Commentary

“The auto companies might deserve sympathy if their executives hadn’t become political supplicants. In addition to lobbying for subsidies, they intervened to defend the administration’s recent emission standards against a legal challenge by GOP state attorney’s general. 

“They sold themselves out to the government for subsidies, and now they are pleading for more subsidies to meet its mandates.”

Regular readers will understand the pleasure I had in reading this quote about auto executives by the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal in Thursday’s lead editorial, “Biden Remakes the Auto Industry,” because I have frequently criticized auto executives for being weak-kneed, caving to the government.

Just yesterday, I wrote, “For years, as a supporter of free enterprise, I have chided the automakers for going weak-kneed to government pressure on Café’ standards.”

The administration talks about electric vehicles as the future, but “why then does the government have to subsidize and mandate them,” the editorial asks. 

The left knows that Americans aren’t that interested in going electric, but they plan to unveil new strict Café’ standards for 2027 through 2032, in an effort to force consumers to purchase EVs.

The sad part of the Biden fantasy is that it was done to address climate change, believing that by reducing CO2 emissions, caused by human use of fossil fuels, he could alter its effect on our climate, but even his climate czar, John Kerry, has conceded that even if we did attain zero emissions, it would not have any effect on climate.

In a separate editorial, the Journal noted as I did, that the demand for the minerals required for battery production will be high and force us to get needed supplies of lithium, cobalt, copper, and others in huge quantities from China, the Congo, and elsewhere even as we subsidize our own battery manufacturing companies.

I find it interesting that the environmental activists behind the go electric movement won’t hear the need to permit mining in the U.S., because it will emit CO2.  It’s okay if the air is dirtied over other countries as these minerals are mined using child labor.

Even if a mine were approved, the transition to electric cars will be slowed because it takes 15 to 20 years to develop it with the extensive permitting, planning, construction, and logistics required.

Attention President Biden

“It’s becoming clear that there is a very big gap, not easily closed, between aspirations for energy transition and the availability of the minerals needed to implement those goals.” – Daniel Yergin, Wall Street Journal

While the aspiration to advance technologically into the EV field, and expand our efforts in wind and solar is laudable, it should be done with reasonable goals alongside our easily attainable return to energy independence and the production of fossil fuels, required for a number decades to supply electrical needs.

Attention GOP House Members

You hold the Biden administration’s purse strings.  Stop the ridiculous race to all-electric taking place at our expense.

May God continue to bless the United States of America.