By Christopher Wright, 9/2/22
Going somewhere for the holiday weekend? Not if you live in California and drive an electric vehicle, you’re not. California issued an emergency alert asking people not to charge their EVs because the power grid can’t handle the demand. This from a state that is moving to ban the sale of gas-powered vehicles. So how’s this going to work when the internal combustion engine is gone, natural gas appliances are banned, and everyone has to rely on electricity for getting around, heating their homes, and washing their clothes. The short answer is: it’s not. The numbers don’t add up. But that’s the bright green energy future into which your insane leaders want to take you.
Here’s one thing that will happen in that future. Everyone will have smart meters and the government will simply order the power cut off whenever it feels like it. Don’t believe me? It’s already happening. How did you like the story out of Denver this week, where 22,000 households were locked out of their thermostats and couldn’t adjust their air conditioning when it got hot? No car, no A/C, no appliances, whenever the government decides it’s time to control your behavior.
Colorado and California are among the states that have adopted green energy mandates. Hate to break it to you, folks, but green energy is just not up to the job. The numbers don’t add up. That’s why Illinois is already looking for ways to adjust its green energy mandates and escape the trap. They figure they can’t attract business to the state without being able to demonstrate they will have reliable energy supplies in the future. That’s the first sensible thing I’ve heard out of Illinois politicians for a long time.
Since I’m the skunk at the garden party, let me ask this: What is all this sackcloth and ashes supposed to accomplish? If I were a cynic, I would say the goal is wealth and power for a tiny elite that is personally heavily invested in green energy stocks, something I’ve reported on before. I could also say it’s about controlling the people, reducing their standard of living to make them poor, cutting America down to size in the world, waging Marxist war on capitalism, putting the globalists in control of your happiness, and de-growth and depopulation.
I’ve heard all these things and they sound plausible to me. But let’s take the entire exercise at face value, shall we? Leaving fossil fuels in the ground and making the transition to green energy will stop climate change and keep the planet from burning up, right?
There’s only one problem. Over 1,100 scientists and professionals from around the world just signed a declaration stating in no uncertain terms there is no climate emergency. “Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific,” they said. “Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming.” So, anyone who tells you ‘the science is settled’ and the planet is burning up is lying to you for their own selfish purposes. There are real costs to green energy policies, the scientists went on, and the cure – getting rid of fossil fuels – will be worse than the disease. They criticize the unfounded beliefs that dominate media narratives and call for getting back to real science.
Emergency directives and smart meter shut-offs aside, let’s suppose you do manage to get your EV out of your garage this weekend. You have some other things to worry about. Your EV could explode at any moment. Hyundai and Kia just issued warnings. They recommend parking your EV outside so it doesn’t burn your house down. The town in Connecticut with the electric bus fire this summer has gone back to diesel-powered buses.
If you’re on the road, good luck finding a charging station, and hope it works when you find one. A police department in England is finding its EVs can’t reach some emergencies because the emergencies are too far away and the batteries run down before they can get there. In 2019, a police officer in California could not pursue a suspect because the officer’s EV ran down. The suspect got away.
If you’re driving an EV because you feel guilty about damaging the environment with fossil fuels, here’s something else to feel guilty about: pulling lithium out of the ground for your EV battery generates lots of carbon emissions, toxic wastewater, and other environmental damage. Indigenous peoples and governments in Latin America are wising up to this and are moving to clamp down on lithium mining. How will the numbers add up when more people in producing areas revolt?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for progress. I had halogens for years, but I love my LED lamps. But here’s what I’m not for: chasing unicorns and rainbows, turning everything upside down just because some people take it on faith the planet is burning up. And I’m not for blindly pursuing supposed solutions without ever giving a thought to what they will really cost or what new problems they will create. And I’m not for financially self-interested government officials telling us we have to ‘press the accelerator’ on the green energy transition when the numbers obviously don’t add up. I’m not for the inmates running the asylum. Take your romanticism and shove it! Get real and keep your hands off my thermostat and my life. Kapish?