The Green car movement has just enjoyed two big moments, one very important and potentially transformational, the other merely symbolic and mildly promising.

The first was the U.S. Biden administration’s emphatic push for EVs (electric vehicles), to have them account for 50% of all new car sales by the end of the decade. For a Baby Boomer like me, this sounded very much like former President John Kennedy’s pledge to put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. Which did, indeed, happen. So, there’s hope.

Kennedy’s point was that “We do things because they are hard” and he framed it as an existential struggle with the then-Soviet Union. Biden, meanwhile, said the quick transition to EVs is an existential race against China, one supported by billions and billions in infrastructure spending to improve the U.S. electrical grid. Sure, the ultimate goal is to “save the planet,” but the core motivation Biden is trying to tap the competition with China for global super power supremacy.

As for the second moment, it was completely Canadian – modest, timid, and understated and anything but bold. We heard about the launch of Canada’s first hydrogen hub just outside Edmonton. Be clear: this is NOT a billion-dollar initiative, a la Joe Biden. Instead, we are looking at a $2-million effort.

The eventual goal is to create a series of hydrogen hubs right across Canada, all in support of a domestic hydrogen industry that might be worth $50-billion to $100-billion each year by 2050.

Yes, the so-called Hydrogen Strategy for Canada announced last year is crawling into shape and it could very well dovetail with Canada’s bigger goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. But let’s be clear on two things:

First, hydrogen is NOT a fuel. It’s an energy carrier, more like a battery than a barrel of oil. Hydrogen only carries energy that is put into it by some other energy source – solar panels, wind turbines, natural gas, industrial waste… A hydrogen economy depends on some other energy source charging up the hydrogen that carries that energy.

Second, well, hydrogen has been the next big thing in the green transition for at least a quarter century in Canada. I began reporting on Ballard Power Systems and the Burnaby, B.C. hydrogen hub in the mid-1990s.

Ballard is now sort of viable, but all the company’s initial promises about hydrogen fuel cell cars for sale in the early 2000s disappeared like so much hydrogen venting into the atmosphere out of a leaky tank – which is precisely what happens to stored hydrogen in the real world. Tanks can’t store it for long, no matter how good they are.

Truth is, Ballard initially turned out to be a stock play, not a real company with a long-term industrial strategy. The sharks who made all those promises, and betrayed the late Geoffrey Ballard in the process, made fortunes and moved on, leaving behind broken promises and a bruised reputation for hydrogen fuel cells to muddle through.

Since then, Ballard has reinvented itself as an unprofitable forklift and stationary power provider with a share price that goes up and down like any highly speculative investment. Hydrogen may yet prove to be an important piece of a zero-emissions strategy, but I’m not holding my breath. I’ve inhaled too many broken hydrogen promises.

The Biden initiative, however, is notable for one simple reason: it’s being framed as a very American us-versus-them effort, one designed to trigger the American need for conflict, competition and conquering.

Just as Kennedy framed the moon shot as a race with the Soviets for domination of space, Biden, as The New York Times notes, is framing “his push in part as a geopolitical competition in an emerging technology.” The Russians are now an incompetent sideshow, though a dangerous one geopolitically. America’s rival now is China, which already has an EV lead on the U.S.

And so, as a White House fact sheet notes, the Biden initiative is designed to “drive the electric vehicle future forward, outcompete China and tackle the climate crisis.”

Biden clearly understands the American mindset like the savvy, veteran, aged politician that he is. Sure, the climate crisis is a real thing and EVs really are more entertaining to drive. But what will motivate most American most is a race against the Chinese, just as it did with the moonshot race against the Soviets half a century ago.

Americans understand they have a rival in China, not just a source of cheap Tupperware for Walmart. The Olympic medal race only underscores that for the everyday media consumer. China at this writing has more gold medals than the U.S., in fact.

Biden has the good sense to do the very American thing and frame the EV race in Olympic terms: the U.S. in an existential race against a dangerous and skilled China that will do anything to beat the great American imperialists.

This is serious, and real. The competition is now underway. It will be entertaining to watch, should produce affordable EVs and the infrastructure to support them, and in the end it could potentially benefit the entire world in the struggle to control climate change.