I recently asked a liberal friend, “how far will electric vehicles drive during the all but certain power blackouts in CA?” Although the answer, of course, is that EVs will not drive at all during power blackouts, my liberal friend gave me a blank look. Far Left thinking today is so dominated by fanatically-held articles of faith, and is so divorced from reason, science, logic, or math, that the liberal proponents of such thinking have often not even considered the most obvious consequences of their own insane proposals. The liberal obsession with electric vehicles is one example of the new faith-based thinking.
First, as I have written before, new green deal gadgets, such as EVs, wind mills, solar panels, and storage batteries will require almost unimaginable levels of dirty and dangerous mining operations for copper, aluminum, silver, lithium, and a variety of toxic rare earth minerals. Pastural dreams of magically harmless green energy pop like soap bubbles when considered in the light of the massive mining operations necessary to sustain all of these supposedly green devices. The vast mining operations will certainly be comparable in ecological damage to the oil industry the Left so viscerally hates. Do liberals understand this? Do they really understand the extent of mining operations that will be necessary for all those EVs and windmills? Do they understand that discarded and used and broken EVs and batteries and windmills and solar panels will be a new kind of toxic waste that will require special disposal? Does someone as daft as AOC, who without a shred of evidence, stupidly believes the world will end in ten years from climate change, really understand how absolutely filthy the gadgets of “clean green energy” truly are?
Second, do far left prattlers really grasp the implications of the inescapable fact that all EVs must be powered off the electrical grid. Every time and everywhere the electrical grid fails, whether in CA or Texas, EVs will not run. Moreover, the sources of energy for the electrical grid that powers all EVs are still overwhelmingly based on nonrenewable forms of energy, including natural gas, and other fossil fuels. Currently only 2.8% of US power comes from solar energy. Only 9% of US power is generated by all those windmill farms that are springing up everywhere like poisonous mushrooms, wasting important farmland, killing millions of birds, and making hideous rural landscapes. And, despite all this, solar and wind power cannot manage to contribute more than 11% to US energy needs. The die is cast. Although the left may be too delusional to fully admit it, your Tesla is going to be powered by electricity generated through burning of fossil fuels, including coal, as well as through nuclear power for the foreseeable future – meaning for at least 2 decades. The alternative is not renewable energy, which we may never have in sufficient quantities to power opium-laced green dreams; the alternative is that all those Teslas and EVs will rust in driveways as America struggles to produce enough reliable energy to charge them.
Copyright 2022 in Paul H.Beattie. All rights reserved.
Notes from the Secular Right 