"Green" Technology & Electric Vehicles: Uncomfortable Truths (Part 3 of 4)
Electric Vehicles: The Dark Truth of "Green" Transportation
We have already learned of the climate-change mindset in Part One and Part Two, and how it is compelling a maddened re-shaping of the industrialized world.
I must now endeavor to offer some examples of “green” technology’s limited effectiveness.
Naturally, this cultural theme has been ongoing for quite some time.
Some readers may be old enough to remember the persistent demands from environmental activists of past seasons, who whole-souled declared that our culture must stop using paper grocery bags "to save the trees,” though they, in a classical instance of a rushed misunderstanding of the matter, overlooked the fact that the trees used to make the bags originated from managed tree farms grown as a resource of paper and other products.
Nonetheless, the faithful adherents would get their wish, only to realize after time had passed that the technology of plastic grocery bags are far worse for the environment than using paper. As they would only later come to understand, whereas paper biodegrades, plastic does not. Plastic waste never goes away, and, even now, still remains a large part of the trash that gets swept into the oceans.
“Just about everyone in elite America is an environmentalist,” noted Tucker Carlson, in his book Ship of Fools: How A Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America To The Brink Of Revolution. “It’s all but mandatory. What’s changed is the definition of environmentalism. The new environmentalism has everything to do with making elites more powerful and self-satisfied. It has very little to do with improving the natural world. Modern environmentalists step over piles of garbage and human excrement on their way to save the planet.”
As particularized by journalist Alex Jones, in his book The Great Reset And The War For The World, “We all want to save the world. But everything has its trade-offs. Would you willingly give up your freedom of movement, your ability to drive and to travel, if they told you it was for saving the planet? If they told you (again) that a new crisis was so severe that you had to stay inside indefinitely? Would you be willing to allow global governments and big corporations to track and trace your every movement, in the name of saving the planet? Would you let them automatically track your carbon based on your diet, your driving habits, and more? If they used a military-style crackdown in the name of an emergency, would you submit to a digital surveillance system to monitor your carbon emissions? These are questions worth asking, because this is what they want for you.”1
We are now told that, in order for the planet to evade destruction by way of the supposed threat of climate change, green technology, such as solar and wind power tech, must be quickly and unquestionably adopted by all the people of the world.
The fact that wind and solar power-generation systems, like every other form of technology, might present unforeseen consequences to its adopters are simply not taken into account by those promoting its implementation.
To quote Carlson again: “…it’s remarkable to see birds of prey once again dying in large numbers. Chemical companies aren’t killing them. Environmentalist are. In 2011, at the urging of environmental groups, the Obama U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service granted an exemption to industrial wind companies under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. For most Americans, killing an eagle, even accidentally, remains a felony punishable by up to two years in prison. Corporate wind farms can kill eagles with impunity. And they do. Wind turbines destroy hundreds of bald eagles every year. That’s in addition to more than a quarter million other birds of various species, including hawks, owls, and songbirds crushed by turbine blades. Some experts believe the actual number of dead birds is much higher, possibly in the millions.”
Carlson goes on to say, “Two years after granting its initial exemption, the Obama administration gave a power company in California legal protection in the event wind farms killed California condors, a critically endangered species…For the first time in many decades, killing condors was legal, as long as they were killed by wind turbines. In addition to thinning bird populations, wind farms had a devastating effect on bats…Bats regularly mistake wind turbines for trees. Somewhere between 600,000 and 800,000 of them are caught in wind rotors each year…Deepwater wind turbines, meanwhile, kill untold numbers of aquatic animals. In 2017, experts concluded that noise pollution from offshore wind farms may cause the beaching of humpback whales. Fishermen in New York claim that wind turbines in Long Island Sounds are destroying fisheries by altering the migratory patterns of certain fish. These are real costs, measurable in the carcasses of dead animals, many of them endangered. To environmental groups, they mean nothing compared to the entirely theoretical benefit of wind power.”2
We can probably not dismiss the possibility that readers reflecting on Carlson’s observations, or on the manifest fact that the wind does not blow everyday, or that the sun does not shine everywhere all the time, run the risk of being labeled and expelled as a far-right “problem” that must be overcome.
I wish now to shift our focus to electric vehicles, or EVs, the primordial solution being consistently marketed to the population.
On March 8, President Biden tweeted that, “Loosening environmental regulations won’t lower prices. But transforming our economy to run on electric vehicles, powered by clean energy, will mean that no one will have to worry about gas prices.”
In April, 2022, reports surfaced purporting that President Biden would use the Defense Production Act to mine for rare earth minerals and build batteries for EVs. Some judged the plan as little more than using the power of the federal government and taxpayer dollars to force Americans into adopting EVs under the appealing tagline “helping Americans afford to drive.”
On July 19, 2022, Biden Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg stated that, “The more pain we are all experiencing from the high price of gas, the more benefit there is for those who can access electric vehicles.”
Those paying attention to the ongoing EV saga will know that rare earth minerals are required to construct the batteries required for EVs. It may be worth mentioning that Biden abandoned $1 trillion worth of rare earth mineral mines in Afghanistan. And though the president could have negotiated for the rights to the mines, since the US taxpayers paid to build the infrastructure for those mines in Afghanistan, Biden apparently chose not to.
And while American taxpayers have been funding billions in weapons to Ukraine, some have suggested that Biden could instead be negotiating for peace in Ukraine and even mining rights to the massive lithium stores in Ukraine.
As we know, while China holds over 85% mining rights to the world’s rare earth minerals, the Biden regime is actively forcing America onto the Green New Deal, leaving US taxpayers to pay for America to convert to adopting EVs. In comparison, the U.S. holds less than 5% market share in rare earth mineral mines and EV batteries.
Of course, certain mining operations, which have been seized upon in order to provide power sources for electric vehicles, is a task purported to be essential for rescuing the Earth from the supposed terror of climate change. But those eager to pursue such a thing in the name of saving the planet have neglected to notice that this too carries a unique set of consequences that are well to be considered.
The largest lithium reserve in the United States, a place called Thacker Pass in northern Nevada, is just one place that is looked upon. “[Shoshone] Tribal members and some ranchers are fighting the plans,” reported the Los Angeles Times, “alarmed by details in the environmental impact assessment: The operation would generate hundreds of millions of cubic yards of mining waste and lower the water table in this high desert region by churning through 3,200 gallons per minute. Arsenic contamination of the water under the mine pit could endure 300 years… Many of the tribal members who gathered for a daylong ceremony on the pass recently shared stories of the fallout from the area's long history with mercury, gold and silver mining. The trade-offs for the jobs mining brought to Nevada's Humboldt County, they said, were cancer clusters, water and air contamination and broken promises to clean up the land.”
The newspaper adds that, “The debate over how much damage should be inflicted on the planet to save it may be most intense far out to sea. The Metals Co. and others plan within three years to start vacuuming patches of the deep ocean floor for nodules that contain many of the metals that go into electric car batteries along with lithium. Many scientists say the timeline is dangerously irresponsible. More than 500 scientists from 44 nations recently signed a petition against the mining, warning there are too many unknowns. It could destroy entire ecosystems, the scientists say, leading to potentially devastating consequences for the broader ocean.”
The publication goes on to note that “many scientists say there are any number of deep-sea life forms that are too little known for debate to even begin. They warn that the plumes kicked up by harvesting machines could destroy ecosystems, damage the seafood industry and kill off critical organisms that could take lifetimes to come back, if they ever do.”
The paper further detailed that over half the world’s supply of cobalt, a key component of electric car batteries, come from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where roughly 40,000 children are exploited for cheap labor in the nation’s cobalt mines. “A person buying an electric vehicle is probably not that aware of the fact that children are mining for their batteries in the DRC,” observed Bramley Murton, a marine geology professor at the National Oceanography Center in Southampton, England, to the news review.
Also extensively omitted from the conversation is that, while all this is being put in place, there exists no effective plans to increase U.S. energy production to supply all the extra electricity that will be required.
As I have previously illustrated, Europe is preparing for the coming winter energy crisis, where, as the Associated Press put matters, the lights are out and the ovens have been turned off.
Indeed, South Australia and their extreme green trial with renewable energy seems to only have produced crippling blackouts and the highest electricity prices in the world. “A suspended electricity spot market, rolling blackouts because of supply shortages, a ‘botched transition’ to renewable energy – these terms were all used to describe the state's energy crisis of 2016/17, long before the troubles of today,” wrote the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
The news service went on to report, “AEMO [Australian Energy Market Operator] said the current problems are due to planned and unplanned outages at power stations, an early start to winter, low output from wind and solar farms and planned outages in transmission infrastructure.”
According to Stanford scientists, in a study published in the journal Nature Energy, charging EVs at night can put pressure on the United States’ power grids. The study authors said that changing from gas vehicles to EVs will cause a strain in the electric grid when there’s 30% to 40% of cars on the road. The team further forecasted that if a third of homes were to charge their electric cars at 11 PM or whenever electricity rates decreased, the local grid would become unstable.
Compounding matters is that, just several days ago, Europe’s lifeline to Russian energy was officially severed in the form of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines from Russia to Europe losing pressure and rupturing overnight.
And though all of this must be taken into account, some have already come to learn for themselves the consequences granted by EVs.
Avery Siwinski, a 17-year-old whose parents spent $11,000 on a used 2014 Ford Focus Electric car, had the vehicle in her possession for 6 months before certain problems presented themselves.
"It was fine at first," Siwinski told KVUE. "I loved it so much. It was small and quiet and cute. And all the sudden it stopped working."
When the car was taken to a repair shop, the Florida family found out that a replacement battery would cost $14,000. In this case, the replacement battery for the dead EV ended up costing more than the used car was purchased for.
"Then we found out the batteries aren't even available," recounted Avery’s grandfather, Ray Siwinski, to the news outlet. "So it didn't matter. They could cost twice as much and we still couldn't get it."
According to data released on September 26, EV drivers in the UK are now having to grapple with EV charge points being nearly expensive as gasoline. “For those that have already made the switch to an electric car or are thinking of doing so, it remains the case that charging away from home costs less than refuelling a petrol or diesel car, but these figures show that the gap is narrowing as a result of the enormous increases in the cost of electricity,” noted Simon Williams, an EV spokesperson for RAC, the motor organization that composed the figures.
We can also see that Tyler Hoover, a popular YouTuber, tested the towing capacity of Ford’s all-electric F-150 Lightning truck, only to find that it operated far below expectations. Hoover attempted to tow a 1930 Ford Model A on an aluminum flat-bed trailer roughly 128 miles with an almost-full battery charge, which was supposed to last around 200 miles. In the video, Hoover concludes, “This truck can’t do normal truck things. You would be stopping every hour to recharge, which would take about 45 minutes a pop, and that is absolutely not practical.”
Also helping to bolster mistrust in EV technology is that in August, 2021, GM-owned car manufacturer Chevrolet issued a nationwide recall for all of its Bolt EVs spanning from 2017 to 2022 following numerous troubling reports of batteries catching fire spontaneously.
I hope the examples I have provided might be sufficient to solicit culture weighing “green” technology’s advantages against its drawbacks, for technology’s results are not always what they appear to be, a fact that seems to be especially true for our “green” contrivances.
My purpose here has not been to refute that EVs can carry the capability of taking its users where they wish to go.
But it may be also be true that those who speculate as to how many bumps in the road might be encountered along the way are justified in doing so.
Alex Jones, The Great Reset And The War For The World, P. 153
Tucker Carlson, Ship of Fools: How A Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America To The Brink Of Revolution , P. 218, 222-223
I am huge fan of Hybrids. You need gas as a backup. Just think of how many people would have died during hurricane Ian if everyone had EV and they weren't fully charged. The unintended consequences are dangerous