(Deroy Murdock, Headline USA) Regarding electric vehicles, President Joe Biden cannot simply use his bully pulpit to preach EVs’ virtues.
Gift-wrapping them in lavish taxpayer-funded subsidies is not enough for Biden, either.
So, this dictator rules by fiat. Rather than ask Congress to enact a pro-EV law, Emperor Biden issued a decree on Wednesday, via the Environmental Protection Agency:
By 2030, 54% of new passenger vehicles must be electric. Just two years later, this mandate would grow by more than one-fifth, until 67% of new cars and light trucks are electric in 2032.
This edict bludgeons personal freedom, is terminally grandiose, and defies economic reality. It surely was crafted by leprechauns whom Biden just befriended in Ireland.
Most offensive, Biden’s directive tells American adults which vehicles to purchase. I respect a woman’s right to choose which car to buy. Biden disrespects that right and will make it tougher for women (and men) to exercise it.
Barking orders at grown Americans gives Biden something close to carnal satisfaction. For the 47% of Americans who recently told pollsters that they are “Not too likely/Not at all likely” to buy EVs, Biden’s command feels like taking a cold shower—alone.
Biden’s mandate is absurdly overambitious.
Last year, just 5.8% of new cars were EVs. So, Biden demands a 931% increase in EV sales in the next seven years—a 133% annual hike through 2030.
And he ordains 1,155.2% unit-sales growth in the next nine years—a 128.3% yearly boost between today and 2032.
Good luck!
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation said: “This requires a massive, 100-year change to the U.S. industrial base and the way Americans drive.”
Imposing such a wholesale economic overhaul this swiftly would rival Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward. That government program killed a mere 20 million Chinese citizens.
This timetable is unachievable, especially when Biden padlocks mining projects in Alaska, Nevada and Minnesota that would help yield additional sources of copper, cobalt, lithium and other minerals indispensable to EV production.
Even if America manufactured all of these EVs, what would happen after they got plugged into an already strained grid? Imagine a national overburdened-power-strip inferno.
“Independent estimates indicate that we need to expand electricity transmission systems by 60% by 2030, and may need to triple it by 2050 to meet the country’s increase in renewable generation and expanding electrification needs,” the U.S. Department of Energy stated last May 10.
“Between 2008 and 2021, according to C Three Group, the U.S. high-voltage transmission system grew by about 1,700 miles per year,” energy scholar Robert Bryce wrote in a Feb. 9 Substack post.
At 1,700 miles of new high-voltage power-line construction per year, increasing today’s 240,000 miles of HV lines by 60%, or 144,000 miles, would take 84 years or until 2107. To build this new capacity by Biden’s 2030 deadline, productivity would have to rocket 12-fold.
What would this cost? Bryce calculates about $4 million per mile. So, these 144,000 miles would devour $576 billion or $82.3 billion annually between now and 2030.
So, will Biden’s proclamation at least curb so-called “global warming?”
According to a White House statement: “Through 2055, EPA projects that the proposed standards would avoid nearly 10 billion tons of CO2 emissions—equivalent to more than twice the annual U.S. CO2 emissions in 2022.”
Thus, over the next 32 years, Biden’s scheme would cut US CO2 by 312.5 million tons annually, totaling 10 billion tons at mid-century.
Too bad China produced 10.081 billion tons of CO2 in 2020 alone, the International Energy Agency reports. Hence, China’s yearly CO2 output would obliterate whatever “gains” Biden imagines over a 32-year period.
In other words: Unless Beijing revolutionizes its behavior, Biden’s 10-billion-ton CO2 reduction will vanish within a 320-billion-ton cloud of Chinese carbon.
Biden’s EV policy combines fascistic decrees, magic thinking, exorbitant costs, elusive benefits and powerful acid. If the White House pumps enough LSD into the U.S. water supply, every American could enjoy Emperor Biden’s phantasmagorical vision.
Fox News contributor Deroy Murdock writes from Manhattan.
