“Well, you all imagined it,” Vice President Kamala Harris commented during a so-called clean-transit event, where she appeared with her fellow tautologist, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. “That’s why we’re here today — because we have the ability to see what can be, unburdened by what has been, and then to make the possible actually happen.”
When Harris and Transportation Secretary Pete get together, it’s Platitudicon. As it was this week, when, as the reality of imminent historic gas price spikes was hitting Americans, the duo spent the day promoting electric cars, the Green New Deal and the Environmental Protection Agency’s soon-to-be-tightened emissions standards.
When it comes to energy, the Democrats adopt a bizarre elitist disconnect: Propelled by theological belief in end-of-days climate alarmism, they assume that Americans will join them in losing all sense of perspective and proportionality.
Despite the perpetual championing of electric vehicles, less than 1% of cars, SUVs and light trucks on the road in the United States are electric. The average cost of an electric car is $55,000. Even with layers of subsidies that artificially bring it that low, the average price of an electric car is around $19,000 higher than the price of an average gas-powered vehicle. The average Tesla goes for around $75,000. Leasing the Model S, not at the high end of the Tesla line, is still likely to cost you more than $600 per month. Not everyone is pulling in Ocasio-Cortez bucks.
Even if they are, they’re probably more concerned about functionality than pricey virtue-signaling. Why would a couple with kids shun a perfectly useful gas-powered car that, until recently, could be cheaply fueled and easy to drive any distance and in any environment? Fossil fuels are the most efficient, affordable, portable and useful form of energy. And we have a vast supply of them. In recent years, the U.S. has become the world’s largest oil producer. There are tens of billions of easily accessible barrels of offshore fossil fuels here at home — and much more around the world. We have centuries’ worth of it waiting in the ground. Four dollars a gallon is a choice.
Every plan to fight climate change either creates fabricated markets to raise prices on fossil fuels or creates artificial scarcity. Biden says this is the moment we become a leader in “exporting clean energy to countries all around the world.” The president wants half of new cars produced in the United States to be electric by 2030 (the year we will miraculously reach zero emissions), not because consumers demand them but because technocrats decided to manipulate the market and coerce Americans to drive them. Ford and GM promise to dramatically scale back gasoline-powered cars and become electric-car manufacturers by 2035 because government promises “investments” and subsidies. Car companies know they’re too big to fail.
And, in the meantime, let them eat cake. “Today, the average gas price in America hit an all-time record high of over $4 a gallon,” Stephen Colbert ($10 million yearly salary) joked. “OK, that stings, but a clean conscience is worth a buck or two. It’s important. I’m willing to pay $4 a gallon. Hell, I’ll pay $15 a gallon because I drive a Tesla.”
If sending envoys to Iran and Venezuela to beg for oil soothes your principles, so be it. But Colbert’s comment is almost as funny as Buttigieg telling Americans that “families who own (an electric) vehicle will never have to worry about gas prices again.” Where do Buttigieg and Colbert believe the power used to charge those electric cars comes from? Over 70% is from oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear. Nuclear energy, in fact, is a cheaper and more practical alternative to revamping an entire $22 trillion economy than the high-minded, extortionately expensive proposals meant to cleanse the consciences of climate scaremongers.
Meanwhile, the same administration that argues that increasing domestic capacity and allowing more North American imports would have no immediate impact on spiking gas prices proposes that you buy yourself an expensive, impractical luxury item. The difference between them and Marie Antoinette is that the latter never actually said, “Let them eat cake.”
David Harsanyi is a senior writer at National Review and author of “Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent.” To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
I can just see our American kids in the future, dragging worn out, dated American battery leaking electric cars from the American Junkyards for a dad and son project to resurrect them as a first car for the kid. That is right after they get their master’s degree in electromagnetic engine designs and kinetic force fields.
In a free REAL Democrat nation, it is the individual who makes the life decisions, not the government party Apparatchiks. If this is Biden’s and Pelosi’s idea of saving democracy,,,,just who and what are they saving it for? The communists or just the party that now acts and governs like one.
We already have seen their merciless ability of how to burden the American people with overpriced energy boulders to carry upon their already financially and COVID crippled backs, and their pathological need to actually make it happen no matter who it hurts, which is not the rich, but the average and struggling people of America,,,who do vote by the way, and next time will be voting from the positions of their Biden Democrat inflicted pain.
Not just that, but where do these cretins, THINK ALL THOSE USED batteries, will get dumped, that RUN THESE electric cars!!
There is no mention of recharging those vehicles, the capacity to produce electricity is being whittled down by the same people who advocate using electric vehicles, high demand, low capacity of output, higher prices, rationing. Sounds like a scheme for failure!
What about all the pollution from the gas, oil and coal fired electric generators used to charge the cars. Brain damaged Joe must think he can use electric motors to run the electric generators with electricity that magically appears out of nowhere. All we will end up with is the same burned fossil fuels, plus millions of leaky car batteries to bury in the ground whose fluids will head right for our water wells.
That’s because to THEM< they 'recharge' by willpower.
I’ve seen posts that say people who have priced adding the building code legal fast charging ports in their garages are find they are very expensive. One that comes to mind was an estimate of about $2000 because an additional breaker panel was required to be subbed off the main house load panel. Electrical work is expensive when you’re talking 220V service to fast charge an EV to keep it useable in a reasonable time interval. Plus the cost of that 220V electricity from the grid for however long a full charge takes. Sounds like it could be likened to running your 220V clothes dryer for 6 or 8 hours on high heat? If you have to charge your car daily for commutes and other driving tasks, that might get even more expensive.
Never even thought of that issue, about the car CHARGING PORT at home..
So many in Gov wearing rose colored glasses and totally clueless.
How about develop a vehicle that can run on hot air from liberals? That would provide an endless supply of free energy overnight.
OR one that runs on the methane that they shove out of their heads..