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Joe Biden: Destroying the Planet
Joe Biden claims to be saving the planet with his big all-electric vehicle push, but the reality is just the opposite. One sentence caught my eye:
“Blowing up a mountain isn’t green, no matter how much marketing spin people put on it,” Max Wilbert, an activist protesting a proposed lithium mine site in Nevada, told The New York Times in May.
I thought to myself, Why doesn’t this guy protest electric vehicles, the biggest reason for the increased mining?
I’m a hybrid fan myself. The batteries are much smaller than in all-electric vehicles, and the mileage is significantly better than a gasoline-only car. Still, I can’t wait to see the range on a truck powerful enough to haul a 30-foot camper or a 40-foot RV.
In a related story, Biden is directly adding to the destruction.
Frankly, I’m less bothered by this because government should show the general public just how great all-electric cars are. However, forcing them on the general public is where I draw the line. He should just step aside and let the public decide, and the market respond accordingly.
Published in Technology
The whole solar and wind and electric car push reminds me of vegans: It is about feeling good about one’s self.
See, to grow crops, little fuzzy animals die. Lots of them. Ones with faces. But vegans ignore that. They don’t know and they don’t care.
Same with this: The electric car people don’t care.
I agree wholeheartedly about hybrids. They really are great. My wife’s Ford Escape hybrid gets about 600 miles per fill. They require zero electricity from our already overstressed grid, as they make their own electricity! Our car is sharp as a tack as it moves effortlessly between the electric power and the gasoline engine. Plus it has all the cameras and safety radar beeping, internet hot spot, good handling, and, as an SUV, it is quite functional for hauling the occasional large load.
These new all electric pick up trucks have got to have huge batteries. Our ability to produce electricity with minimum carbon fuel is nowhere close to what we need, unless we invent more localized nuclear power generators with recyclable fuel. If the push for all-electric vehicles leads to a vastly expanded and more localized power grid, that would be a significant achievement for many reasons.
I think hybrids are the future. Each wheel having its own motor seems the best way to go. Computer controlled traction. Safer cars all around that you can refill with the current system.
Well. I’ve invested a bunch in lithium, copper and uranium since the Greenie Weenies are nuts on the topic of CO2.
It’s hard to know how to weigh that kind of environmental damage against that caused by the use of fossil-fuel powered internal combustion engines, when it comes down to one kind of emotion-based scare-mongering against the other. That’s why it’s good for government to go easy on subsidized, mandated technologies and let market forces help source it out. If we ban or regulate specific harmful activities, and then let market forces sort out the rest, it’s a lot better than a big, green electric car program. It still a crude method for dealing with the problems–the bans and regulations will not always be proportional to the harms–but still it’s a lot superior to the Democrats’ preferred methods.
I suppose you can make the argument that centralization and turning our manufacturing over to China will reduce GDP growth so much we’ll use less energy, but I don’t think that’s their argument.
I’ll just chime in and say I really like hybrids. When I was a claims adjuster I’d always try and get a hybrid. So good. I could just drive forever without stopping! It isn’t a social policy issue or because I love the environment (I don’t like waste but it isn’t about being green)– when you make a good, gas efficient, vehicle people will want to buy them over gas guzzlers. In this case, it really is the market that helps us protect the environment. Aren’t we beating all of the climate change Kyoto/Paris targets? It is the market.
Don’t force people to cut down more trees and strip-mine more resources when it isn’t efficient to do so. It isn’t that trees or certain mineral rich areas are sacred, it is just that we have a more efficient process for deciding how many resources to use, and it is the market. The government distorts that and makes it artificially cheaper to use precious environmental resources in an inefficient manner.
Maybe, maybe not. How about the use of (in some places) children and slave labor?
There is that, too.
When environmental regulation comes into conflict with safety regulation, it’s often a good time for a bowl of popcorn.
How long will that executive order last?
Can you stick 8′ 2×4’s in it?
Until the next Republican President – maybe . . .
My criterion is if can you fit a standard sheet of plywood in it . . .
That’s why I keep buying Chevy Suburbans.
For the one time in every 10 years that I would need a vehicle big enough to carry a 2×4 stud or 4×8 sheet of plywood (uncut) I can rent one of the Home Depot pickups for $20+ gas per hour. You guys are very funny. Ha!
I need one more often than that.
What? The Smart Car didn’t fit?
Doesn’t even fit ME.
I was gung ho for hybrid until I learned most don’t have a spare tire. That worries me. Wherever I trade my car in, the new one will be over road car. Hybrids get better mileage in the city. Highway driving doesn’t use the battery as. much. Now I’m looking at large SUVs.
A lot of new cars don’t have spares these days. As for the mileage, it is a weird feeling getting better mileage in the city than on the highway. Still, the worst mileage I got in my hybrid was 36 MPG – on the Interstate, doing 85 MPH in Summer with the AC going full blast . . .
As for the spare tire…run-flat tires are the cat’s meow. If you are out in the boonies just slow down a bit and you’ve got 50 miles of driving flat to find a repair. Hybrids are the best technology going right now. I love that they make their own electricity totally off the grid.
It’s a really cool technology. The battery is tiny compared to an all-electric car. I believe my Camry can only go a few miles on the battery alone. But that’s not it’s purpose. The battery assists the gasoline engine when accelerating, and gets charged when the car coasts or brakes. On level ground, the two engines “take turns” powering the vehicle forward. Here’s a RAV-4 hybrid display, the same as mine:
When the motor runs, you’ll see red arrows going to the wheel and the electric motor (which is actually a motor/generator), and green arrows going to the battery. When coasting or braking, the motor is off and you have green arrows going from the wheels to the battery. In the picture, only the battery is powering the front wheels . . .
Update: And the battery is powering the rear wheels, as the RAV-4 is all-wheel drive. My Camry only has one electric motor/generator, the Rav-4 has 2, based on the picture. Maybe I should have taken a picture of my display . . .
@Stad said, “It’s a really cool technology. ”
I agree. I can’t get over the lack of a spare tire and haven’t found out if they come with run flats. However, Grandpa Tinpot is rushing through a regulation changing CAFE standards and requiring them to be in place by 2026. Let’s go Brandon. I think I am going to buy a big ass SUV instead. I have started studying them. Since I was planning on buying the midsize, I hadn’t studied the large ones. Now I need to decide, two rows or three.
Pssst! See comment #15.
Did it! Got my Let’s Go Brandon v6 large SUV. Gamecock garnet. Honda Passport Touring. More bells than a cathedral, more whistles than an NFL umpire crew. Do I have the gas mileage of the of hybrid? No. My gas tank is almost 20 gallons. I won’t notice. Take that, greenie weenie Democrats.
Two-fer: oldest and youngest daughters joined me to talk me into buying it, after all, I haul my grandkids a lot. Oldest fell in love with a blue Pilot and traded her minivan for it. The Pilot is mostly the same as the Passport, just three rows of seats, third row stored in floor unless needed, and about 6 inches longer. More Let’s Go Brandon.
My husband took it all in stride. Just grabbed the checkbook and went to the credit union to pay off his car about six months early to make way for my car payments. What a guy!
The sight at Honda yesterday:
Excellent!
Hmffp. All I did was get a “Let’s Go Brandon” sticker for my back windshield.
Anything worth doing is worth doing well.
Also, I traded in my almost 12 year old CRV. It was time.
That’s where my wife put hers . . .