Americans may get a regular check for $1,000 from the government if Andrew Yang is elected president, but if the Democratic contender has his way, we won’t be spending our free money on a car payment. At MSNBC’s climate forum telecast this week, Yang suggested that the U.S. might have to do away with private car ownership if we want to save the planet from the evils of carbon emissions.
Host Ali Velshi asked Yang what the world might be able to do to fend off the ravages of climate change in the years between now and 2050.
“You have this ability to envision the future, right, with your proposals on universal basic income. You’ve played the whole chess game out and you see what it looks like on the other end. Play the chess game out on climate change,” Velshi said. “What does the world look like to you in 2050? What physically do you think we will do differently than we do today that will result in us fighting climate change?”
“Well I mentioned before that we might not own our own cars. Our current car ownership and usage model is really inefficient and bad for the environment,” Yang said. “You guys all probably agree with this because you’re quite young.”
We didn’t realize the millennial tastes ran to the carless, but hey, you learn something new about this generation every day.
“What we’re really selling is not the car, it’s mobility,” he said. “So if you have mobility that’s then tied into a much more, if you had like, for example, this constant roving fleet of electric cars that you would just order up, then you could diminish the impact of ground transportation on our environment very, very quickly.”
Ah. A constant roving fleet of electric cars.
And they say Marianne Williamson is wacky.