The Hidden Cost of Battery Failure

Opponents of the transportation carbon cycle – in which we pull carbon from the ground in the form of fossil fuels and put it into the air in the form of exhaust from mechanized transport – tend to justify their advocacy with appeals to the oft-refuted "greenhouse" theory of “climate change.” (Of course, if the climate cultists really still believed in the “greenhouse” theory, we still would be calling it “global warming.”) But there's another cycle which should worry us more, one that is real, deleterious to our freedom and prosperity, and causing geopolitical centers of gravity to rearrange to America's detriment.

As part of the Inflation Reduction Act (shouldn't that name be considered disinformation?), President Biden created a tax credit for American car manufacturers of E.V. battery packs. This subsidy was pegged by the CBO to cost $30.6 billion over ten years. Industry analysts now estimate this credit (a hole in the tax revenue the middle class will be taxed to fill) at $136B, and being worth up to $5,500 per new vehicle to the manufacturers.

Of what are these batteries made? Lithium, a particularly toxic substance. Interestingly,

GM announced plans to invest $650 million in a Nevada lithium mine, operated by Lithium Americas, a firm whose largest shareholder has ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

E.V.s are not particularly popular, hence the subsidy. Overlooked in the transportation cycle (and so the car repair/replacement decisions of insurance companies after an accident) is the impact of car crashes, of which in America, 5,250,837 happen over the course of a year. No, not the fires that can’t be put out until the vehicle is a total loss and your house burned to the ground, but minor fender-benders in which the very expensive, highly subsidized, environmentally catastrophic battery pack is scratched. Although many E.V. manufacturers continue to insist that "their battery packs were repairable" in such situations, "many are unwilling to share key data with third-party insurers to help assess damage."

This leads to repairable packs becoming a total loss and the manufacturer gaining a subsidy for the new battery pack that isn’t gained if the data is shared and the battery pack repaired. If that E.V. is totaled by the insurance company before it has traveled very far, the entire purpose of the E.V. fails, because you’ll need to drive "13,500 miles (21,725 km) before you're doing less harm to the environment than a gas-guzzling [car]."

Although lithium ion (LI) battery packs can be recycled, only 12 percent of them seem to be in the E.U., the highest-performer at this point, and only 40 percent of the total battery materials can be recycled under current schemes. In ten years, the vast majority of LI batteries wind up in the ground. Even those with only a scratch.

Which is to say, we are subsidizing car manufacturers to make new LI batteries who are incentivized not to make available information that could result in repairing existing batteries, resulting in the production of new batteries, more subsidies, more batteries in landfills, and -- don't forget -- more mining revenue to the C.C.P.

This is a far more-damaging cycle than a bit of CO2 in the air. Cui bono?

The 'Energy Revolution' Will Not Be Forthcoming

Do yourself a favor and watch this presentation delivered by the Manhattan Institute's Mark P. Mills entitled "The energy transition delusion: inescapable mineral realities." It is data heavy, but also a gripping and common sensible account of how and why the common environmentalist account of a "great transition" in the next few years, away from hydrocarbon based energy and forward to renewable energy just isn't going to happen.

A comment upon the title: Mills explains that by "delusion" he means that anyone who confidently proclaims that in a few short years the entire world will be Norway (which gets the vast majority of its energy via renewable resources, principally hydro dams) is likely "suffering some modest delusion about what the possibilities are in the mining sector." For Mills, "the whole thing distills to mining," and mankind's mining capacity -- for minerals like cobalt and nickel, which are essential for large battery production -- is the bottleneck for such a transition. Without those batteries -- for E.V.s, factories, residences, etc. -- the environmentalist vision of the future is absolutely impossible.

And yet, the production increase which the predicted transition would necessitate is an increase "not by 10 or 20 percent, not by 50 percent, not 200 percent, but from 700 to 7,000 percent," and over the next twenty years. If this were to be achieved, says Mills, it would be "the largest single increase in demand or supply of metals in all of human history. It's never happened." And, judging purely by the projected investment in mining over the next few decades -- it isn't projected to increase 700 percent, let alone 7,000 percent -- it isn't going to happen at all.

But there's a lot more in here than that point, so give this a watch. You won't regret it.

Panglossian Pipedreams of a 'Green' Superpower

As a callow 22-year-old recent (ten pound Pom) immigrant to Australia, I travelled to sub-tropical Townsville where I got a job with the Queensland Main Roads Department. I was dispatched to an encampment outside the small town of Cardwell, one hundred miles further north; where, nearby, a long new stretch of the Pacific Highway was being laid alongside the existing crumbling road. The new road, as the old, had just one lane either way. I asked the foreman why the opportunity was not taken to build a road with four lanes. His answer has stuck with me. You don’t understand, he said. And added, words to the effect, Australia is a big country with few people. We build what we can afford.

If ever that grounded view had legs within the Australian government, "climate-change" hysteria has driven it out. On the drawing board are 13,200 kilometres of new transmission lines to carry renewable energy from a vast panoply of yet-to-be-built wind and solar farms. Lots of steel, aluminium and concrete in them wires and pylons (about 40,000 of them) and many skilled hands needed to erect them and many landowners’ palms to grease. Infeasible? Yes, though it is the least of it. A projected 28,000 kms of new transmission lines will be required, apparently, if Australia is to fulfill its destiny of becoming a (green) “hydrogen super power.”

You couldn’t make it up. For those filled with zealotry to reset energy generation, one pipedream is built on another. They “have both feet firmly planted in mid-air,” to employ Francis Schaeffer’s description of moral relativists among churchmen. And, to boot, their Panglossian ambitions are unbridled: eliminate all coal, oil, and gas. Cull cows and sheep, or else make their belches methane-free. Transform industrial processes to eliminate their "greenhouse gas" emissions. Convert ships to run on hydrogen. Insulate the stock of all houses and commercial buildings. Ration power, precisely when it’s too hot or cold for human comfort. The list goes on, including the vainglorious ambition of running all cars, trucks, and buses on batteries or green hydrogen.

Visions of the Annointed.

The Electric Vehicle Council is a national body representing the electrical vehicle (EV) industry in Australia. In mid-October 2022, it reported that EVs now account for 3.39 percent of new vehicle sales; up from a little over 2 percent the year before. Apparently, the Australian Capital Territory, the seat of government and home to only 1.7 percent of the national population but many federal public servants, leads the nation with 9.5 percent of new car sales. Where white-collar, richer-than-average people live, there you’ll find virtue-signalling EVs trundling around well-to-do suburbs. This comment made me happy:

It’s great to see so much momentum behind EV sales in Australia, but to put our 3.4 percent in context – Germany sits at 26 percent, the U.K. at 19 percent, and California at 13 percent. The global average is 8.6 percent so Australia has a long, long way to come.

When lemmings are heading for the edge of a cliff being a straggler ain’t so bad. Moreover, to the chagrin of the Electric Vehicle Council new vehicle sales present an over-rosy picture of stark reality. Only 0.12 percent of light vehicles on Australian roads are EVs. And, bet your life, that percentage would be much lower, if it were based on miles travelled.

RepuTex Energy is the firm used by Australia’s Labor government for modelling its 'Powering Australia’ plan. One projection, now quietly dropped, was that household electricity bills would fall by $275 by 2025. Not quite. They have since risen sharply and Australia’s Treasury department forecasts them rising still further, by over $1000 by June 2024. Hopeless at predicting electricity bills. Trust them on predicting the usage of EVs?

Follow RepuTex’s and Labor’s yellow brick road. They say that the number of light EVs on the road will grow from next to nothing now to 3.8 million by 2030. There will be 1800 new public fast-charging stations, and 100,000 businesses and 3.8 million households (a third or so of all households) will have charging capacity.

Official figures show that 18.6 million light vehicles were registered in January 2021. At current growth rates, approximately 3 million more will be registered in 2030. Assuming about 800,000 to 900,000 million light vehicles are scrapped each year, EVs would have to average 37 percent of all new vehicle sales over the whole period from now until 2030 to reach the projected 3.8 million. It’s sheer unadulterated bunkum.

Each of these 3.8 million owners will not only have wanted to buy a new EV, and have had the wherewithal, but will also have to have managed to employ an electrician to upgrade their electrics (and, as applicable, the electrics of their whole apartment building) and install a charging point. Which electrician will also need to have checked how many such charging points the local substation can handle. Then there’s that pressing need to string out fast-charging stations right across the country. And, apropos of the wisdom of that Queensland foreman of whom I spoke, Australia has a large landmass and a dispersed population.

There’s also the revenue dilemma. Each litre of petrol or diesel sold is taxed at 46 cents. Over the next three years this will bring in about $15 billion dollars per year. EVs do more than make this disappear they negatively impact revenue. There is no 5 percent tariff on EV’s, as there is generally on cars, and they can be provided to employees free of fringe-benefits tax which is payable for conventional cars. What to do?

One thing for sure, a Labor government won’t give up revenue. So many things to spend money on. I suspect a road-user charge will be introduced to replace fuel excise but, at the same time, petroleum-fuelled cars will be penalised with emission taxes. The Greens (party) want it and Labor needs the Greens to pass legislation in the Senate. Where and when will it all end? Not in the realisation of pipedreams. Think, instead, of an ocean of tears that not even the wizards of Oz can make disappear.

Swiss to EV Drivers: Stay Home

How's this for the least shocking headline of the year: "Swiss look to ban use of electric cars over the winter to save energy." From Der Spiegel:

Switzerland could be the first country to impose driving bans on e-cars in an emergency to ensure energy security. Several media report this unanimously and refer to a draft regulation on restrictions and bans on the use of electrical energy. Specifically, the paper says: “The private use of electric cars is only permitted for absolutely necessary journeys (e.g. professional practice, shopping, visiting the doctor, attending religious events, attending court appointments).” A stricter speed limit is also planned highways.

Not shocking, of course, first because much of the world is in the midst of an energy crisis at the moment, brought about in part by the war in Ukraine and in part by the West's increasing reliance on unreliable "renewable energy." There just isn't enough juice on the grid to force everyone into electric cars, which fascist environmentalists hope to achieve within the next 10-15 years. In fact, E.V. manufacturers have been saying the same, at least the honest ones.

But, second, because another Keen-for-Green state, namely California, called upon E.V. owners not to charge their vehicles this past summer for the same reason.

So in our Electric Vehicle future, you can look forward to not be able to drive in the winter or the summer. Or we can stick with the gas- and diesel-driven cars we already have, and which are already the most environmentally friendly option. Just ask Toyota Motor Corporation president Akio Toyoda, who has said:

The more EVs we build, the worse carbon dioxide gets… When politicians are out there saying, ‘Let’s get rid of all cars using gasoline,’ do they understand this?

Unfortunately they do not. Or, worse... maybe they do.

New Nukes, More Nukes, not No Nukes

The war in Ukraine created a new energy reality. Russian petrochemicals, including natural gas once bound for Europe, are now being sold to India, China and other customers in Asia. Offering discounts out of necessity, Russia has displaced 'gray market' Iranian and even Gulf oil in Asian countries. The distribution has rearranged the map of buyers and sellers, but there is little doubt that the market for petrochemicals has shrunk for a long time to come.

The world is reeling from the economic impact of steeply rising fuel costs but bureaucrats at the International Energy Agency (IEA) can scarcely contain their delight at the shortage of 'fossil fuels.' They hope to avoid any further investment in petroleum and meet the entire energy shortfall through increases in renewables. "Global fossil fuel use has grown alongside GDP since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century: putting this rise into reverse will be a pivotal moment in energy history... Today’s growth rates for deployment of solar PV, wind, EVs and batteries, if maintained, would lead to a much faster transformation than projected in the Stated Policies Scenario, although this would require supportive policies not just in the early leading markets for these technologies but across the world." In other words subsidies and incentives for renewables will still be needed to save the day.

First World problems.

Prominently missing from the IEA's list of preferred energy technologies is nuclear power, which despite a high regulatory cost burden that must be capitalized is nevertheless "cost competitive with renewable generation when capital cost is in the region of 2000-3000 ($/KW)." It is extremely reliable and insensitive to fluctuations in fuel costs because the fissile material is replenished so infrequently. Moreover the big reactors -- unlike renewables -- are 'load following', that is to say able to increase or decrease their output in response to the demands of the grid. Because they are so useful, planned nuclear power capacity worldwide will increase steadily with about 55 reactors under construction, mostly in the Asian region.

Nuclear power technology is also advancing steadily. "More than a dozen advanced reactor designs are in various stages of development." The most mainstream of the new designs are the Generation IVs. The Generation IV International Forum (GIF), initiated by the US Department of Energy in 2000, has 13 member countries (Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, Japan, South Korea, South Africa, Switzerland, China, Russia, Australia, U.K., U.S.A.) plus Euratom jointly developing next generation nuclear technology. Six designs have been readied so far. They feature:

Perhaps the most exciting development is the availability of commercial small nuclear reactors, which are perhaps the most tested kind of all. Many hundreds of smaller power reactors have been built for naval use accumulating over 12,000 reactor years of experience. They are inherently safer. "This is largely due to their higher surface area to volume (and core heat) ratio compared with large units. It means that a lot of the engineering for safety including heat removal in large reactors is not needed in the small reactors." But their biggest advantage is they can be located—even airlifted—anywhere, even where the local grid is limited or nonexistent.

By contrast solar PV, wind, EVs and batteries require a smart grid to smooth out supply and demand. Solar farms built in North Africa, for example, need huge, kilometers-long undersea power cables to send electricity to overcast Europe. Called the EuroAfrica Interconnector, it will have 1000 MW capacity in the first stage, only equal to an average nuclear power plant. But unlike a nuclear power plant, which can be securely located near the user, a solar array in North Africa has to be secured along a long, vulnerable line of communications across national boundaries.

Given these factors, why aren't Green activists turning more to nuclear power to redress the energy crisis exacerbated by the Ukraine war? The counterintuitive reason is that cheap and reliable nuclear power would enable wasteful capitalist consumption and undo the Green agenda. Environmentalist Paul Ehrlich said in 1975:

In fact, giving society cheap, abundant energy at this point would be the moral equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun. With cheap, abundant energy, the attempt clearly would be made to pave, develop, industrialize, and exploit every last bit of the planet—a trend that would inevitably lead to a collapse of the life-support systems upon which civilization depends.

Cheap nuclear power would allow ordinary people, even in the Third World, to afford big screen TVs, game consoles, electric vehicles, lights, air conditioning, etc., all of which in the Leftist view would spell disaster.

The Catch-22 is that hardcore Greens prefers power to be expensive in order to cut consumption. As an op-ed in the Seattle Times put it: "High gas prices? They’re just what we need." The Green nightmare is billions of Africans living like Americans. The advantage of solar and wind over nuclear is it sets a hard limit on the lifestyle it will support. In that way Americans would live like Africans. As filmmaker Robert Stone put it: "as you provide societies with more energy it enables them to do more environmental destruction. The idea of tying us to the natural forces the wind and the sun was very appealing in that it would limit and constrain human development."

For the radical Greens, that's a good thing.

How Do We Stop California from Throwing Its Weight Around?

California is the American Left's biggest asset and its biggest liability. It is a liability because it clearly demonstrates to the world what unfettered "progressive" governance looks like: out-of-control crime, through-the-roof taxation, an inhumane regulatory regime, insane gas prices, the constant threat of blackouts, and a government so divorced from reality that it is unable to actually accomplish anything.

If you need proof on the last point, check out the New York Times' recent deep-dive into the state's "multi-billion-dollar nightmare" of a high-speed rail system, which has seen its cost projections rise from $33 billion to $113 billion, is currently costing $1.8 million a day, and which will almost certainly never be completed. And for all the Left's bellyaching about "income inequality," the Golden State is the poster child for that concept. As Victor Davis Hanson once wrote,

By many criteria, 21st-century California is both the poorest and the richest state in the union. Almost a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line. Another fifth is categorized as near the poverty level — facts not true during the latter 20th century. A third of the nation’s welfare recipients now live in California. The state has the highest homeless population in the nation (135,000). About 22 percent of the nation’s total homeless population reside in the state — whose economy is the largest in the U.S., fueling the greatest numbers of American billionaires and high-income zip codes.

Unsurprisingly, Californians of all political persuasions have been fleeing in droves, which has led to the state's losing a congressional seat (and therefore a vote in the electoral college) in the wake of the 2020 census. But even with that population shift, California is still the largest state in the union, the 400-poound gorilla of the U.S.A., which is why it remains an asset. It has the ability to throw a lot of weight around.

Sacramento's acting out again.

Case in point: this past August, the California Air Resources Board approved Governor Gavin Newsom's directive banning the sale of carbon-emitting (that is, gasoline- and diesel-driven) vehicles in the Golden State by the year 2035. This will have major repercussions for the automobile industry nationwide. Manufacturers, unwilling to be locked out of the California market and its 39 million perspective customers, will shift their development priorities towards EVs. So if this rule remains in effect, it will be increasingly difficult to purchase a non-E.V. as 2035 draws near.

There's another reason that California's environmental regulations is putting pressure on auto-manufacturers: in 2009 the state was granted a waiver by the Obama administration regarding the Clean Air Act which allows it to set harsher emissions limits than the national standard, an authority the Trump administration attempted to revoke and the Biden White House reestablished. Seventeen states have tied their emissions standards to California's, with New York State recently taking the plunge. New York governor Kathy Hochul said that, in light of government subsidies for charging stations and vehicles themselves, “you will have no more excuses” not to buy an E.V. The Wall Street Journal's editorial board correctly translates this sentiment: "You will have no more choice."

One state, at least, is trying to abstract itself from this scheme. Virginia signed onto Sacramento's emissions standards in 2021, under former governor Ralph Northam. That same year saw the election of Governor Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, whose tenure in office has seen him declare war on the destructive policies of his predecessor. He has signed executive orders banning Critical Race Theory, rescinding the state's school mask mandate, and beginning the process of withdrawing Virginia from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (another plot to remove environmental regulation from the realm of democratic oversight). And now he's turned his attention towards bringing emissions standards back home to Richmond.

Youngkin's 2022 state energy plan, released earlier this month, called on state legislators to reverse the alignment with California, and Republicans in the GOP-controlled House of Delegates of delegates are answering the call. Any repeal, however, will have to make it through the state senate, where the Democrats are in the majority.

Still, we wish Governor Youngkin well in his efforts, along with the attorneys general of the seventeen Republican-led states which are currently suing the Environmental Protection Agency in the hopes of getting the Golden State's Clean Air Act waiver revoked. After all, if Leftists are successful in turning the whole country into California, there will be nowhere left to flee to.

Diary of an Acclimatised Beauty: Concoursing

Surprisingly I couldn’t get anyone to go join me at this year’s Salon Privé. It’s not a ‘must-do' but I didn’t expect a flat ‘no’ across the board. Daddy and Judith are in Italy, my school chums are everywhere but London, and even my ex, Patrick, is in New York watching tennis. So it will just be me and my Gemma Chan squiggle dress.

I’m hoping the tone will not be dour given the likely end of the fuel-powered car. It’s early days but with California promising to ban this planet-killing transport, the world is likely to follow. And follow they should. I was an early adopter having purchased a Tesla car and solar panels well before Elon Musk bailed on California. As to blaming cars for the demise of our planet… Daddy and I have gone round and round on this subject. He likes to remind me that Britain was once a peninsula of continental Europe until the Channel was flooded by rising sea levels about 8,000 years ago—well before cars. But as I’ve explained to him—we can’t just ignore the science, no matter what history says.

This way to the egress, Boris.

I budgeted two hours drive to Blenheim which should be sufficient except for traffic getting out of London due to all the stupid bike lanes. Of course I’m not saying that bicycling is stupid, only putting so many lanes in an already-congested city has just made for more traffic. And stalled traffic means more CO2. Plus no one is really using the lanes anyway. So was it any wonder Boris got caught cycling outside of his own proscribed covid-zone? It was also his bright idea that bikes become ‘as commonplace as black cabs and red buses’. I mean, really! No one would get anywhere.

It took me a while to find the non-preferential parking, which meant a ten-minute walk to the main entrance on one’s choice of grass or gravel. UGH! Obviously some man with wide feet and a love for sensible shoes had managed this. Making a quick trip to the ladies' I sorted myself out, but I overheard complaints about people having taken the train to Hanborough where there was no taxi rank. Seriously? It was the car event of the season and everyone was walking way more than they wished.

Making my way to the gallery I met an American who introduced himself as ‘Ken’. I was hoping he’d be a candidate to talk about making cars carbon-neutral but he seemed only to want to talk about his ’54 Corvette mule car that he’d shipped over. Oh how he went on about this particular 'vette—and his other 250 cars. I had half a mind to ask if he, like Prince Charles, had any that ran on leftover wine and cheese but thought better of it. My guess of course, was no because he mentioned if you’re lucky you’ll see flames come out of the back end. FLAMES! Not exactly carbon-neutral. I tried easing into a meaningful conversation but it was no use. He didn’t know who I was, he didn’t know who my clients were, and he was impressed by shooting flames.

By contrast the next person I met was Bill Ford, of the Model-T Fords. The Fords didn’t pre-date the Churchills but at an event like this he was no less impressive. Also he knew who I was, and announced that he, too, was an environmentalist. Why had I spent so much time talking to Mr Fire-Butt? Bill had grown up with many thinking his family the enemy. To a lesser degree I had carried the guilt of a father who was the top geophysical engineer in the oil industry. Talk about kismet! I was sure we’d partner in some way to move toward carbon neutrality in the automotive industry. This was exciting. I quickly dazzled him with the work I’d done, and my near-encyclopaedic knowledge of the issue at hand. He didn’t interrupt so I continued on explaining my position and the path we needed to take in order to avoid extinction.

Don't blame me, Greenies.

He led me into the Aviva Pavilion and excused himself briefly. I texted my father to tell him the good news. Daddy texted back ‘Hold your horses’.

What?? ‘THIS IS DIVINE PROVIDENCE!’ I texted back.

‘I doubt it’. Was his response. ‘I’m not saying you can’t find common ground and achieve your end but talk to him about something YOU know. Like traffic jams. And how Boris has it all wrong. Tell him that four billion clean cars is still four billion cars on the road. Tell him that restrictions on movement in the name of global warming is not the answer’.

What? OMG NO! Daddy had it all wrong. When Bill came back I told him I owned one of the first Teslas. Bill beamed and said ‘Then you understand! Clean cars alone are not the solution’.

‘Uhhhhh…correct!’ I said. ‘Four billion clean cars is still four billion cars’.

‘YES!’ He roared.

‘And…restrictions on movement in the name of global warming is not the answer’.

‘THANK YOU!’ He said. ‘You know, the freedom to move about the country is by far the greatest thing my grandfather, Henry, created. I aim to preserve that, so obviously I’m against banning cars, and we both agree that more bikes and more smart cars is just—more. Unfortunately some are trying to ban the very thing my grandfather created—the freedom to move about the country. If we allow this next they’ll be rationing energy. Yet global gridlock will stifle productivity. Maybe we need underground roads.

‘Correct’. I said again, baffled.

'Would you be interested in partnering with me on an interconnected system of intelligent transport?'

’‘I would indeed’, I said. And that is all I said. Because clearly I could not have said it better myself. Wait 'til I tell Daddy...

EVs Down Under: No Bang for the Buck

I help my next-door neighbour out if she wants something done that only an electric drill can manage. Last Australian winter she bought a panel heater for her bedroom and asked whether I would affix it to the wall, which I did. A little time later she said that it kept tripping the safety switch. Ours is a 1973-built apartment building. Not among the youngest; not among the oldest in Sydney. The electrics were wanting when it came to handling the addition of a mere $250, 1,500W panel heater.

She had to call in an electrician to fix the problem; who, for the princely price of $600, put a contraption on her fuse box. Charging an electric car at home overnight apparently needs 7.2kW; almost five-times the power which stymied my neighbour's panel heater. Obviously, my building is not fit for purpose. How costly it would be to make it so; I simply don’t know. Nothing is yet out there to tell us. There is no clamouring of demand to pique enquiry. Incidentally, for the open road, rapid charging ranges from 50kW to 350kW. Better get those wind turbines a-spinning.

Would that i'twere so simple.

A friend shared with me an account by an electrical engineer who, for understandable reasons, prefers to remain anonymous. He’d been asked whether some electric-car charging points could be installed in a large apartment building in Melbourne’s central business district. Part of his account goes something like this:

Do you ever get the feeling that ambitions among those demonising fossil fuels are light years beyond our capacity to deliver? In the past I tended to think of queues for elective procedures at public hospitals as being preeminent in provoking unrealisable ambitions. Whenever, and in whatever country, there were inevitably long queues and some shameless politicians promising to spend other people’s money to slash their length. Two insuperable problems. Money doesn’t conjure up experienced doctors, nurses and technicians. And second, and more intractable, demand is never sated when those enjoying unhealthy lifestyles meet free remedial treatment.

That was in the past. Now, nothing compares, or has ever compared, to the boundless and fanciful ambitions of those intent on healing the planet. Electric vehicles (EVs) are, of course, only one facet of the delusional outer limits within which they abide.

In its 'Powering Australia Plan', the Australian government projects that the proportion of light EVs on the road will increase from 0.2 percent now to 15 percent (i.e., to 3.8 million vehicles) by 2030. Financial incentives and new charging infrastructure will do the trick, apparently. And the infrastructure: 1,800 new public fast-charging stations, and 100,000 businesses and 3.8 million households with charging capacity. All these figures have been pulled out of a hat.

For example, 3.8 million households represent about 35 percent of the projected number of about 11 million Australian households by 2030. I’ll guess none of the 43 households in my aging building will have one; and ditto for lots of other aging apartment buildings, and the millions of houses without garages. As it is, the vast majority of electric cars on the road are swanning around posh inner-city suburbs; a few miles at a time. You won’t find many, if any, in working-class suburbs and none traveling the 550 miles between Sydney and Melbourne. Let’s face it, the worthless promises of politicians have reached new heights of self-deception.

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I turned my mind to CO2. Just how much does a conventional car exhale? The answer from the American EIA is 19.64 pounds per gallon of petrol. Of course, it’s a U.S. gallon (= 128 fluid ounces) which for some reason lost in the mists of time is different from an imperial gallon (=160 fluid ounces). The babel of different measuring sticks, tons versus tonnes for example, can complicate calculations. Traps for the unwary. Lucky for me, my school learning paid off. While there are some standards which have 12 ounces to the pound; 16 applies uniformly in Australia, Britain and the U.S., where a pound is the same pound.

CO2 in the atmosphere is measured in units of one billion tonnes. Such a tonne is 1000 kg or 2,204.6 lbs, compared with 2,240 lbs of the imperial ton. Though, confusingly, gigatons and gigatonnes of CO2 are used interchangeably, both meaning the latter; written for short as GtCO2.

According to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (on the physical science), issued in 2021, the cumulative emissions from 1850 to 2019 are roughly 2,390 GtCO2. Global (fossil-fuel) emissions are estimated at 37 GtCO2 (rounded) in the year 2019; that is, before Covid hit, and had been inexorably rising year-by-year. Lofty emission-cutting ambitions notwithstanding.

Can you spell "insufficient capacity"?

Displaying prescience par excellence, the IPCC claim that if cumulative emission rise by another 1,350 GtCO2, we have only a 50 percent chance of avoiding 2.0°C and more of warming. For sure, 1,350 GtCO2 seems like a lot. However, it will be breached in 37 years, by 2059, even if emissions stabilise at their level of 2019. And they won’t. Fondness for coal among the Chinese and Indians will see to that. Be alarmed greenies, sweaty times ahead and way before 2059.

What to do? We all have to do our bit, is the catchcry of the miniscule. Apropos the Australian government’s fantasy of having 3.8 million EVs on the road by 2030. Based on 2019-20 data, each vehicle on the road uses on average 441 (U.S.) gallons of petrol each year; incidentally, about a third less than in the U.S. Assuming, generously, that EVs will do as much travelling as conventional vehicles, which they won’t, this will save 1,677 million gallons per year. As each gallon accounts for 19.64 lbs of CO2 emissions, a bit of arithmetic shows a saving of 15 million tonnes of atmospheric CO2. This would equal just 0.04 percent of the emissions of 37 GtCO2 in 2019.

Ergo, in the very unlikely event that the Australian mouse succeeds in roaring, it’ll have bugger-all effect. And, by the way, how about the CO2 emitted to make the electricity to fuel the EVs? Wind and sun, they say, will do the trick. In such manner is ruse built upon ruse.

Piercing the Electric Car Fantasy

Electric cars are having a big moment right now, with the supercilious wonderboy of the Biden administration Pete Buttigieg proclaiming last week that we could escape the pain at the gas pump if more people could “access” electric cars (EVs). Very telling that he chose to say “access” rather than “afford” electric cars, because without the $7,500 tax credit, very few middle-class people can afford to buy an electric car. And very few middle-class people do: the lion’s share of “clean energy” subsidies are captured by high-income households.

But press beyond the typical economic illiteracy of leftists like Buttigieg who think having the government pay billions in subsidies makes something “cheaper,” and note that electrons aren’t printed out of thin air by the Federal Reserve like our fast-depreciating currency. With electricity rates rising fastest in those places that have overemphasized “renewable” energy such as California or Germany, it's not clear that consumers will save much by driving a more expensive electric car and paying higher utility rates. And that’s if you can still fill it up with electrons whenever you want to. During recent power crunches, which are threatening to become endemic in the U.S. under the current policies of the Biden apparatchiks, grid operators have asked EV owners not to charge their vehicles in the evening, when power demand is highest and the time of day when most working people will want to charge their cars.

The truth hurts.

Right now, electric vehicles make up about 1 percent of America’s car fleet. If they pose challenges for the electric grid already, what will the challenges look like if the EV fleet reaches 50 percent of the auto fleet as Biden proposes? No wonder Elon Musk says we’ll need to expand electric power generation by 30 percent or more to meet the demand of a larger EV fleet on the road. And yet it is supremely uncouth to point out that electrons for EV batteries are generated mostly from fossil fuels right now, and thus EVs may not deliver a net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions when a proper life-cycle analysis is done.

Economist Mark Perry notes that nearly two-thirds of current U.S. electricity is generated by coal and natural gas, and the figure rises to 86 percent if you include nuclear power, which environmentalists irrationally hate and are trying to eliminate. When you raise this problem, you are met with a hail of green indignation about how we’re starting on an “incredible transition” to a carbon-free energy future (a phrase Biden and energy secretary Jennifer Granholm have both used repeatedly with the unsettling grin of the chiliastic fanatic). “EVs are just an early step toward the carbon-free nirvana, which is just a few hundred thousand more windmills and square miles of solar power away!”

A recent little-noticed report from Volvo punctures this green myth, even though the very green Volvovians try very hard to obscure this conclusion. The report notes what a number of neutral analysts have pointed out for some time now: EVs are more material-intensive than old-fashioned gasoline-powered cars, requiring more steel, aluminum, copper, and other rare earth minerals and specialty products like magnets that must be mined (which environmentalists oppose) and require an energy-intensive process to manufacture into shiny EVs. And that’s before you get to the huge quantity of lithium needed for the batteries.

Where "clean energy" comes from: lithium mining in Zimbabwe.

Thus it is eye-popping when Volvo admits that the carbon footprint for the manufacturing of its C40 Recharge electric car is 70 percent higher than its comparable internal combustion version of the car (the XC40). But not to worry, says Volvo: you’ll make up the higher manufacturing emissions when you drive the emission-free EV far enough.

How far? Kudos to Volvo for calculating that: at the world’s average electricity sourcing today, a C40 driver would need to drive his car 68,000 miles to reach a break-even carbon footprint with a gasoline-powered model. The average American drives about 14,000 miles a year, and thus would need to drive his Volvo EV almost five years before reaching a lower carbon footprint. What if we had a grid that was 100 percent wind- or solar-powered? Volvo calculates that an EV driver would still need to drive 30,000 miles before reaching a carbon-footprint breakeven point with a gasoline car.

It is all a ruse anyway. If electric vehicles drop in price and effectiveness, which may be possible with enough brute-force engineering, you can expect environmentalists to turn against them, by noting the huge environmental footprint to make them and the human-rights problems of child labor in Africa mining all the cobalt EVs need. They did it before with natural gas, which environmentalists embraced back in the aughts (2000-2010) as a “bridge fuel” when they thought they could bash coal with gas, and turned on a dime when natural gas became cheap and plentiful. They’ll do the same with electric cars someday.

The E.V. Market: Mandated, Not Demanded

Over at the Wall Street Journal, Allysia Finley has a piece about the oddities of the Electric Vehicle market, which is driven almost entirely by government mandate. In practice this has meant that "a parade of electric-vehicle startups" found themselves with multibillion dollar stock valuations despite the fact that "most had never sold a single car." "Fueled by cheap credit and political subsidies," -- after all, our governing elite are convinced that E.V.s are the way of the future -- "their stocks surged, only to crash."

China, "the world leader in electric-vehicle production and exports," is seeing similar problems:

Beijing has set aggressive production quotas for car makers and provided generous subsidies for buyers. China’s annual electric-vehicle production capacity has ballooned to 5.7 million vehicles... and is expected to hit 15 million in a couple of years. Yet concerns are mounting in China about oversupply of what the country calls new energy vehicles. “Reckless investments and disorderly efforts can be seen in the country’s NEV industry,” Lin Nianxiu, vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, warned in March. “We have too many EV firms,” Xiao Yaqing, minister of industry and information technology, said in September. Some 200 Chinese EV startups have launched in the chase for government subsidies. Many have struggled to scale up production, and some have gone bankrupt.

Both cases illustrate something instructive about the Electric Vehicle market, which is that, overall, it is built upon a desire to circumvent that basic organizing principle of economics, demand. This is a struggle even in China's "state capitalism" economic model, which is much more comfortable dictating to consumers, rather than responding to them, than America's ostensibly free market system is.

In America, E.V. companies like those mentioned above sprung up in response to Democrat-enacted policies whose object was to create an industry more or less ex nihilo, while also smothering the traditional, gas-and-diesel driven automotive industry. But with inflation soaring, and the cost of minerals like cobalt, lithium, and nickel (which are necessary for the production of E.V. batteries) rising, even government subsidies can't cover the cost of doing business. Finley quotes representatives for the E.V. company Canoo (which, she mentions, is currently able to produce only 12 cars per week) as saying that “substantial doubt exists about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern” in the next year.

A kid could grow old and die...

Oddly, the only companies who seem able to take advantage of the regulatory preference for E.V.s (apart from Tesla, which consciously sells itself as a boutique status symbol for wealthy virtue signalers) are the established automobile manufacturers, who are essentially supporting their electric lines by means of government subsidies on the one hand, and gas-powered cars on the other.

But even they are struggling with our new economic realities. Finley mentions that Ford's new electric pickup truck, the F-150 Lightning, is currently selling for only $10,000 more than the traditional model, and they hope that scaling up production will allow them to further bridge that gap. But, once again, the cost of E.V. manufacturing is going up, not down. The great hope of Ford and the other major automakers is that the government will keep throwing money at them (they've been "lobbying hard" for Biden's "Build Back Better" bill) until a major breakthrough in battery technology makes E.V.s financially self-sustaining. Unfortunately for them, that's not how innovation works.

So how will they -- green politicians and automakers on the take -- keep their electric dreams alive? Finley suggests that it will be through a combination of carbon taxation, emissions mandates, and other forms of government intervention, which will have the effect of making traditional cars more expensive rather than bringing the cost of E.V.s down. Unsurprisingly, letting consumer preference -- demand -- sort out these problems seems never to have occurred to them.

We're becoming more like China every day.