Joe Biden Enjoys His 1967 Corvette While Forcing You to Go Electric
While President Joe Biden enjoys his beautiful gas-guzzling 1967 Corvette Stingray, he wants to dictate what kind of car you get to own. Auto companies will be forced to produce more EVs, even if Americans don’t want to buy them.
The Biden administration ought to be looking at lowering barriers it has imposed on oil drilling, reducing gas prices, and scaling down burdensome regulations.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed de facto electric vehicle mandate would force auto manufacturers to make nearly 70% of their new automobiles electric by 2032. Now, Biden’s Department of Transportation is following up with a second punch. On the Friday before Congress’s August recess, when members were leaving town, DOT released a new, expensive, and likely unattainable fuel economy standards proposal requiring passenger cars to meet a standard of 66 miles per gallon and light trucks to reach 54 miles per gallon by 2032.
This new burden being foisted on the auto industry, working-class Americans, and small businesses is being perpetrated in the name of stopping climate change, a top priority of the Biden administration that is being zealously pursued regardless of how it will hurt Americans and how little of an impact their extreme proposals will have on the climate.
According to The Heritage Foundation’s chief statistician, Kevin Dayaratna, if the United States were to eliminate not some, not most, but all of its conventional fuel use, we could expect a less than 0.2-degree Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100. Thus, despite claims that the global environment will collapse within the next decade, leading to a possible “human extinction event” unless the most drastic measures are taken, this onerous regulation will have no environmental benefit and wreak plenty of economic havoc across the nation.
Just as with the Biden regime’s proposed efficiency standards on dishwashers, gas stoves, and water heaters, DOT makes the argument that such restrictive fuel economy standards will save Americans money even though it openly admits “consumers would pay more for new vehicles upfront.” It claims the difference can be made up over time through savings at the gas pump. But the more likely result, when Biden’s overall climate agenda is factored in, is higher auto and gas prices, less consumer choice, and reduced road safety.
As DOT argues, at face value, a higher miles per gallon standard does mean fuel can be stretched further. But when Biden says, “I guarantee you, we’re going to end fossil fuel,” add that to shutting down oil pipelines while draining the nation’s strategic petroleum reserves, and investors become reluctant to spend, energy supply contracts, and fuel prices rise. Thus, while the fuel in these new cars’ tanks might go further, if it costs more, then it cancels out the efficiency savings.
As with the EPA’s proposed tailpipe emissions rule intended to convert much of America over to EVs, the new DOT fuel economy standards mean less consumer choice. Such high fuel standards are extremely difficult to achieve and are unlikely to be attained, meaning that if this rule were to be finalized as is, auto manufacturers will be constrained in what types of vehicles they can build.
Auto companies will be forced to produce more EVs, even if Americans don’t want to buy them. These cars will be more expensive, take longer to recharge than a simple gas fill-up, and will not work as well in very cold or very hot climates. They likely will have reduced functional versatility, such as not possessing any real towing capacity, meaning consumers will be paying more for cars that do less.
Lastly, these fuel economy standards will reduce passenger safety. Per DOT’s own admission noted above, the expected increase in auto prices would make purchasing a new car prohibitively expensive for many Americans.
With unaffordable newer models, consumers lose access to the latest advancements in safety technology. As Americans work to keep their old cars on the road longer and odometers tick up, the law of averages dictates that parts will fail, which not only results in costly repairs, but sadly, can lead to serious car accidents, as older models are shown to be less safe in accidents relative to new vehicles.
The DOT’s latest fuel economy standards, especially when considered in conjunction with the EPA’s tailpipe rule, should be rejected. Of equal importance, it is long past due for the central planners in Washington, D.C., to leave drivers alone.
https://www.heritage.org/energy/commentary/joe-biden-enjoys-his-1967-corvette-while-forcing-you-go-electric ?
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Weird California Transportation Policy
Not only does California want to require that all new vehicles sold in the Golden State are electric by 2035, it also wants all light-duty vehicles and school buses sold there to have “bidirectional charging” by model year 2030. Bidirectional charging means that while your electric vehicle is plugged in to charge, if California needs it, it can take the energy stored in your battery and return it to the electrical grid.
Imagine the surprise when you go to bed thinking your electric pick-up truck will be fully charged for a long-haul business trip the next day, only to find when you wake up that the government has taken your electricity back. When I told this to Daniel in Midland, he said, “That’s crazy!”
Some people think that California’s blackout problems mean that it should not require EVs, as they just drain more power from an already overtaxed grid. But State Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, is sponsoring a bidirectional charging mandate bill because she believes that energy stored in Californians’ batteries will solve the state’s energy shortage.
Skinner said, “The battery capacity in today’s electric vehicles give them the potential to be mini power plants on wheels. That’s crucial as California continues to face unprecedented impacts from climate change, including record heatwaves, wildfires, and destructive storms that can lead to power outages.”
Some vehicles, including the Nissan Leaf, the Hyundai Ioniq 5, and the Ford F-150 Lightning, already have such bidirectional charging systems.
Skinner’s bill has passed the Senate and three committees in the State Assembly. If it passes the State Assembly, Gov. Gavin Newsom will likely sign it into law. Last September, he called the technology a “game changer” and said that “this is the future.”
The bill also includes the ability for the state to require other types of vehicles to have bidirectional charging systems at the discretion of the California Air Resources Board without the passage of a new law. It the state’s power problems are not solved with electricity from cars and school buses, it can draw down electricity from tractors, public transit buses, and trucks.
Carbuzz has calculated that “a 60 kWh EV battery [a typical electric vehicle battery] can provide backup power to the average US household for two to three days.” But that doesn’t absolve the state’s largest power company, Pacific Gas and Electric, of the responsibility to provide power to homes. People should not have to choose between transportation needs, such as going to work or taking someone to the doctor, and keeping their refrigerators and home heating operating.
Bidirectional charging changes the concept of the right to personal mobility and property rights. If EV owners in California must return the electricity in their car batteries to the grid during power shortages, they don’t truly own the energy in their EVs. In essence, the state has the power to tell them when to travel. It also has the power to tell them where to travel, because the state is setting up the network of electric charging stations.
This vast attempt at industrial regulation is meant to reduce global temperatures. But even getting rid of all American fossil fuel emissions would only reduce global temperatures by 0.2 degrees Celsius by 2100, according to government models, because increases in emissions are coming from China, Russia, India, Africa, and Latin America.
Industrial energy policy is not the only reason for the migration from California to Texas. California’s high taxes and high cost of housing are also factors. But the contrast between attitudes about transportation, looked at as a right and a key to the American dream, is stunning and a lesson to other states.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/17/dont-bring-california-transportation-policies-texas
**************************************************Why the Montana climate change lawsuit ruling is total bunk
A Montana district court under Judge Kathy Seeley has ruled in favor of a group of green Zoomers, backed by fearmongering legal outfit Our Children’s Trust, who sued the state over its regulatory policy of not using carbon emissions as a standard when permitting new fossil fuel projects.
In other words, the war on domestic energy continues apace, with judges now getting in on the action.
It will do nothing to slow warming, as the world’s leading polluters (like China) will be utterly unaffected by it.
It will do massive economic harm to average Americans, by driving up energy prices.
President Biden’s federal war on production proves that: Energy prices have skyrocketed under him, and his fossil-fuel clampdown is a huge contributor.
Plus, beyond the practical considerations here, it’s absurd for a judge to find a state-constitutional right to be protected from the warming that results from global carbon emissions.
Yes, carbon output contributes to warming.
But warming is a slow-motion risk, whereas carbon drives currently everything in the modern economy: refrigeration, clean water, farming.
No one needs to be protected from emissions.
They will, however, need lots of protection if green nuts succeed in their decarbonization schemes and all the goods and services we count on go dark one by one.
The Montana attorney general’s office was dead right to call the judgment a “taxpayer-funded publicity stunt” — and to plan an appeal.
Indeed, the judge herself is a true believer, apparently citing pie-in-the-sky claims that Montana can go 80% renewable in seven years as a factor in her judgment.
Luckily, the decision is a low-level state one, limited in scope and nearly certain to be reversed.
https://nypost.com/2023/08/15/why-the-montana-climate-change-lawsuit-ruling-is-total-bunk/
*****************************************************Susan Crockford: Climate activists are silent on polar bears because their doom-mongering blew up in their faces
A Grist article last week pandered to activist polar bear specialists over their failed climate change agenda as it tried to minimize why the climate movement doesn’t talk about polar bears anymore. Apparently, the Arctic icon has “largely fallen out of fashion” through “overexposure” resulting in polar bear images invoking “cynicism and fatigue.” But that isn’t really true, is it?
While there is an admission that the over-hyped lies about starving bears promoted by National Geographic in 2017 and 2018 were a factor, there is no mention in the article of the well-known, documented evidence of scientists’ own failed assumptions that polar bears require summer sea ice for survival have had any impact on public opinion (Amstrup et al. 2007; Crockford 2015, 2019, 2022, 2023; Lippold et al. 2019; Rode et al. 2021).
Thriving populations in the Chukchi Sea and elsewhere amid low summer ice levels have busted the myth that polar bears need ice year-round.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
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http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
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http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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