My late grandmother lived as an African smallholding farmer. With hope, she planted her crops each year: yams, juicy mangoes, and the tastiest tomatoes I have ever eaten. Some years the rains came, and the harvest was good, other years not. In the last period of her life, the rains became sparser and the seasons much less predictable.
In the west global warming may seem like a distant, almost theoretical concern. But for small subsistence farmers in Africa like my grandmother, it is very much a living reality. Across the continent, temperatures have risen, lakes are drying up and terrible droughts are often followed by savage floods. This is ironic, as Africans and others in the Third World barely contribute to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The average American produces well over 8 times the amount of GHG the average Indian does and over 20 times the average sub-Saharan African. In effect, we in the west have privatized the benefits of economic advancement and socialized the effects on our planet — with the poorest bearing the biggest brunt.
The fight against poverty and against global warming go together. A critical question in human development is how to eradicate poverty while stopping the continued exponential growth in GHG emission. Can we find new templates for economic growth? At first glance things do not appear promising. Taking announced policies and pledges into account, there remains a significant gap between current trends and the targets set out in the Paris Agreement (widely accepted as the minimum needed to prevent a climate crisis). Large-scale and rapid shifts are required in food production, industrial adaptation, clean-power generation and transportation to make a meaningful impact.
This is why I joined Xos Trucks.
As much as 30% of total GHG emissions in the US and Europe originate from transportation. Today freight and trucks run largely on diesel, polluting our air, and contributing to destabilization of our planet’s climate. Xos’ trucks are zero emission, clean air vehicles that cost our customers less on a total cost of ownership basis. Xos’ founders Dakota and Gio know the challenges that fleet owners face in maintenance and management, having previously run their own trucking business. These challenges convinced them that there had to be a better and cleaner way. Over the years, Xos has been built with a differentiated and bespoke technical approach, led by our CTO Rob Ferber who helped build Tesla. With cutting edge, customer centric products like ours we can begin to make a significant impact on our global emissions.
My grandmother believed in the promise of science to solve problems (which led to my mother’s education and ultimately mine). I still hold that promise true today, and hope to play my part at Xos.
A fairer, cleaner world: Why I joined Xos Trucks was originally published in xos-trucks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.