The Biden administration is making America worse again. This time, his EPA plans to mandate electric vehicles make up two-thirds of new cars by 2032. Which is really, really destructive.

According to a Gallup poll released Wednesday, 41% of Americans said they would not buy an electric vehicle. But White House Climate Adviser Ali Zaidi doesn’t care about what dumb Americans think — he knows better.

“Whether you measure today’s announcements by the dollars saved, the gallons reduced, or the pollution that will no longer be pumped into the air, this is a win for the American people,” Zaidi gushed.

If this actually is a win for the American people, government wouldn’t have to force it on us. But the government and media assure us that more EVs are an unalloyed good.

As Thomas Sowell said, “there are no solutions, only trade-offs.” A vast expansion of EVs means a vast expansion of mining lithium, nickel, and cobalt. Mines which these same environmentalists aggressively oppose.

Most cobalt comes from Chinese-owned mines in the “Democratic” “Republic” of Congo, which have ravaged the environment and employ child slave labor. I guess EVs matter more than Black lives these days.

Nickel is available more widely, with major sources being Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Russia, and the Philippines. These mines create “plumes of sulfur dioxide choking the skies, churned earth blanketed in cancerous dust, and rivers running blood-red,” according to environmental watchdogs.

Most of the global lithium supply comes from extraction ponds in Australia, Chile, and Argentina. All require large quantities of water from arid regions, create massive mineral waste, and increase respiratory problems among residents.

(Don’t get me started on rare-earth elements.)

This reveals the big problem with all these so-called green initiatives: our leaders think of energy production as less a matter of physics than one of morality.

Slaves extracting minerals is somehow “good,” while well-paid workers drilling oil under strict environmental controls is “evil.” EVs are only clean and efficient for the end user in an advanced society; it’s not like upper-middle-class Tesla owners vacation in the Congo anyway.

It has ever been thus. Energy sources like hydroelectric, nuclear, and natural gas were initially sold as clean and green but became demonized the instant they turned a profit or revealed trade-offs.

Oil and coal are dirtier, but they’re cheap and efficient. Dams alter the environment but provide reliable power and mitigate flooding downstream. (They also create man-made reservoirs, which environmentalists alternately love and hate.) Nuclear produces vast amounts of energy and emits only water vapor but holds the risk of radiation and long-term waste storage.

Despite progressive activists pushing renewable energy sources as cure-alls, similar trade-offs exist. Currently, solar and wind produce minimal energy at very high cost, yet both are renewable and are a great option for certain applications (especially off-grid living). But they also fillet/roast birds and other wildlife, damage local ecosystems, etc. Pick your poison.

Powering our cars on sunshine and summer breezes sounds eco-friendly. But solar panels, windmills, and the batteries that store their energy require mined materials. A lot of them. Chinese communists and Congolese autocrats think this is great. Biden seems to agree. His EV mandate just means the Democrats are endorsing a lot more slave labor and strip mines.

Published in Energy, Environment