There are tons of people with that opinion that “the eggheads will just figure it out like they always do”. IMO it’s incorrect, but people on all ends of the political spectrum have that take.

IMO he’s correct that individual action doesn’t matter, but he’s wrong that political action doesn’t matter. It reminds me of the gun hobbyists in the US who are against gun control because they don’t want their enjoyment of their hobby to be constrained by laws intended to get less people killed. There are solutions here where you can have your cake and eat it, but you just don’t want to decouple the fantasy of your hobby from the reality of it.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying guns or cars as a hobby, but you should also acknowledge that their widespread presence is a net negative for society and regulating them would be a good thing for the world in the long run. It doesn’t mean you can’t have your toys.

Certainly nobody who drives their car to the office every day on a congested freeway is thinking about how fun it is to drive a V8. Less car dependency and more public transit would mean less cars on the road which would make driving more fun for petrol heads like Clarkson anyway. He should want more public transit, cyclist infrastructure, etc. It would benefit him indirectly even as a petrol head.

What I find funniest though is when he says in that quote in the same breath “electric cars don’t solve anything” and then “science will solve the problem”. My brother in Christ, science made the electric cars!