deutscher Standard. Sie sind Teil einer Kultur, die viel reguliert und wenig umsetzt, in der richtig gemacht ist, wenn Prozessen gefolgt wurde. Alles bleibt, wie es ist. Und sollte es doch Veränderung geben, dann unspürbar, unwirksam langsam.

Seit Jahren umschreibe ich diese bundesrepublikanische Präferenz für den Status quo mit “Republik in Aspik”. Das klingt lustig. Doch sie ist nicht nur haareraufend frustrierend. Sie kann tödlich sein.

Der erste Schritt zur Lösung ist anzuerkennen, dass es ein Problem gibt: Wir sind kein Land, das auf außergewöhnliche – oder auch nur halbwegs neue – Herausforderungen angemessen reagiert. Das gefährdet nicht nur Fortschritt, Wohlstand, Zukunftsfähigkeit. Sondern auch Sicherheit, Gemeinwohl, Demokratie.

Politiker und Institutionen, die dazu nicht in der Lage sind, sind offenbar ungeeignet. Armin Schuster und Herbert Reul sind in der CDU. Doch deutscher Konservatismus – die unbedingte Verteidigung des Status quo – ist nicht den Konservativen vorbehalten. Reflexhafte Relativierung, Verdrängung und performativen (Selbst-)betrug gibt es auch woanders. (Doch eine Haltung, den Staat als Erbhof zu betrachten, ist der Einsicht besonders abträglich.)

Eine britische Forscherin musste uns auf unseren Blinden Fleck aufmerksam machen. Bis Samstag war die Flut gleichzeitig gottgegeben und menschengemacht – und ganz schnell wurde darüber gesprochen, was künftig zu tun sei, als wären die Gefahren von Flächenversiegelung, Flußbegradigungen und Uferbefestigungen, Klimawandel gerade erst entdeckt worden. Und natürlich soll nun ganz “schnell und unbürokratisch” alles wieder gerichtet werden. Die Frage, wie wir, eine führende Industrienation, so komplett unvorbereitet sein konnten, stellte erst Hannah Cloke.

Erkennen wir das Problem an: wir verwalten unseren Alltag bis zur Beschäftigungstherapie. Wir vermeiden, verlangsamen und verwässern Veränderungen bis zur Unwirksamkeit. Wir ertragen stoisch technischen Rückstand und verdrängen staatliches Versagen, notfalls bis zum Tod.

Nichts davon muss so sein oder so bleiben, im Gegenteil: wir haben Großartiges geleistet und Sensationelles geschaffen. Wir leben in einer offenen Gesellschaft, mit guter Ausbildung, ungebrochenem Erfindungsgeist, reicher Kultur und in Wohlstand. Wir haben bessere Voraussetzungen als die meisten. Nutzen wir sie.

Es ist ein altes Menschheitsversprechen: unsere Kinder sollen einmal besser haben als wir. Dieses Versprechen wurde wieder und wieder eingelöst. Nicht, indem wir mit dem Status quo zufrieden waren, sondern indem wir das Potential einer besseren Zukunft höher bewerteten als die Bequemlichkeit von heute.

Sicherheit bedeutet nicht Status quo. Sicherheit bedeutet Herausforderungen meistern, nicht zur Katastrophe werden lassen. Wenn wir die Augen öffnen, den Aspik abschütteln, den Aufbruch wagen, mit Mut, Tatendrang und Ungeduld, dann ist die Zukunft unser.

• competitive: technologically leading and globally successful,

• sustainable2 in production and products,

• providing good employment and high value added in Germany.

I clustered my answers into three categories: decarbonization, digitization and progress, each with three distinct recommendations – too much for one newsletter alone. If you don’t want to miss the next ones in this mini-series, and haven’t subscribed yet:

Subscribe now

The future according to Germany, eleven years ago

Germany was late to join the decarbonization game3: It was only in 2010 that the German government formed the advisory council National Platform for Electric Mobility NPE4, along the joint ministerial agency GGEMO. It was the most comprehensive measure yet in a country that, merely 2.5 years prior, had acknowledged that “electric vehicle drives offer the greatest potential in the medium and long term to reduction of transport-related CO2 emissions”.5

The stated goal for 2020: Germany should become both the global lead market and lead supplier of electric mobility, with 30,000 additional jobs created and 1 million EVs on German roads.

Only the 1-million-bit of that goal came to fruition6, albeit barely, and with a minor detour via the biggest industry scandal in post-war Germany.7 It was an arbitrary goal, with no science involved. It soon morphed from slogan into a benchmark to identify a self-sustaining market, defined by relying less on incentives and regulation.

1 million EVs, but no “Markthochlauf”

Once 1 million benchmark was reached, people’s collective preference was supposed to switch to EVs, ditching their ICEs en masse.

The NPE even introduced a new word for this: “Markthochlauf”, or market ramp-up. It has remained a cornerstone of the political debate since.

But self-sustaining the German EV market is not. Instead, incentive programs continue to be prolonged and expanded, and regulations to be tightened. Yet the believe in a self-sustaining EV market is alive and well in Germany, and still undergirds debate, policy, and regulation: NPEs successor organization National Platform for Future Mobility NPM argues for the continued subsidies for Plug-in Hybrid EVs, or PHEVs, because they would enable the transition to electric mobility for buyers8. PHEVs are disproportionately subsidized in Germany, leading to a higher share in total EV shares (50% against 25% worldwide).

So, if 1 million EVs didn’t get us there, when will demand for EVs become self-sustainable?

EVs are becoming fashionable worldwide

Globally, electric propulsion, combined with a battery for energy storage, is the leading alternative to internal combustion engines (ICEs) running on fossil fuels. All other alternatives – e.g. fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) running on Hydrogen or ICEs running on alternative fuels (natural gas, plant-based, fuels derived from hydrogen) – lag far behind BEVs.

Today, electric vehicles (EVs, including PHEVs) make up about 3% of all new vehicles sold annually worldwide, with a total of 12 countries reaching a minimum of 1%. EVs have become fashionable, yet they’re still mostly high fashion: pricey, somewhat experimental, exclusive.

Only in Norway, EVs have moved from high street to main street. The difference: the country started to promote the sale of EVs 30 years ago – a head start on Germany and most other countries of 20 years –, through a multitude of measures9. Today, with 56% market share, the country continues to regulate and incentivise the transition to electric propulsion.

Regulations and promotions are not mere accelerants; they are the necessary drivers of transition: In every single country with at least 1% market share, a combination of incentives and punitive measures is in place. Put differently:

Nowhere on this planet10 are EVs sold in any significant numbers without robust measures in place – regardless of how wealthy or environmentally minded or novelty-driven the population might be.

Leave a comment

“Markthochlauf” is a dangerous myth.

Norway puts it succinctly: “The speed of the transition is closely related to policy instruments and a wide range of incentives.“ This describes the opposite of a functioning, self-sustaining market.11 Yet “Markthochlauf” continues to be a cornerstone of German policy and debate. Why?

Favoring market forces over forced markets, and keeping technical options open, are laudable notions – in fact, they are the cornerstones of market economies. Alas, pretending to operate in a functioning market is not creating one. (All economies, market or otherwise, have failed to account for ecological externalities.)

• “Markthochlauf” implies a gentle, transitory nudge, rendering suggested government interventions more palatable to constituents. But it invites doing too little, too gently, while still binding considerable resources: Significant amounts of capital and brainpower12 were poured into so-called four-year showcase projects (“Schaufensterprojekte”13), resulting in 22 recommendations for action, all of them groundbreaking (and just as inconsequential) as number 18: “Public transport should increasingly use electric buses in the inner cities”.

• “Markthochlauf” delays a transition that gets only more disruptive down the road. It kept industrial (and Germany’s collective) focus on ICE profits, and jobs. That alone could not explain the criminal mindset to commit the Diesel scandal, but defeat devices would have served less of a purpose. Significant legal, economical and technical resources continue to be wound up in the aftermath of this fraud – from lawsuits to retrofits14.

• It’s convenient if you want to keep questioning the rationality of electrification. There’s a valid argument to be made that BEV might not fit all use cases in every part of the world, but it’s been used to discredit the push for electrification wholesale – sometimes explicitly citing the non-market, political directive nature of that push. In that narrative, “Markthochlauf” failed, and if markets don’t want BEVs, then they’re not the right answer after all.

Pretending comes with real cost – to the environment, the taxpayer, and – in the long run – to the industry. It misallocates resources, neglects responsibilities, and delays progress. The next German government needs to do stop pretending that decarbonization is a market.

Subscribe now

What to do? (What government does best.)

For the next German government to succeed in facilitating a future-proof German automotive industry, they need to stop pretending: A future EV self-sustained market will arise only when transition is completed, and not one car earlier15.

This will need sustained, robust, flexible use of policy instruments and incentives on every level of government, closely coordinated with the EU, US and other important markets, along clear goals, and a sensible path to success.

Waiting for “Markthochlauf” results in a lack of goal-oriented, forward thinking (to avoid the toxic word planning). One of the most dramatic, and entirely preventable16 such failures of German (and EU) governments has been infrastructure:

For a healthy, future-proof industry, nothing is as important as demand. Without demand, there are no sales.

Two studies - one from Cardiff University, one from Chang'an University - have compared the demand effectiveness of different instruments internationally. Both independently conclude that infrastructure drives demand: "If the government increases the density of charging points by 1%, this will increase e-vehicle use by 0.9%." The advantage of infrastructure investment over other measures: it stays, even if other benefits expire.

Infrastructure is a basic public service, and as such government task. Government doesn’t need to directly construct or operate, but laissez-faire is not an option. (The recurring stance that it’s the energy companies’ or car manufacturers’ duty to provide infrastructure, borders on political malpractice.17)

Governments are in a unique position when it comes to infrastructure – and the economic powers of infrastructures (often natural monopolies) can hardly be overstated. The state must ensure that it is available in sufficient quantities and that access is regionally and socially equal – especially since EV adoption closely tracks income levels.

A nationwide, high-performance charging infrastructure is the single most effective measure at a governments’ disposal to boost demand – furthering decarbonization and the path to a future-proof industry.

The German and European status quo is a hinderance to demand, and therefore a direct hinderance to a future-proof automotive industry18. ACEA and TE don’t always agree, but on the need for 3 million charging points by 2030, they do.

Subscribe now

The second best thing

If the future government had only one shot, infrastructure it should be. The battery-electric drive is the first choice in terms of climate policy. But, as the world map at the beginning has shown, BEVs are not a one-fits-all solution. What to do with

• the need for smaller and cheaper cars for people living in multi-family-homes - e.g. the home health caregiver?

• heavy and/or long-distance transportation - e.g. long-distance trucks, construction trucks?

• spontaneous and fast - e.g. police?

• beyond northwest Europe, ROW and existing fleets?

A future government cannot shy away from scenarios that aren’t conductive to BEV applications. Especially since the very question of which applications actually fall into this category, if any, is hotly disputed, and that’s putting it mildly. The follow-up question of which complementary fuel/technology combinations – e.g. ICE+eFuels, ICE+CGH2, FCEV+LH219 – should be advanced, isn’t settled either.

This newsletter is too long already; the entire debate, including energy sources, infrastructure, geopolitics is too complex to squeeze into another paragraph – and too important.

But in terms of climate policy, but also industrial policy, it is necessary to reach a path decision in Europe in the next two years. This is because, as with the regulation and promotion of and infrastructure for battery-electric drives, this second best technology would also require significant support from the state.

Leave a comment

I applaud and thank you for reading this far. I promise, the next part – digitisation – will be shorter. Let me know what you think – and share if you like.

Share

4

The steering committee consisted of top representatives of industry, politics, science, associations and unions, with many more people engaged directly and indirectly in six working groups. The joint agency was formed between four ministries.

Ich habe Andrew Salzberg letztes Jahr im Rahmen eines MIT-Programms zur urbanen Mobilität kennengelernt: er war damals LOEB Fellow an der Harvard University und Policy Advisor für Biden for President. Kurz darauf startete er den hervorragenden Newsletter Decarbonizing Transportation, welchen ich an dieser Stelle bereits wärmstens empfohlen habe. Heute ist Andrew Head of Policy bei Transit sowie Berater bei Populus und ClimateView.

In seiner aktuellen Ausgabe interviewt Andrew Daniel Sperling – dem Doyen der Dekarbonisierung im Verkehrssektor. Er ist der Gründungsdirektor des Institute of Transportation Studies an der UC Davis und Kommissionsmitglied für Automotive Engineering im California Air Resources Board. Er diente zweimal als Hauptautor für das IPCC, sagte achtmal vor dem US-Kongress aus und hat eine Menge zu diesem Thema geschrieben, einschließlich eines kürzlich erschienenen Buches.

Was Andrew fragt und Dan antwortet ist wert, auch in Deutschland gelesen zu werden. (Ich empfehle insbesondere den Vergleich der PHEV-Policies in USA und EU sowie die Weisheit, die Dan von der Queen of Green Mary Nichols gelernt hat.) Als ich ihn fragte, hat Andrew sofort eingewilligt, dass ich hier sein Interview samt Einleitung in Deutsch wiedergebe:

Share

Ich habe mich an Dan gewandt, da er einer der Hauptautoren eines großen Dekarbonisierungsberichts ist, der im letzten Herbst herauskam – der Zero Carbon Action Plan (ZCAP). Den Abschnitt zum Transportwesen ist auf S. 188 zu finden.

Unser Gespräch deckt einige kontroversen Themen ab, welche oft Debatten auslösen:

• Wie sehr sollten wir darauf abzielen, den Autoverkehr zu reduzieren, und wie sehr sollten wir uns auf die Elektrifizierung von Fahrzeugen konzentrieren?

• Sind Plug-in-Hybride ein echtes Mittel im Kampf gegen das Klima?

• Wird unsere neu entdeckte Liebe zur Telearbeit die Emissionen senken oder erhöhen?

• Welche Rolle spielt (wenn überhaupt) Wasserstoff als Transportkraftstoff?

Keiner arbeitet länger an diesen Themen als Dan, was für ein großartiges Gespräch sorgte.

Andrew Salzberg (AS): Lassen Sie uns über den Zero Carbon Action Plan for the United States (ZCAP) sprechen. Die beiden Hauptstrategien, für die Sie plädieren, sind der Umstieg auf emissionsfreie Fahrzeuge und die Reduzierung der Verkehrsnachfrage. Es gibt Befürworter beider Strategien, und sie sind nicht immer einer Meinung. Wie denken Sie über die Kombination dieser beiden Ansätze?

Dan Sperling (DS): Es gibt einige Spannungen, wenn man über die Reduzierung von Mobilität, gemessen in Vehicle Miles Travelled (VMT), spricht. Die Gegner der VMT-Politik verweisen auf amerikanische Werte wie Freiheit und Unabhängigkeit und weniger staatliche Eingriffe. Sie sagen auch: "Wenn ihr die Fahrzeuge elektrifiziert, warum müssen wir dann überhaupt über eine Reduzierung der VMT sprechen?" Das ist das größte Gegenargument.

Auf der anderen Seite dieses Kampfes stehen diejenigen, die "Anti-Auto" sind, selbst wenn es um Elektrofahrzeuge (EVs) geht – aber in den Vereinigten Staaten ist das eine wirklich winzige Gruppe. In Europa ist das anders. Dort sind die Anti-Auto-Befürworter viel mächtiger. Hier sind sie kaum auf dem Radar zu sehen.

AS: Sie bemühen sich in Ihrem Plan wirklich darum, dass jene die sich Sorgen machen, dass wir unsere ganze Energie in Elektroautos stecken, einbezogen werden.

DS: Wissen Sie, nachdem mein letztes Buch herauskam, habe ich 70 Vorträge in einem Jahr gehalten. Überall, von den Firmensitzen von Uber und Lyft bis zu Stadträten und NGOs. Und ich habe gelernt, dass wir, wenn wir im politischen Prozess effektiv sein wollen, niemals mit der Reduzierung des motorisierten Verkehrs einleiten sollten. Das findet wirklich keine große Anhängerschaft. Wir sollten damit anfangen, dass wir Mobilität und Zugänglichkeit1 zu unserem Transportsystem erhöhen wollen. Mit anderen Worten, wir wollen die Anzahl der zurückgelegten Passagiermeilen erhöhen, aber die Anzahl der zurückgelegten Fahrzeugmeilen reduzieren, indem wir die Menschen dazu bringen, andere Verkehrsmittel als ihr eigenes Auto mit nur einem Insassen zu benutzen. Ich denke, das ist eine viel bessere Formulierung.

Wir sollten auch über die steigende Bedeutung der Environmental Justice (EJ)-Bewegung nachdenken. Auf die Frage der Umweltgerechtigkeit kann man antworten, indem man sich auf die Erhöhung der Mobilität und Zugänglichkeit konzentriert. Meiner Meinung nach ist ein Bereich, in dem die EJ-Bewegung bei der Verwirklichung ihrer selbstgesteckten Ziele hinter ihren Möglichkeiten bleibt, die Ablenkung durch Initiativen für Elektrofahrzeuge (EV). Ja, E-Fahrzeuge bringen Vorteile für die lokale Umwelt und die Gesundheit. Aber, wie Sie wissen, werden neue Fahrzeuge von wohlhabenden Menschen gekauft. Ungefähr 30% der Haushalte in den USA kaufen fast alle neuen Fahrzeuge. Jeder andere kauft gebrauchte Fahrzeuge. Die Fokussierung auf Elektroautos bietet also nicht so viel Nutzen für Gemeinden mit geringem oder sogar mittlerem Einkommen, wie ein besseres Mobilitätsangebot.

Wir wollen, dass jede Gemeinde ihre eigene Top-Priorität bestimmt, wenn es um die Dekarbonisierung des Verkehrs geht. Für viele Gemeinden sind Elektroautos wahrscheinlich nicht die oberste Priorität. Die könnte alles Mögliche sein: von der Verbreiterung von Gehwegen über die Verbannung großer LKWs aus der Nachbarschaft bis hin zu einer besseren Verkehrsanbindung. Meiner Meinung nach ist das Ziel, Zugänglichkeit und Mobilität zu verbessern – aber auf eine Art und Weise, die das Verkehrsaufkommen nicht erhöht. Das bedeutet mehr und besseren ÖPNV, Fahrradinfrastruktur, Motorroller, subventioniertes Ride-Hailing sowie ein besseres Internet für E-Commerce, Telemedizin und Telecommuting.

AS: Inwieweit unterstützen diese VMT-bezogenen Maßnahmen direkt die Dekarbonisierung?

DS: Die Reduzierung des Verkehrsaufkommens ist wichtig, aber nicht annähernd so wichtig wie Elektrofahrzeuge, wenn es um die Dekarbonisierung geht. Die Reduzierung des Verkehrsaufkommens ist aus vielen anderen Gründen wichtig, z.B. in Bezug auf Gesundheit, nachhaltige Städte, lokale Verschmutzung, effiziente Landnutzung und vieles mehr. VMT ist in der Tat wichtig für den Klimawandel, denn wenn wir so weitermachen wie bisher, wird es richtig schwer sein, den Verkehr zu elektrifizieren. Bei den gegenwärtigen Trends werden wir bis 2050 50 % mehr VMT und Autobesitz haben. Wenn wir das Verkehrsaufkommen und den Autobesitz nicht reduzieren, wird es wirklich sehr schwer werden, eine 100-prozentig elektrische Zukunft zu erreichen.

Aber, technisch gesehen, ist es auch wichtig den Autobesitz zu reduzieren, da jedes Auto allein durch seine Herstellung einen großen Kohlenstoff-Fußabdruck hat. Bei batteriebetriebenen Elektroautos entfallen etwa 15 bis 20 % des gesamten Kohlenstoffausstoßes auf die Herstellung. Wir können und werden den Einsatz von fossilen Brennstoffen für die Herstellung reduzieren, aber es bleibt immer noch eine Menge Material. Es ist wirklich eine Menge Zeug. Wenn wir ein völlig autoorientiertes Transportsystem haben, wird es grundsätzlich schwieriger sein, es zu elektrifizieren. Es bedeutet mehr Straßen- und Parkinfrastruktur, mehr Energieinfrastruktur, mehr Platz für Autos, mehr von allem. Wenn ich also über eine Zukunft mit weniger Autoverkehr, aber mehr Personenverkehr spreche, konzentriere ich mich auf mehr Fahrgemeinschaften und Shared Services, mehr Mikromobilität und eine bessere Integration der Verkehrsträger.

AS: In dem Bericht heißt es, dass das Wichtigste für die Dekarbonisierung des Verkehrs ein nationales Verkaufsmandat für Elektrofahrzeuge ist. Was denken Sie über die Aussichten einer nationalen EV-Verkaufsverpflichtung in den nächsten vier Jahren oder darüber hinaus?

DS: Unwahrscheinlich, leider. Und wenn es doch passiert, wird es wahrscheinlich deutlich schwächer sein als das, was Kalifornien und die 177 Bundesstaaten2 machen. Ich glaube wirklich, dass das Wichtigste, was eine neue Bundesregierung tun könnte, ist, Kalifornien und die anderen Staaten weitermachen zu lassen. Kalifornien hat sich zu einem 100%igen EV-Verkaufsmandat für 2035 verpflichtet, oder etwas, was dem sehr nahe kommt. Zählt man die anderen 177 Bundesstaaten hinzu, sind das 30 bis 40% des US-Marktes. Das wird wahrscheinlich genug sein um die ganze Industrie voranzutreiben. Schließlich geht der Rest der Welt in diese Richtung und die USA hinken hinterher. Die Autoindustrie wird dasitzen und sagen: "Okay, die EU wird elektrisch, China wird elektrisch, und die Hälfte der USA tut es auch." Also Job erledigt – fast.

AS: Zu dem Thema, dass man den Bundesstaaten und Kommunen die Führung bei diesem Thema überlassen sollte, gibt es in dem Bericht einen kleinen Absatz über Umweltzonen. Soweit ich weiß, hindert der Clean Air Act US-Städte daran, Umweltzonen einzuführen.

DS: Es könnte sein, dass es einige Maßnahmen auf Bundesebene geben muss, um dies zu ermöglichen, oder einige clevere rechtliche Strategien. Aber die USA sind nicht sehr gut für Umweltzonen aufgestellt. Wir haben so viel Zersiedelung und so viel Fahrzeugaktivität.

Ich denke, dass im Frachtbereich die interessanten Möglichkeiten für eine geografische Regulierung der Emissionen liegen. Es könnten Regeln sein, die vorschreiben, dass man entweder einen emissionsfreien oder einen NOx-armen Lkw betreiben muss. Neue Technologien haben diese Art der Beschränkung einfacher gemacht. Ich denke, dass die Möglichkeiten bei Lkw wahrscheinlich größer sind, zum Teil, weil sie eher ein Thema der Umweltgerechtigkeit sind. Und das bedeutet, dass es mehr Unterstützung dafür gibt, etwas zu tun.

AS: Ich habe in Europa viel darüber gehört, dass Plug-in-Hybride ein Dieselgate sind, das nur darauf wartet, zu passieren. Was ist Ihre Meinung zu Plug-in-Hybriden?

DS: Die Situation in Europa ist völlig anders als in den USA. Die Testverfahren und die Anreizsysteme sind sehr unterschiedlich. Die Europäer geben enorme Anreize für Plug-in-Hybride. Und die Kauf- und Verkaufsanreize sind so groß, dass sich die Leute weniger auf den tatsächlichen Betrieb mit Strom konzentrieren. Wenn es unbequem ist zu laden, dann ist es keine große Sache – zumindest in der Erfahrung vieler Käufer. Und dann gibt es noch das Firmenwagen-Phänomen. In vielen europäischen Ländern sind fast die Hälfte der Fahrzeugverkäufe Firmenwagen. Auch hier sind die Fahrerinnen weniger darauf bedacht, das Auto aufzuladen. Hinzu kommt, dass es in vielen Unternehmen antiquierte Regeln gibt, nach denen man zwar den Kraftstoff, nicht aber den Strom erstattet bekommt. Hinzu kommt, dass die Autohersteller großzügige Gutschriften in der CO₂-Regulierung erhalten, was sie dazu ermutigt, den Verkauf zu subventionieren. Das ist nicht unbedingt schlecht, außer dass es viele Verkäufe von reinen Elektrofahrzeugen zu Plug-in-Hybriden verschiebt. Hier in den USA haben wir nicht die gleichen Verzerrungen. Ich denke, dass PHEVs eine Schlüsseltechnologie sind, sicherlich für die Übergangszeit zu Elektrofahrzeugen, und vielleicht sogar weit darüber hinaus.

AS: Wir sollten über Wasserstoff sprechen. Im ZCAP scheint Wasserstoff eine relativ geringe Rolle zu spielen, eher für schwere Nutzfahrzeuge und vor allem später in den 2030er Jahren.

DS: Es gibt definitiv eine mögliche Rolle für Wasserstoff bei schweren Nutzfahrzeugen, und ich bin mir nicht 100%ig sicher, dass der Kampf für leichte Nutzfahrzeuge vorbei ist. Viele Leute sagen, dass die Batterie den Kampf um die leichten Nutzfahrzeuge gewonnen hat, aber ich bin mir nicht sicher, ob das richtig ist. Wir haben noch einen langen, langen Weg vor uns, sogar in Kalifornien. Wir sind erst bei 8% der Verkäufe von emissionsfreien Fahrzeugen. (Batterie-)Elektroautos werden für viele Leute problematisch sein: Vielleicht leben sie in einem Mehrfamilienhaus, sie haben keinen Platz zum Aufladen, sie machen viele lange Fahrten, usw. Die ersten 30 oder 40% der Fahrzeuge werden wahrscheinlich am einfachsten auf Batteriebetrieb umzustellen sein. Die letzten 30% werden sehr schwierig sein. Und dann könnten Brennstoffzellen ein Comeback feiern. Wir bauen Wasserstofftankstellen in Kalifornien, und zwar sowohl für Lkw als auch für Pkw. Die großen Lkw-Hersteller beschäftigen sich mit Wasserstoff fast so sehr wie mit Batterien.

AS: In letzter Zeit gibt es einen unglaublichen Geldfluss in die EV-Welt, was definitiv nicht der Fall war, als Sie in den 1980er Jahren mit diesem Thema anfingen. Was denken Sie über die neue Finanzierungslandschaft? Sind Sie begeistert davon? Sind Sie besorgt, dass es uns um die Ohren fliegen wird?

DS: Der Hype hat seine Rolle. Wir als Analytiker und Forscherinnen kritisieren gerne den Hype. Aber man braucht ein gewisses Maß an Hype. Ähnlich wie wir als Individuen ein gewisses Maß an Optimismus brauchen, oder? Das ist analog dazu. Man will natürlich nicht, dass die Sache aus dem Ruder läuft, aber wenn der Hype nicht da ist, sieht man auch keine Investitionen, kein Engagement der Stromversorger, der Kommunen, die Ladestationen zulassen, und so weiter.

Eine kleine Anekdote dazu aus der Zusammenarbeit mit Mary Nichols, als Boardmitglied bei CARB. Ich habe viele Dinge von ihr gelernt, aber eines der wichtigsten Dinge, die ich gelernt habe, ist, dass man, wenn man etwas verändern will, einen Pflock in den Boden schlagen muss, man muss ein wirklich aggressives Ziel setzen, auch wenn es wenig Hoffnung gibt, es kurzfristig zu erreichen. Denn das bringt die Leute dazu, ehrgeizig darüber nachzudenken. Und es ist auch so, dass jede dieser Veränderungen, über die wir sprechen, eine Zusammenarbeit aller möglichen Institutionen, aller möglichen Regeln und Praktiken erfordert. Und wenn man nicht die Aufmerksamkeit dieser Leute bekommt und sie nicht anfangen, in diesen Organisationen darüber nachzudenken, wird es nicht passieren. Es ist ein ganzes Ökosystem, das sich zusammen bewegen muss. Ich war immer skeptisch. Ich habe mit den Augen gerollt und gesagt "Komm schon, Mary." Und sie sagte: "Nein, nur so passiert Veränderung." Und sie hat mich überzeugt.

AS: Also kann Hype helfen?

DS: Ja, aber man will nicht, dass es zu sehr aus dem Ruder läuft. Da denke ich auch an automatisierte Fahrzeuge (AV). In den Jahren 2015 und 2016 gab es einen großen Hype um AVs. Ich habe das in meinem jüngsten Buch hervorgehoben. Aber am Ende des Tages werden wir einen Übergang zu automatisierten Fahrzeugen erleben. Der Hype bringt Investitionen und lockt mehr Ingenieure an. Und so ist es auch passiert. Der Hype ließ vor ein paar Jahren nach, Unternehmen verschwanden und die Investitionen gingen zurück. Aber es war eine Zeit des gesunden Rückschritts. Jetzt geht es wieder vorwärts. Sie sehen Cruise, Zoox, Waymo und viele andere, die vorankommen. Sie alle sprechen davon, Stufe-4-AVs ausgerechnet in der Innenstadt von San Francisco zu betreiben.

AS: Eine kurze Frage zu EVs. Offensichtlich ist eine Nebenwirkung von Elektrofahrzeugen, dass die Grenzkosten des Fahrens sinken, weil das Aufladen so viel billiger ist als das Tanken. Inwieweit ist das ein Problem? Ist das nur ein Kompromiss, mit dem wir arbeiten müssen?

DS: Die Theorie besagt, dass eine Senkung der Kosten für das Autofahren zu einer Erhöhung der Fahrleistung führt. In diesem Fall sprechen wir von einem Rebound-Effekt. Es ist derselbe Rebound-Effekt, den wir bei neuen Standards zur Kraftstoffeffizienz sehen. Man senkt die Betriebskosten. Das bedeutet, dass wir mehr politische Maßnahmen brauchen um diesen Anreiz mehr zu Fahren zu adressieren. Die Lehre daraus ist, dass wir politische Maßnahmen nicht isoliert als Einzelmaßnahmen betrachten können. Es muss ein Maßnahmenbündel sein. In Kalifornien haben wir eine ganze Reihe von Richtlinien, Maßnahmen und Investitionen der Regierung. Wir brauchen Maßnahmen, welche Mitfahren, Mikromobilität, Partnerschaften zwischen ÖPNV und Mobilitätsunternehmen etc. fördern.

AS: Der ZCAP hat sich in einigen Sätzen positiv über Telearbeit geäußert, aber es scheint viele Beweise zu geben, dass die Menschen mehr Auto fahren, sobald sie von der Arbeit zu Hause bleiben. Wie denken Sie über Telearbeit als Strategie zum Klimaschutz?

DS: Telearbeit ist grundsätzlich eine gute Idee – und wir werden eindeutig mehr davon sehen. Aber die Umsetzung ist begrenzt. Nur einige Menschen und einige Arbeitgeber, meist mit Büroangestellten, können die Vorteile nutzen. Aus Sicht der Arbeitgeber sieht es attraktiv aus, wenn sie Geld für Büroräume sparen, aber es gibt umgekehrt auch beträchtliche Hinweise auf Einbußen bei Produktivität und Kreativität. Es funktioniert auch nicht für viele Einzelpersonen, selbst wenn sie einen Bürojob haben. Sie haben vielleicht Kinder zu Hause, sie haben kein High-Speed-Internet, sie sind leicht ablenkbar und so weiter. Wenn Sie also die Liste der Gründe für Skepsis durchgehen, dann sind das schon einige. Dann haben Sie den Grund, dass Telearbeit hauptsächlich den wohlhabenderen Arbeitnehmern einen Vorteil bringt. Es gibt auch einige Belege dafür, dass der Gesamt-VMT zunimmt, wenn die Leute telearbeiten, oder zumindest nicht abnimmt. Erstens, weil sie in eine abgelegenere Gegend umgezogen sind, in der sie längere Fahrten zum Einkaufen, für Besorgungen und für soziale Kontakte haben, und auch längere Fahrten, wenn sie zur Arbeit gehen. Und zweitens, weil sie das Auto tagsüber häufiger für Besorgungen und aus sozialen Gründen benutzen, wenn sie von zuhause arbeiten. Telearbeit ist also hilfreich gegen Staus, weil sie den Verkehr in überlasteten Gebieten zu Spitzenzeiten reduziert, aber weniger vorteilhaft für die Reduzierung von VMT und Treibhausgasemissionen.

AS: Das ist ein guter Punkt. Ein großer Teil unserer Verkehrspolitik beruht auf der "Bekämpfung von Staus", anstatt sich mit Emissionen zu befassen. Es ist nicht nur die Morgen- oder Abendspitze, die für die Emissionen wichtig ist, jede Fahrt zählt.

DS: Wenn wir es von einem ökologischen Prisma aus betrachten, dann ist Stau nicht schlecht. Staus können gut sein, oder?

Das Interview war so großartig, dass ich es in zwei Teile aufteilen musste. Wenn Sie die komplette Antwort auf diese Frage lesen wollen, wenn Sie erfahren wollen, wie Dan diesen Schwerpunkt für sich entdeckte, was die komplette Geschichte der kalifornischen Vorschriften für emissionsfreie Fahrzeuge ist und was ihn an den letzten 30 Jahren des klimapolitischen Fortschritts im Transportwesen überrascht hat, müssen Sie sich auf Teil 2 in einem der nächsten Newsletter einstellen.

Soweit der erste Teil von Andrews Interview. Wer diesen Post teilen möchte:

Share

Wer nicht auf den zweiten Teil warten möchte: Andrew hat bereits in früheren Newslettern "Wege zur Emissionsfreiheit" seziert (z.B. in UK, Boston und Toronto). Sie sind allesamt empfehlenswert.

Zum Schluss noch eine Eventempfehlung: Im Mai findet die EcoMotion in Israel statt – eine der spannendsten und erfreulichsten Smart Mobility-Veranstaltungen überhaupt. #EcoMotion2021 findet wie immer in Tel-Aviv statt, und wie mittlerweile üblich auch virtuell. Startups können sich jetzt bewerben:

Ich erfreue mich seit 2015 einer schönen, fruchtbaren Partnerschaft mit dem Team und empfehle die Veranstaltung vom Herzen. Weitere Infos auch hier.

Wie immer: Feedback welcome.

Leave a comment

Wer Gefallen an rising gefunden hat: gerne abonnieren! (Meist in Englisch.) (Demnächst geht es um das Autoland Deutschland – aus industriepolitische Sicht. stay tuned.)

Subscribe now

So far, we’re not on track. For reference: Berlin just decided to evaluate the idea to put a cycle path under an elevated railway. The proposal dates back to 2015. Results of said evaluation are expected by end of 2023.1 Completion of the 9 km project: unscheduled, as of yet.

Luckily, there is a more uplifting reference: Mars 2020 mission was announced by NASA in December 2012. Eight years and two months later, rover Perseverance landed 62.07 million km off planet on Mars.

Space travel and urban mobility have little in common2. But the cool people of JPL3 have a powerful, yet simple message for us urbanites: “DARE MIGHTY THINGS”. This applies equally to putting a rover on Mars, and to making urban mobility sustainable on Earth.

So, what are “mighty things” in urban mobility? What would be “daring” in this context? Let’s take my hometown Berlin as an example.

Berlin’s mighty things

In 2018, Berlin passed the urban mobility equivalent of the SDGs: The Berlin Mobility Act (BMA)4. It indeed is mighty: It currently comprises 60 articles of law, with dedicated sections for transit, bike and foot traffic. Two more sections – new mobility and commercial traffic – are in development. It boasts to be the first of its kind: no other city or state in Germany has created such a comprehensive and integrated framework for sustainable future mobility.

Just like the mighty SDGs, the BMA defines overall goals, like Vision Zero, or giving pedestrian traffic, bicycles and public transport priority over cars. It also “supports the goal” to make car traffic in Berlin climate-neutral by 2050. It “intends” for public buses to run on renewable electric energy by 20305.

This type of cautionary language is usually the domain of globally negotiated (read: watered down) treaties, yet the SDGs provide more hard targets than the BMA: In Berlin, “Vision zero is a guiding principle”. The SDG target reads: “By 2020, halve the number of global deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents.”6

Two years after the law passed, even proponents of Berlin’s stated goals are somewhat underwhelmed by the results. Initially, urban mobility projects carried on undeterred, including new bike lanes decidedly non-conformant like this one. But even after allowing for some time to adapt, Changing Cities called the law “official wishful thinking” since legal deadlines are still not met, improvements aren’t implemented, while districts continue to plan and build in direct violation of the law.7

From mighty to meager

The BMA is a brilliant piece of legislation. It manages to navigate the quagmire of overlapping jurisdictions (including the federal road traffic act, which routinely gives cars priority) while outlining a comprehensive and ambitious plan for mobility in Germany’s capital. Unfortunately it’s also a Scheinriese8: a magnitude of a law from afar, yet meager results up close.

Proponents of the BMA will point to

• progress and some real achievements,

• delays due to staffing issues, resources, and coordination,

• misguided expectations: two years won’t undo a century of car centricity,

• additional upcoming legislation and regulation, e.g., the just passed Urban Development Plan Mobility and Traffic 20309.

But whether the results are more plentiful than acknowledged, the expectations after just 2.5 years overblown or more regulation will speed things up: the fact remains that planning to evaluate a 2015 proposal for a bike path until 2023 is not in line with meeting the 2030 deadline for sustainable urban mobility.

No might without dare

Good intentions – good legislation alone – will not get us where we need to be. That’s neither specific to BAM, nor to mobility, nor to Berlin (even though we repeatedly try to prove otherwise).

The lack of progress, the lack of results and substantial changes in mobility are all due to the same forces that prevents Germany from having a smart grid with smart metering or an internet infrastructure worthy of an industrial powerhouse, to name just two. It’s what I call Republik in Aspik.

• In Germany, we routinely underestimate the resilience of the status quo, partly because we overvalue the status quo: We evaluate progress in terms of what we could lose, instead of what we could gain.10

• We have a propensity to focus on risks, details and processes, and less on opportunities, goals and results. Consequently, we lack implementation and enforcement, both of which would naturally flow from a focus on results.

• We love to debate, basking in the brilliance of complex, yet balanced argument and thought (but eschew decisiveness). Sometimes, this is all we do: a performative exercise to make us feel and look good. Zukunft als Gesprächstherapie.11

• In case we get near actually doing things, we over-plan, over-engineer, over-complicate and thus under-deliver. We are almost pathologically addicted to rules and at the same time to a multitude of exceptions to those rules. We create magnificent edifices of planning, yet regularly fail to keep these simple enough to implement or enforce. We shield ourselves from failure by ignoring the few tangible targets we set ourselves.12

Sorgfalt vor Schnelligkeit – it is a recipe for Aspik. Even more, it is a German vice. It is our perpetual excuse for inaction, for overcomplicating to the point of impracticability, for drawing out processes to the point that proposed solutions will have no bearing to the reality they were once supposed to address.

Instead, once we’ve agreed to how we see our future, we need to spring into action to get there. We need to start, start with smaller chunks, allow for initiative and iterative corrections along the way. This often means to delegate more power to the local level, find sometimes unlikely allies, with maximum transparency and constant feedback loops. It means to dare – to take charge, to experiment, to muddle forward towards a shared goal.

Germany will – and should – always be doubtful13. But instead of playing it safe when in doubt, we’d better dare to experiment when in doubt, dare to do, dare to start. How else are we ever to achieve anything other than incremental insufficient improvements to an increasingly unsustainable status quo? We, the Land of Ideas should dare to become the Land of the Future. From thought to action: there’s nothing stopping us.

Dare mighty things: A call for creative disobedience

Easier said than done. “There are processes, regulations, how things are done in our democracy and rule of law.” I wholeheartedly agree. I’m neither calling for anarchy nor strongmen. But processes and regulations are not l’art pour l’art. Their purpose is to set the rules of the game, not to stop the game entirely.

Democracy and the rule of law, and governments in particular, gain legitimacy through tangible and visible results – the ability to solve problems effectively within manageable timeframes. By failing to meet our goals, we’re also jeoparizing societal consent to and support for liberal democracy. We urgently need to make our system more responsive, more effective. We need reform.

The task of administrative and political reform makes solving urban mobility look quaint in comparison. Luckily, it’s not the subject of this newsletter. But I would urge not to take on this monumental task by discussing and drafting reform first, and implement much later. Instead, I would focus on reclaiming some responsiveness along the way – via creative disobedience:

“Wo kein Kläger, da kein Richter” is a slightly surprising German proverb, given that Germans are generally regarded as sticklers for rules and process, sometimes at the expense of results. But with lawmakers, administrators and pretty much everyone else entangled in results-defying red tape, “Where there is no plaintiff, there is no judge” might be a way to take action on what is generally agreed to be right, important and urgent – and not to wait.

Let me close with a small urban mobility anecdote:

A few years back, while I was working at the car lobby association VDA, we wanted to install bike racks for employees, visitors and couriers. The sidewalk was getting cluttered with bikes strapped to sign posts, and there simply weren’t enough places to secure a bike. We asked the bike-over-car-preferring Bezirk (city district office) to allow us to install racks on a wider section of the sidewalk14. The request was denied.

I suggested to install them anyway. It would benefit bikers and pedestrians alike, and it was the most sensible place to put them. Who would sensibly object?

We’ll never know. Some questions come to mind:

• Would the district have ordered the car lobby to dismantle the bike racks and have sued the VDA for illegally appropriating public space?

• Or would the racks, once fait accompli, freed up the sidewalk for pedestrians, and encouraged employees (and maybe others) to take the bike more often?

I’m sure someone in city administration saw the irony in declining a request by the car lobby for more bike parking. Maybe they wanted instead to rededicate parts of existing street parking space for bikes, as they later did in some other areas of the district. But that hasn’t happened, and the VDA didn’t want to fall foul of the rules, either.15

Mighty ambitions – like making urban mobility safe, sustainable and equitable – need mighty laws and regulations. But they should not come at the expense of speed, dare, and agility – and those might need a bit creative disobedience along the way.

Maybe, sometime in future Germany, “Das wird Folgen haben!” will be not a warning, but a promise. Like a bike path under the elevated railway well before 2030.

It’s up to us. Deutschland. Alles ist drin.

(This article has been updated on March 1, 2021. It now includes references to EU’s DSM Directive and GDPR.)

Social media is getting a lot of bad reputation lately:

• It’s assumed to be monopolistic, stifling competition and innovation, depriving both users and advertisers of choice and driving up prices (paid in data or money, respectively).

• It’s thought to be detrimental to, and parasitic of quality journalism, siphoning off advertising revenue while using media’s free content to lure eyeballs to its platforms.

• Its algorithms, designed for stickiness and engagement1, are deemed responsible for growing discord in society, including the dissemination of conspiracy theories and the incitement of political violence and terrorism.

• It’s part and parcel of the global debate regarding data privacy and security in the digital age.

These allegations have weight, as they touch on cornerstones of our economy, as well as our society and democracy. They are also relevant, because social media is so ubiquitous and part of our everyday life – even when off-platform, as I can attest as someone not on Facebook.

What to do about it? The current debate about these perceived ills mainly revolves around four policy measures – on both sides of the Atlantic:

• Tougher competition regulation and enforcement, including breaking up existing bundles like Facebook’s WhatsApp and Instagram. In the US, Senator Klobuchar just introduced a bill to that end. The EU did so in 2020.2

• Introducing mandatory licensing of media content, redirecting some revenue back to the publishers. In Australia, Facebook is fighting such a measure before the Senate, with dire consequences. Back in 2009, German press publishers pressed for a similar “Google tax”.3

• Making social media companies more responsible for the content propagated on their platforms. Despite Section 230, Facebook & Co. are already, albeit reluctantly, moderating content – and banning some users, including the former president.4

• In 2018, the EU implemented the toughest privacy and security law in the world, GDPR. It has global reach, and is arguably one of the most effective regulations in the last years. The California Consumer Privacy Act, effective since 2020, is deemed comparable.

As Zephyr Teachout points out, there are good arguments to be made to break up monopolies, and start treating platforms like publishers, as well as infrastructure5. Some of these measures might – with differing rationales – even receive bipartisan support in the US. Data privacy and security will continue to be subject of increased regulation and enforcement.

All these measures are about reigning in. They are, by nature, reductive. They push against the very business models these platforms operate under. It’s no surprise then, that the companies in question are not enthused.

The public debate around Facebook & Co. is mostly reductive – about what they should not be.

More platform competition, more publisher protection, more content responsibility and more data protection will all potentially make social media less harmful to society. At best, these measures might provide the necessary, but not the sufficient conditions to make social media work for society.

Two arguments stand out why these measures by themselves might not garner the desired change (and, depending on implementation, could even be harmful):

1. The current ad-based business model, somewhat reigned in or not, will continue to dictate algorithms, and retention will continue to trump responsibility. 10 out of 10 times the algorithms will be quicker than any human review: All you can hope for is some mitigation, but you will not alter the trajectory, propelled by the incentives provided by what Shoshana Zuboff calls the surveillance economy.

2. There are also compelling arguments against having some of the largest and most powerful companies in the world moderate, curtail and censor individual posts, people or even other companies6. If anything, rules of public debate should be a matter of, well, the public.7 Calls for ever stricter moderation also provide cover for censorship by authoritarian regimes.8

Hence – instead of focusing on reductive measures alone – I suggest to also explore creative, productive elements. Put in another way, it’s

Time to define what social media should become.

What if social media would ensure that some of the content fed to its users is editorial: presenting factual content, discussing controversial matters of public interest, and providing contrasting informed opinions on these matters? After all, these are elements currently missing in the public realm9. If social media companies would be obliged to infuse their platform with a critical amount of quality content, ensuring sufficient reach across the network and all target groups, it could provide two benefits:

1. A majority of users would receive similar facts, the very foundation of any productive debate.

2. A majority of users would be exposed to different views of these facts, the fuel for productive discourse.

It’s been done before: Public broadcasting in Germany was tasked with, “in the interest of freedom of information and democracy, to ensure a diverse, comprehensive and balanced media offering”.10 The US FCC fairness doctrine11 had two basic elements: It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters.

Such editorial content – not in the monologue format of broadcasting, but in the social media way of information dissemination and co-creative development, and additional to the user-generated content – could promote and enhance public debate.

How would that work?

One possible approach: developing massive open online debates – or MOODs.

MOODs would work on the basic principles of cMOOCs (creative and dynamic massive open online courses), adapted to create platforms for shared information, interpretation, debates and solution findings in an engaging and edifying manner. Drawing on connectivist pedagogy and the experience from MOOC providers like edX, the development would look at formats like oxford debates, surveys and gamification, and last, but not least, the “sticky” algorithms developed by the industry. The behavioral scientists and programmers of social media would team up with an editorial board (newly formed, or in collaboration with existing quality media outlets, providing independent journalistic rigour) to create engagement around balanced news, background reporting and productive debates.

Instead of merely acting like publishers (in terms of user-generated content moderation), these platforms would become publishers, and in a decidedly more interactive form.

What would be the potential benefits?

For users of social media:

• Strictly siloed information bubbles would be harder to maintain, as editorial content would involuntarily be part of every feed.

• More fact-first (as opposed to opinion-first) content would be available, and, since less partisan, be more accessible.

• Engagement would revolve around debate and insight, not reconfirmation of preconceptions, and not about fuelling rage and indignation12.

• Editorial content would at least partly fill the void left by the purge fake news and conspiracy theories (i.e. reductive measures).

For social media companies:

As with reductive regulation, the productive kind is still regulation: being told to do something that doesn’t serve the bottom line. But the expenditure for reductive will always remain just cost of doing business, and will always directly push against more profitable ways of doing business – and nothing else. Reductive regulation will always and only be a nuisance.

The expenditure for productive regulation at least has the upside of cost of creating something, of something you can actually become good at. You can get ambitious about productive regulation, and make something of it that would differentiate your service, and make it more attractive. Only productive measures afford that opportunity.

Just as TV had to find its way to better reporting than simply reading news articles, and the internet found new formats for journalism, social media still has to find what it can positively contribute to the public discourse. Productive regulation would provide a framework.

For society and democracy:

By affording social media users better access to more quality information, and exposure to different views without sowing discontent, division and demonization, we would also help to foster more social cohesion, goodwill and support for democracy.

This could also be an exiting experiment to bring democracy to the 21st century: the advent of internet and social media has been detrimental to mass media as part of our intermediary system between state and citizenry. Social media could become a new pillar of discursive public sphere, and even for political participation.

These would be the ideal outcomes, based on perfect regulation, universally embraced by social media companies and an executed so compelling and attractive, that users would be willing to engage with editorial content, creating a new form of public discourse.
Short of an ideal outcome: chances are, the outcome would be better than the status quo – and also more productive and effective than introducing only reductive regulation.

So, there you have it: My thoughts, and a rough idea, on a current debate happening on both sides of the Atlantic. It’s a debate that touches on so much I care about: how we interact and find commonality and insight in differences, how we find kindness and courage to build an ever better union (the “U” in US, EU, and UN).

I don’t fool myself that editorializing social media via a 21st century version of the fairness doctrine would be wholeheartedly embraced by the companies in question – the current model is just too neatly focused, too successful, too profitable.

But some regulation will certainly come, and it will most probably cost – both in terms of investment, as well as in forgone revenue.

The question for Facebook & Co. will be: which type of regulation is less disruptive, more sustainable for business – and what might even help turn this entire debate around?
The question to regulators is: which type of regulation, which combination of measures, will solve the various issues most effectively, and lastingly? Making social media part of the solution might be also part of the answer.

Please feel free to let me know why I’m wrong. (I borrowed this phrase from Andrew Salzberg’s great Decarbonization Transportation newsletter. I recommend it warmly.)

Leave a comment

I’ll occasionally publish new ideas and thoughts here. Currently in the pipeline: Explaining the US to Germans, How Micromobility Complements Transit, A Praise to the City (yes, even in the pandemic), Die Republik in Aspik und der Mut zum Morgen.

Subscribe now

Sign up now so you don’t miss the first issue.

Subscribe now

In the meantime, tell your friends!