“Environmentalism” and Rabies

Guest Post by Eric Peters

When an animal catches rabies, in the end stages, it manifest bizarre, aggressive behavior. A normally shy raccoon will charge a human, growling and frothing at the mouth.

There is only one treatment for a rabid raccoon.

How about humans afflicted with the disease called “environmentalism”?

It is a form of rabies – and much more dangerous.

California Assemblywoman Autumn Burke, for instance. This “environmentalist” (what’s the credential, exactly?) is pushing legislation that would require 15 percent of all new cars sold in California be “emissions free” by model year 2025.

This means electric cars, as only electric cars qualify as “emissions-free”… notwithstanding that they also most definitely produce emissions.

Just not at the tailpipe.

This also means catastrophe for the car industry – for car buyers. For buyers of cars that aren’t electric cars.

The price of which will skyrocket – in order to offset the losses imposed on car companies forced to manufacturer and then give away vast fleets of electric cars in order to be allowed to sell any cars at all. Electric cars only being “salable” when subsidized or “sold” at a loss.

In the past, there was a dodge. 

A con, actually.

It’s the one that helped make the rent-seeking Andrew Carnegie of our time, Elon Musk – purveyor of the Tesla electric car – a very wealthy man. He sells carbon credits to other car companies. These credits serve as flim-flam-than-you-ma’am proxies for not building electric cars. GM, for instance, avoids wasting money and time designing, manufacturing  and then attempting to sell (at a loss) an electric Edsel (like the ’90s-era EV1) by purchasing carbon credits from Elon for the tailpipe emissions not produced by the cars he makes. In order to offset the tailpipe emissions of the cars GM makes.

In this way, Elon gets rich and the regulatory fatwa is obeyed – with relatively minimal fuss and muss for those engaged in actual productive endeavors rather than rent-seeking.    

But the California nomenklatura, of which Burke is a high muckety-muck, is unhappy. The nomenklatura does not like that manufacturers of non-electric cars skate around the “zero emissions” sales quotas by buying carbon credits from Elon. They want the electric cars made, as many as possible.    

“That’s why we need to reform the rules to require that 15 percent of all new cars sold in California have (sic) zero emissions by 2025,” says Burke. “This is about clean cars, not credits.”

Who is “we,” by the way?

Elon’s surely unhappy. If the carbon con goes away, his rent-seeking operation will suffer. But then, he’s already fat and happy on the taxpayer dime.

Besides which, the object of this exercise is not to make Elon rich. It is to make us poor.

To make driving ever more expensive. Such that hopefully – from the point of view of “environmentalists” –  we (the peonage) will not be able to do much driving at all.

California Governor Jerry Brown – another “environmentalist” – has already laid down the “ambitious goal” (says Burke, sounding like a Komsomol or Junior Anti-Sex League harridan) of  getting 1.5 million electric cars on the road by 2025, a little more than eight years from now.

The problem is that there are only about 200,000 electric cars registered in California right now; about 4 percent of the desired 15 percent.

There are only so many suckers.

Who else pays upwards of $30,000 for a car that can’t compete, functionally or economically, with a car that costs $15,000?

Yes, battery technology has improved. It is still not cost-competitive with gasoline.

Yes, range has improved. It is still far less than even the worst gas-guzzler’s.

And the gas guzzler can be refueled and back on the road in less than five minutes. There isn’t an electric car available that takes less than half an hour to recharge – and that’s if it’s hooked up to a high-voltage “supercharger.” Of which there are not very many, due chiefly to the very high cost of each one.

An entire “refueling” infrastructure for electric cars would need to be built in order to make electric cars somewhat practical.

Emphasis on somewhat.

We live in a fast food nation. Does anyone not afflicted with environmental rabies really believe other than a small minority of also-rabid electric car fanatics will put up with waiting for half an hour to recharge a car that will then travel maybe 100 or so miles before it needs to be plugged in for another half hour?

Again, that’s if you can find a high-voltage “supercharger.” If not, the wait will be hours.

Still, Autumn Burke and her fellow raccoons cannot seem to grok why electric cars haven’t gone mainstream.   

Possibly it is because she – like most people who buy electric cars – is both an “environmentalist” and in a position, financially, to contemplate the purchase of a $30,000-plus toy.

Which is what these things are, once you strip away the unctuous prattle about “zero emissions” (they’re not; I’ll explain below).

Porsches are also toys.

They are terrible in winter, have small trunks and some of them only carry two people. No one considers them practical or economical – and most people would think the idea of subsidizing their purchase (and mandating their manufacture) at least slightly tetched in the head.

Why is it any less tetched in the head to subsidize electric cars and mandate their manufacture?

They are not economical to own when their cost to buy is taken into account  – or practical to drive for most people. Most people not having the time to wait for 30 minute minimum recharges and needing a car that can travel more than 100 miles before needing to recharge.

Those are facts beyond dispute.

It’s why electric cars are a hard sell. Even the Teslas, which at least have looks and performance (not battery, acceleration) going for them. But – again – why are we forced to subsidize looks and performance? 

Oh. Yes. This “zero emissions” business. Because Global Warming and all.

But electric cars are not emissions free. Their emissions are simply emitted elsewhere. During their manufacture, for one. To extract from the earth the toxic elements (in large quantities) needed to make several hundred pounds of also-toxic battery pack per car.

The heavy equipment used to extract the ores and so on are not powered by batteries, either.

Nor the factories where the battery packs are made.

And even if they were, charging batteries requires electricity. It is produced, not by the energies of “environmentalists” but by the burning of oil and coal.

Emissions are emitted at the smokestack rather than the tailpipe.

Given the extremely low – literally almost nonexistent – tailpipe exhaust emissions  produced by any new car, vs. the plumes of fumes generated by smokestack utilities, it’s hard to grok how the environment benefits from increasing the demand for electricity by mandating the manufacture of millions of electric cars, which means more Bad Stuff emanating from smokestacks and factories and also diesel-powered heavy equipment.

But then, I am not an “environmentalist.”