Jonny Lieberman: Fast Cars, Climate Change, and the Contradictions We Often Ignore

Kim Stanley’s dystopian novel, The Ministry for the Future, opens with a fictional heatwave in India that kills 20 million people. A deadly wet-bulb temperature occurs—that’s the point at which temperature and humidity combine to kill people because the air holds too much moisture for your body to cool itself down via sweat evaporating. Surprisingly, the lowest web-bulb temp humans can endure is 95 degrees Fahrenheit (95 degrees with 100 percent humidity or 115 degrees at 50 percent humidity), though the number could be even lower. Luckily, actual 100 percent humidity is rare, but as global temperatures rise, the planet becomes more hostile to human life.

I mention this because the day I drove the fantastic new Porsche 911 GT3 S/C around Germany, it was 35 degrees Celsius in southwestern Swabia, right about 95 degrees. We were around 30 miles from the French border, where France was suffering through the hottest day in its recorded history. It was 107 in Paris. Later that day it was 106—in Las Vegas. Lucky for me the air wasn’t all that moist, but it was still too damn hot for June in a cabriolet. Around 11 a.m., the blistering sun forced me to put the S/C’s top up and crank the A/C. But I kept revving the fantastic boxer-six to its 9,000-rpm redline everywhere I could. Because vroom vroom!

We’re All Hypocrites

I remember sitting in a small room with Sebastian Vettel at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, home of the Dolphins and the Miami F1 race. It was Vettel’s final year in the sport, 2022. He was driving for Aston Martin at the time and would be replaced by another legend, Fernando Alonso. A group of journalists had gathered to presumably talk about racing and his career. But with the force of a Mike Tyson haymaker, Vettel punched us all in the mouth with his opening remarks.

“When you think that in 50 years’ time, we won’t be able to sit here because it’s flooded, and it’s not just going to impact some distant generation in the future, which will still be very unfair, but our children and the next generation,” he said. Hell of an opener. None of us knew it at the time, but Vettel was remaking himself into something of a climate activist. “People ask why this is so important, and I don’t understand the question,” he said. “It should be important to everybody.” A great point. Naturally, we all pounced on him like a pack of starved hyenas that stumbled upon a dead elephant. Wait a second, bro! Don’t you pointlessly drive in circles for a living, crisscrossing the globe in private jets being tailed by literal fleets of 747s?! “We’re all hypocrites,” he replied. I’ve been thinking about this exchange for the past four years.

Because he’s right, both about being a hypocrite (at the time Vettel was earning around $41 million a year from F1) and that human activity—including race cars, regular cars, and big old jet airliners—are all warming up the planet. Quite ironically, it was scientists at Exxon of all people who first associated increased CO2 emissions with global warming. According to an article from the Harvard Gazette, the oil giant’s researchers “projected that fossil fuel emissions would lead to 0.20 degrees Celsius of global warming per decade, with a margin of error of 0.04 degrees—a trend that has been proven largely accurate.” Geoffrey Supran, the lead author of the study, “Assessing ExxonMobil’s Global Warming Projections,” went on to comment, “What we found is that between 1977 and 2003, excellent scientists within Exxon modeled and predicted global warming with, frankly, shocking skill and accuracy only for the company to then spend the next couple of decades denying that very climate science.” How nice.

I take home a little less cash than Vettel, but by and large, I still make my living flying around the world on big old airplanes and driving cars, most of which burn a hell of a lot of gasoline. Not only because of their powerful engines but also because I drive them the way ExxonMobil’s execs would want me to, as wastefully as possible. I should know better. Actually, I do know better. It’s just that most of the time I choose to ignore what I know.

Getting Harder and Harder to Ignore

Case in point: I recently drove the electric Mercedes-Benz VLE around Bilbao, Spain. The Mercedes folks had come up with a cute little efficiency test—who could complete a 45-kilometer driving loop using the least amount of energy? My initial plan was to get two vans, open the tailgate of the one, and then park the snout of the other van under the aero shroud as we crept around the coast. But Spanish cops would probably have hated that. Instead, my partner (Andy Wendler of Car and Driver) and I deployed every single efficiency trick I knew. No turn signals, no music, no HVAC, DRLs off, windows cracked below 30 km/h, windows up (and sweating) above 30 km/h, as much one-pedal driving as possible. Slowly and safely rolling through an intersection is better (in terms of efficiency) than stopping. We decisively beat every other team, because like I said, I know about this stuff. I just choose to ignore it when driving supercars.

I sit here looking at a table filled with my kid’s Minecraft Lego sets and Crunch Labs Build Boxes. My wife and I are lucky to own our own home in Los Angeles, a purchase that was made possible largely because of my driving cars job. This house is a good home for my son, the person who I love more than I ever thought possible. He loves the place, too. Even though we can’t afford to move, my wife and I talk often about our need for a larger house. “No!” the kid will shout whenever he hears us talking. “I love our house.”

Being able to provide for your kid(s), I mean, that’s what it’s all about. Which I’m able to do because of my job. A job that again, at a pretty simple level, is to burn a lot of gas, thereby releasing more and more CO2 into our only planet’s atmosphere, heating the earth, and making it more hostile to humans. My kid is a human. So’s yours. Normally I’m able to mentally compartmentalize and kick my can full of fears about his future down the road. But man, something about the deadly heat last week in Europe and me just going through the car journalist motions isn’t sitting right.

To further underscore why, a panel on extreme heat set to take place in London was canceled due to extreme heat. This same extreme heat event killed over 1,000 people in Spain, where the country has been suffering through the hottest January to June ever recorded. France is reporting over 1,000 dead, too. Not only did France hit record temperatures, but so did Germany (107 F), Poland (107 F), and the Czech Republic (106 F). The numbers are just insane and obviously don’t bode well for the future. My kid’s future. Your kids’ futures. Depressing, but what’s a gearhead to do?

EVs Are Part of the Answer

I don’t know the answer. Check that, I know that part of the answer is the electrification of the automobile. The anti-EV side has done an incredible job of spreading misinformation (thanks again, Exxon!). So much so that even after gas prices spiked in Q2 due to the start of the Iran war, U.S. EV sales are down year on year, though I should point out that hybrid sales are off the charts. And yes, it’s also true that the (regressive, stupid) removal of the $7,500 EV tax credit has hurt U.S. EV sales.

While hybridization is good, hybrids still burn gas, and that still contributes to climate change. I’ve written about it previously, but pure EVs are much more efficient than their gas-powered counterparts, even factoring in emissions from manufacturing and electricity generation. Even better, as green as EVs are right now, they can continue to become greener as lithium mining, battery production, vehicle production, and the power grid itself are all getting greener. Gas cars can only ever burn oil, forever spewing ever more CO2 into our precious atmosphere. Precious because we don’t have another one. Also, if the world used less oil, we’d have less need for oil tankers. Electric vehicles have a compounding green effect.

But what about the vroom vroom! Yeah, I dunno. I like throaty cars, too. The car enthusiast sphere seems to have settled on the group consensus that all that matters in life is a loud engine and exhaust. Case in point, a recent conversation with a friend of mine went like this:

Her: I used to be all about naturally aspirated engines. But then I got a twin-turbo V-8. Now I’m addicted to torque.

Me: You like torque? You should try an EV. Instant torque, and tons of it.

Her: Naw bruh. Not interested.

Me: You’re not really addicted.

Not to pick on my friend (Hi, Jenn!) but you can see where the logic breaks down. But then again, and back to Vettel, I’m the problem. Because if an email showed up right now, inviting me to another continent to drive a supercar, bruh, I’m there. In fact, soon I’ll be driving a Subaru WRX around Wales. I am the problem. That said, I’m fully aware that I could be delusional, too. As George Carlin pointed out, the Earth is just fine. It’s humans that are going away. Remember, 99 percent of all species that have ever existed on the planet are gone. That said, for my kid’s sake, maybe we could delay what just might be inevitable for another generation or two? Can I suggest a compromise? Turn your RAV4s into R2s, and you can keep your GT3s. For now.