Policies Pushing Electric Vehicles Show Why Few People Want One
They wouldn’t need huge subsidies to sell if they really were a good choice, and consumers know that.
by Bjorn Lomborg Mr. Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus, a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and author of “False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet.” September 9, 2022
We constantly hear that electric cars are the future—cleaner, cheaper and better. But if they’re so good, why does California need to ban gasoline-powered cars? Why does the world spend $30 billion a year subsidizing electric ones?
In reality, electric cars are only sometimes and somewhat better than the alternatives, they’re often much costlier, and they aren’t necessarily all that much cleaner. Over its lifetime, an electric car does emit less CO2 than a gasoline car, but the difference can range considerably depending on how the electricity is generated. Making batteries for electric cars also requires a massive amount of energy, mostly from burning coal in China. Add it all up and the International Energy Agency estimates that an electric car emits a little less than half as much CO2 as a gasoline-powered one.
The climate effect of our electric-car efforts in the 2020s will be trivial. If every country achieved its stated ambitious electric-vehicle targets by 2030, the world would save 231 million tons of CO2 emissions. Plugging these savings into the standard United Nations Climate Panel model, that comes to a reduction of 0.0002 degree Fahrenheit by the end of the century.
Electric cars’ impact on air pollution isn’t as straightforward as you might think. The vehicles themselves pollute only slightly less than a gasoline car because their massive batteries and consequent weight leads to more particulate pollution from greater wear on brakes, tires and roads. On top of that, the additional electricity they require can throw up large amounts of air pollution depending on how it’s generated. One recent study found that electric cars put out more of the most dangerous particulate air pollution than gasoline-powered cars in 70% of U.S. states. An American Economic Association study found that rather than lowering air pollution, on average each additional electric car in the U.S. causes additional air-pollution damage worth $1,100 over its lifetime.
The minerals required for those batteries also present an ethical problem, as many are mined in areas with dismal human-rights records. Most cobalt, for instance, is dug out in Congo, where child labor is not uncommon, specifically in mining. There are security risks too, given that mineral processing is concentrated in China.
This is an article that intrigued me on an another forum. It contains some thinking that was new to me. Give it a read and see what you think.
The Electric Vehicle Scam
Dr. Jay Lehr and Tom Harris | Jan 15, 2022 | Climate
Change, Feature 1, Lifestyle, Politics
The utility companies have thus far had little to say about the alarming cost projections to operate electric vehicles (EVs) or the increased rates that they will be required to charge their customers. It is not just the total amount of electricity required, but the transmission lines and fast charging capacity that must be built at existing filling stations. Neither wind nor solar can support any of it. Electric vehicles will never become the mainstream of transportation!
In part 1 of our exposé on the problems with electric vehicles (EVs), we showed that they were too expensive, too unreliable, rely on materials mined in China and other unfriendly countries, and require more electricity than the nation can afford. In this second part, we address other factors that will make any sensible reader avoid EVs like the plague.
EV Charging Insanity
In order to match the 2,000 cars that a typical filling station can service in a busy 12 hours, an EV charging station would require 600, 50-watt chargers at an estimated cost of $24 million and a supply of 30 megawatts of power from the grid. That is enough to power 20,000 homes. No one likely thinks about the fact that it can take 30 minutes to 8 hours to recharge a vehicle between empty or just topping off. What are the drivers doing during that time?
ICSC-Canada board member New Zealand-based consulting engineer Bryan Leyland describes why installing electric car charging stations in a city is impractical:
A 17-year-old in Florida got a rude awakening when she found out that the replacement battery for her used electric car would cost more than the vehicle itself.
Avery Siwinski is just an average teenage girl who was thrilled when her parents coughed up the money for an $11,000 used Ford Focus electric car, a 2014 model EV with 60,000 miles on the odometer. It seemed like a great choice at the time: gas prices and inflation are skyrocketing, and driving an electric car around town was the perfect way to save on money and save the environment at the same time.
But, according to KVUE 10 News, Siwinski only had the car for six months before it started having issues. That’s when the flashing symbols started to appear on the dashboard. It’s a lot like when your phone quits on you—but in this case, it’s your car, the one you rely on to get you from place to place.
And it turns out fixing your electric car is a lot pricier than repairing an iPhone.
This video is eye opening as to how polluting and destructive the mining of lithium and cobalt is as it is being mined around the world. The myth of Green Energy exposed ! Nancy
Everything from your smartphone to cordless vacuum cleaner uses a lithium-ion battery, and demand is growing as more electric vehicles hit the market. The issue is that there is only so much lithium on the earth, and we may be running out. So what does this mean for the future?
Beware: 100% green energy could destroy the planet
By Stephen Moore June 2, 2022
The untold story about “green energy” is that it can’t possibly be scaled up to provide anywhere near the energy to replace fossil fuels. (Unless we are headed back to the stone ages, which is what some of the “de-growth” advocates favor).
Right now, the United States gets 70% of its energy from fossil fuels. To go to zero over the next 20 years would be economically catastrophic and cost tens of millions of jobs. With gas prices at nearly double their price back from when Trump left office and inflation up from 1.5% to 8% in just 15 months, we are already experiencing the economic damage from the green energy crusaders.
But we also have to ask whether green energy is even good for the environment. Some environmentalists are pointing to a little-noticed study by the World Bank showing that moving toward 100% solar, wind, and electric battery energy would be “just as destructive to the planet as fossil fuels.” This was precisely the conclusion of a story in Foreign Policy magazine, hardly a right-wing publication.
According to the Foreign Policy analysis, moving to a “carbon-free” energy future “requires massive amounts of energy, not to mention the extraction of minerals and metals at great environmental and social costs.”
Here are some of the numbers. Going all-in on batteries, solar, and wind would require
Thirty-four million metric tons of copper,
Forty million tons of lead,
Fifty million tons of zinc,
One hundred and sixty-two million tons of aluminum,
Four-point-eight billion tons of iron.
Those tens of millions of windmills, solar panels, and electric batteries for cars and trucks aren’t exactly biodegradable. So, we will have the most prominent energy graveyard with toxic pollutants that will be 100 times larger than any nuclear waste storage. And yet, the Left is worried about plastic straws!
Democrats’ time for magical energy thinking is over
By Michael McKenna October 23, 2021
Unfortunately for the United States, one of its political parties has become the home of magical thinking about energy. Here’s a hint: It’s not the Republicans.
Despite the Biden administration’s hopes to create a world in which solar panels and wind turbines power an all-electric automobile fleet, just last week, President Biden announced that the administration is considering a 20-year delay of new mining operations in northern Minnesota. These new mines eventually will produce copper, nickel and cobalt, all of which are essential minerals in manufacturing electric vehicles, batteries and transmission lines.
Apparently, no one told Mr. Biden that the administration’s entire energy policy is built on copper, nickel and cobalt. By delaying the mines, Team Biden is making communist China richer and Americans poorer. They are trading our energy independence for reliance on China for minerals, a dependence that may be far greater than any we ever had on the Middle East for oil.
At its worst, we imported less than a quarter of our oil from the Middle East. Right now, China owns or controls about 80% of the rare earth minerals on the planet.
Republican Rep. Pete Stauber from Minnesota was clear. “Rather than promoting the dignity of work, they’re comfortable seeing Minnesota’s union members and skilled workers sidelined. Instead of empowering Minnesotans to develop the minerals necessary for almost every sector of our economy under the strongest labor and environmental standards in the world, they are willing to rely on hostile nations that utilize child slave labor and terrible environmental practices.” He’s right.
In a very candid interview with conservative Mark Levin on Sunday, the former commander of British troops in Afghanistan, Colonel Richard Kemp, said that President Joe Biden had single-handedly destroyed NATO’s credibility and had betrayed the United States and the U.S. military, for which he “should be court-martialed.”
“In my opinion, and I don’t say this lightly, and I’ve never said it about anybody else, any other leader in this position, people have been talking about impeaching President Biden,” said Col. Kemp on FNC’sLife, Liberty & Levin.
“I don’t believe President Biden should be impeached,” he added. “He’s the commander-in-chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, who’s just essentially surrendered to the Taliban. He shouldn’t be impeached; he should be court-martialed for betraying the United States of America and the United States Armed Forces.”
Colonel Kemp was an infantry battalion commanding officer and he headed Operation Fingal in Afghanistan in 2003. Kemp also served in the Iraq war, the Bosnian war, the Gulf war, and in battles against terrorists in Northern Ireland (Operation Banner). He was awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire and the Queen’s Commendation for Bravery.
During the Aug. 22 interview, Levin asked, “Colonel Kemp, my question to you is, given what has taken place now in Afghanistan, and it’s ongoing, and assuming that Joe Biden stays on the same course, what are consequences for the United States, Britain, NATO, the free world, and that area of the world now?”
Kemp replied, “I think the consequences of what has just happened and what’s still happening are absolutely devastating for the whole of the Western world. I mentioned earlier that the catastrophic effect on NATO. NATO is a very important military alliance.”
In the course of hectoring the United States for its “bungled and embarrassing withdraw from Afghanistan” on Thursday, China’s state-run Global Times admitted Beijing has a rapacious interest in Afghanistan’s vast rare-earths mineral resources and snarled it was none of America’s business if China makes deals with the Taliban to get what it wants.
The Global Times accused the U.S. of profiteering from Afghanistan for the past twenty years, without offering any theories on where all the plunder might have gone, and claimed America is only worried about China going after those mineral resources because the U.S. is jealous:
It has been known for years that Afghanistan is rich in rare earth and other very valuable minerals. Has Biden in his hasty ill planned retreat from Afghanistan thought at all about attempting to protect this vast source of sought after minerals for the benefit of the Afghan people? Or as will probably happen, the Taliban warlords and the Chinese will gain control. I swear, everything that man touches turns to you know what !!!! Nancy P.S. By the way, this article was written in May of this year when the Biden administration knew they would be pulling out of Afghanistan. Why in the world wasn’t more thought given to a better plan for withdrawal. It is my understanding that the we pulled out of the Bagram Air Force Base in the dead of night without even giving advance warning to our Afghan allies and our taxpayer funded expensive equipment was left there.
The Great Game over Rare Earth Minerals in Afghanistan
May 29, 2021 | Chandrashekar TS
United States Geological Survey geological survey estimates that Afghanistan may hold 60 million metric tons of copper, 2.2 billion tons of iron ore, and 1.4 million tons of rare earth elements (REEs) such as lanthanum, cerium, neodymium, and veins of aluminium, gold, silver, zinc, mercury, and lithium.
The USGS estimates the Khanneshin deposits in Helmand province will yield 1.1.-1.4 million metric tons of REEs. Some reports estimate Afghanistan REE resources are among the largest on earth.
China has won exploration rights for copper, coal, oil, and lithium deposits across Afghanistan, and there are reports that Beijing won the rights to develop a copper mine by bribing Afghan mining officials.
