Category: Econut O’ The Day

No Cars For The Working Class

The electric streets of La La Land are full of Teslas, Rivians, Mercedes EQS’ and even pricier offerings from the rare earth mines of China. Here a Tesla Cybertruck, looking like a ramp some sportier vehicle will jump, passes Bentleys, canary yellow Lamborghinis and ice blue McLarens.

In the posher parts of California, from Beverly Hills to the Bay Area, the green revolution has come. The ubiquitous EVs charging in the driveways of seven figure mansions are shadowed by solar panels on the roof and sit side by side with signs declaring, “Hate has no home here.”

Neither does affordability.

The vast majority of electric cars, approaching 1 million, can be found in California. Compare that to the paltry 5,000 EVs in Arkansas or even the under 50,000 in a sizable wealthy blue state like Massachusetts. The entire industry of sleek shiny cars that run on batteries only exists because California taxed other car buyers to subsidize Tesla and its emerging counterparts.

California’s heavy subsidies and mild weather, its wealthy cities and conspicuously virtue signaling elites, made EVs possible, and made it impossible for them to evolve outside its warm leftist ecosystem. The vast majority of Californians (like most Americans) can’t afford, can’t use and won’t drive electric cars, but like so much else, the Newsom elites don’t tend to notice.

Electric car owners in California live in “communities with mostly white and Asian, college-educated and high-income residents” who are mostly “concentrated in Silicon Valley cities and affluent coastal areas of Los Angeles and Orange counties.” That’s why most electric cars are luxury SUVs marketed to very exclusive groups in very exclusive areas.

Outside of these enclaves, there isn’t much of an EV industry and there never will be one. Electric cars are not an emerging product, but a niche one as subsidized toys for the rich.

That’s a problem because the Biden administration, like a lot of Democrat states, is moving to ban cars by 2035. It’s one thing for California’s elites to once again disregard over 90% of the state on the assumption that a one-party system and aggressive ballot harvesting can overcome most obstacles, but the car bans have also extended to Maryland (46,060 EVs with 0.91%), Massachusetts (49,440 EVs and 0.91%), Connecticut (22,030 EVs and 0.75%), Oregon (46,980 EVs and 1.24%) and New York (84,670 EVs and 0.75%) among other blue states.

How do you get from those numbers to total adoption in a little over a decade? You don’t.

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Pete Buttigieg Hates Your Car, but Mostly He Thinks You’re an Idiot.

America’s eminently mockable Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg, went on national TV on Tuesday to mock Americans who find that electric cars don’t suit their transportation needs.

“Sometimes, when these debates happen,” the failed former mayor of South Bend, Ind. told Fox News, “I feel like it’s the early 2000s and I’m talking to some people who think that we can just have landline phones forever.”

Spoiler: Nobody was saying that in the early 2000s. Even before the iPhone came out in 2007 and changed phones forever, Americans were snapping up Nokias and Blackberries and wondering if we still needed our landlines at all. As early as 2005, 69% of Americans already owned cell phones, which was pretty much the entire adult population. Six percent of households had even given up their landlines.

But back to SecTrans Buttigieg, who insisted, “Let’s be clear, the automotive sector is moving toward EVs and we can’t pretend otherwise.” This is like telling a death row prisoner that he’s moving towards the electric chair and can’t pretend otherwise. The prisoner might not want to make the “transition” to the next life, but the government has set a date for him — just like the Biden administration is trying to transition the entire country to EVs.

Even though Americans have to be bribed, browbeaten, and mandated into buying EVs, Buttigieg insisted that Big Government knows best — even when that Big Government is the one in Beijing. EVs are “the economically smart play,” he said. “We’ve been working to make sure that advantage comes back on American soil.” China has the opportunity to undercut more established players like Tesla precisely because Washington is trying to force a massive EV market into existence.

Tesla is the most successful electric vehicle company in the West, and its stock was sent plunging on Tuesday after reporting its first-ever year-on-year sales decline last quarter. “Tesla’s deliveries for the quarter fell far below even the most bearish of analysts’ expectations,” CNBC reported.

Overall, EV sales growth has slowed since 2022, despite billions spent on incentives and record-high prices for gas-powered cars.

Presidentish Joe Biden can’t even bribe people into building EV charging stations. Biden’s misnamed Inflation Reduction Act — really the Green New Deal in drag — set aside a massive $7.5 billion in your tax dollars for fulfilling Biden’s dream of building 500,000 new charging stations over the next few years. But just seven have been built in two years.

Seven. Even with all those government billions just waiting to be taken.

Maybe that’s because, while EV sales hit a record 1.2 million in the U.S. last year, they still represented just 7.6% of the vehicle market. While EV sales are expected to take maybe 10% of the market in 2024, there are so many locations, needs, and situations where EVs make no sense at all. Virtually mandating that they make up two-thirds or more of all sales by 2032, as the EPA did last month, is a quasi-religious crusade courtesy of the most anti-religious White House in history.

Still, at least we’ll always have Pete Buttigieg’s smug ignorance to mock.

Maine rejects sweeping electric vehicle mandate in blow to governor’s climate agenda.

Maine’s top environmental regulator rejected a proposed state electric vehicle (EV) mandate in a surprise vote, bucking climate concerns voiced by eco groups and Democrats.

The Maine Board of Environmental Protection (BEP) turned down the so-called Advanced Clean Cars program after receiving overwhelming opposition from stakeholders and citizens. The proposed program would have closely mirrored regulations approved in California, mandating that at least 51% of new car purchases in the state be electric by 2028 and 82% be electric by 2032.

“The Maine Board of Environmental Protection received nearly 1,800 comments from the people of Maine and nearly 84% were not in favor of this EV mandate,” Maine Senate Republican Leader Trey Stewart told Fox News Digital. “Maine is far too rural with far too few charging stations, and many Mainers are also concerned about the reliability of these vehicles in our extreme cold-weather months.”

Democratic Maine Gov. Janet Mills is pursuing a sweeping climate agenda, pushing both vehicle electrification and green energy development.
Democratic Maine Gov. Janet Mills is pursuing a sweeping climate agenda, pushing both vehicle electrification and green energy development. (Getty Images)

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Coast Guard Refuses to Enforce California’s New Environmental Regulation

The state of California is once again proving that it is a far-left outlier, and now even the U.S. Coast Guard won’t enforce one of the state’s outrageous new regulations because of “safety concerns” waiting to befall ships at sea.

The Coast Guard sent an official letter dated Feb. 21 to the California Air Resources Board to inform state officials that the branch will not penalize ships for lacking a new diesel exhaust particulate filter on their engines as required by a new state regulation.

In his letter, Rear Admiral Andrew M. Sugimoto, commander of the Eleventh District, told state officials that the new state regulation is dangerous because the devices that the state is demanding that ships install are prone to failure and have caused dangerous fires.

Adm. Sugimoto also pointed out that the diesel particulate filters (DPFs) called for by the CARB have not been approved for use by the Coast Guard or the federal government.

The admiral said that the Guard has concerns about “the potential safety issues over DPF operating temperatures” and that “DPFs verified by CARB may not necessarily be accepted by the Coast Guard for installation on inspected commercial vessels.”

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Klamath Dam Removal: ‘It’s an Environmental Disaster.’

‘They purposefully made a disaster and are leaving taxpayers and the locals to clean up their mess’
This is the first article in a series about the Klamath Dam Removal project in Siskiyou County. 

The removal of dams along the Klamath River in Siskiyou County, Northern California was sold as necessary to save salmon – specifically, “to restore habitat for endangered fish.”

The dams are part of the Klamath project, a series of seven dams built in the 1910’s and 1920’s in the Klamath Basin to bring electricity and agricultural water mitigation for Southern Oregon and Northern California, the Globe reported in 2020. However, in recent years, concerns over the dams’ effect on the wildlife and fishing industry have been raised, especially regarding claims of fish facing extinction because the dams.

Klamath Dam Removal Project. (Photo: KlamathRenewal.org)

In 2018, plans were released to destroy the dam system. However, those plans halted in 2019 because of data errors and issues over who owns the dams. The Bureau of Reclamation swiftly issued a study on the dams’ effects through 2024, leading to California to again push for destruction of the dams.

In June 2020, the Federal Energy Regulatory Committee halted plans again, ruling that PacificCorp, an Oregon utility company owned by Warren Buffett’s Omaha-based Berkshire Hathaway, would have to transfer it’s hydroelectric license and co-licensee with the Klamath River Renewal Corp., as well as pay $250 million toward getting out of the demolition project to avoid any liabilities around the demolition.

Governor Newsom implored Buffett to back the demolition project to save the salmon populations that Native American tribes in the area rely on. “The river is sick, and the Klamath Basin tribes are suffering,” said Newsom in his letter. “The Klamath dam removals are a shining example of what we can accomplish when we act according to our values.”

Many tribes also issued a joint letter with Governor Newsom in support of the dams destruction.

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The age of glorifying Greta Thunberg is over
‘We are here in solidarity with those who are resisting this project,’ said Thunberg with her now familiar keffiyeh around her neck

Greta Thunberg spent her weekend in France supporting two environmental campaigns. On Sunday she appeared at a rally in Bordeaux against an oil drilling project; twenty-four hours earlier the twenty-one-year-old Swede was further east, adding her voice to those activists opposed to the construction of a new stretch of motorway between Toulouse and Castres. “We are here in solidarity with those who are resisting this project and this madness,” said Thunberg in English, her now familiar keffiyeh around her neck.

Some French media described Thunberg as an “anti-global warming icon” and the “figurehead in the fight to protect the planet.” She might have been once.

Now, however, in her ubiquitous keffiyeh, appearing to chant “Crush Zionism” or endorsing slogans such as “Palestine will be free” she has become — perhaps unwittingly — the figurehead for what conservative commentators in France call “the green alliance.”

Three years ago Jean Messiha, the spokesman for Éric Zemmour during his 2022 presidential campaign, wrote of this strange coalition between Islamists and ecologists: “They share one color: green. But not only that. They also share a totalitarian approach to society.”

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Victory to the French farmers

Europeans are right to rise up against our eco-obsessed elites.

A ‘siege of Paris’ is underway. Since Monday, thousands of tractors, trailers and combine harvesters have encircled the French capital, blocking key motorways in and out of the city. Roads around Lyon, Limoges and Toulouse have also been brought to a standstill by furious farmers.

French farmers have joined the Europe-wide fightback against the green agenda. In the Netherlands, farmers have been revolting for several years against their governments’ stringent restrictions on nitrogen emissions. A policy which, according to the Dutch government’s own figures, could lead to the closure of around 3,000 farms. In Ireland, farmers have risen up over green proposals to cull over 200,000 cows. In Germany, thousands of tractors descended on Berlin earlier this month, protesting against cuts to farm subsidies, tax hikes on diesel fuel and a raft of green rules that have made farmers’ lives intolerable.

Certainly, farmers in each of these countries have their own specific grievances. Every European government has proposed its own intrusive regulations or onerous tax hikes. But these are overwhelmingly driven by a common goal: to turn agriculture into a ‘Net Zero’ industry. And for EU member states, this lofty green goal is not a choice – it is a requirement of the EU’s so-called Green Deal.

These protests have quickly forced governments to sit up and listen. After just one day of the siege of Paris, the French government offered an array of concessions to the farming sector. New prime minister Gabriel Attal has abandoned a planned hike in diesel-fuel taxes for agricultural vehicles and has pledged millions of euros in grants for organic farms. He has promised to cut some red tape. And he has threatened to fine supermarkets that fail to offer producers a fair price for their wares. But none of this has been enough. Because as every farmer now knows, no amount of subsidies or tax breaks can disguise the coming catastrophe of Net Zero. A demented goal that no government seems prepared to abandon.

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Global Warming: Observations vs. Climate Models.

 SUMMARY

Warming of the global climate system over the past half-century has averaged 43 percent less than that produced by computerized climate models used to promote changes in energy policy. In the United States during summer, the observed warming is much weaker than that produced by all 36 climate models surveyed here. While the cause of this relatively benign warming could theoretically be entirely due to humanity’s production of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning, this claim cannot be demonstrated through science. At least some of the measured warming could be natural. Contrary to media reports and environmental organizations’ press releases, global warming offers no justification for carbon-based regulation.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The observed rate of global warming over the past 50 years has been weaker than that predicted by almost all computerized climate models.

Climate models that guide energy policy do not even conserve energy, a necessary condition for any physically based model of the climate system.

Public policy should be based on climate observations—which are rather unremarkable—rather than climate models that exaggerate climate impacts.

 

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Blue State Democrats Demand Jail Time for People Caught Using Gas-Powered Gardening Tools

Democrats in the state of Washington are pushing for members of the public to be jailed for up to one year if they are caught using gas-powered gardening tools.

According to State Reps. Amy Walen and Liz Berry, jailing law-abiding citizens over their lawn mower’s power source will help to fight “climate change.”

Last week, the Democrat lawmakers introduced House Bill 1868.

The legislation seeks to “reduc[e] emissions from outdoor power equipment.”

According to the bill, gas- and diesel-powered landscaping tools “emit a host of air pollutants.”

These “pollutants” are allegedly “contributing to climate change and negatively impacting public health.”

The bill cites findings from Democrat President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The EPA claims gas-powered lawnmowers contribute 5% of the country’s air pollution.

According to the EPA, over 17 million gallons of fuel are spilled yearly while refueling outdoor power equipment.

“Nationally, the Department of Transportation data shows that one hour of running a gas lawnmower can contribute as much smog-forming pollution as driving a passenger car 300 miles,” the bill claims.

“One hour of running a gas leaf blower can contribute as much smog-forming pollution as driving a passenger car 1,100 miles.”

Gas-powered lawn tools also cause asthma, hearing loss, and “other health issues,” the legislation claims.

Additionally, the Democrats argue that the noise from outdoor power equipment can be a nuisance.

Al Gore Melts Down Over an “Inconvenient Truth” in X-Rant about UN Climate Summit Failure
The real “inconvenient truth”: The Iron Law of Electricity >>> Climate Crisis Narrative

I have been following the climate cult antics at the United Nations climate meeting in Dubai [Conference of Parties (CoP28)].

Even before the meeting began, I predicted it would be the biggest failure yet. I was wrong.

The staggering level of failure was beyond my ability to imagine, and I can imagine quite a bit. However, I did not count on pushback from the meat industry. And I didn’t foresee that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) would mount such a sweeping and effective counter-offensive from beginning to end of the meeting.

I noted that climate cultists John Kerry and Al Gore were attending in a desperate bid for relevance. As the conference wound down, Gore melted down in an X-rant about the upcoming failure of the summit to phase out fossil fuels.

It was glorious.


A rant like this deserves a good fisking, so I shall now fisk.

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True cost of charging an EV is equivalent to paying $17.33 a gallon of gas, per new report

In October, I wrote an essay on a “bombshell report” from a Texas think tank “which revealed that the actual cost of rechargeable cars and the E.V. industry is, in reality, much higher than they’re leading us to believe.”

The report is around 20-pages long, so I was only able to cover one of the explosive revelations—the average battery-powered car (E.V.) would cost “approximately $48,698 more to own over a 10-year period” were it not for the “staggering” handouts from the taxpayer via an extortionary and feckless government—but there were more.

Now, not only were the energy experts able to quantify the additional cost over time, but they were also able to put a dollar amount on the real cost of charging the vehicle, translated into price per gallon of gasoline. As you might guess, the price is astronomical, but that’s not the end of it; from an item published by the New York Post:

While EV advocates claim charging costs are equivalent to $1.21-per-gallon gasoline, the real amount is an order of magnitude more.

Including the charging equipment, subsidies from governments and utilities and other frequently excluded expenses, the true cost of charging an EV is equivalent to $17.33-per-gallon gasoline — but the EV owner pays less than 7% of that.

So if the E.V. owner pays less than 7% of that massively inflated cost to “fuel” a car, that means more than 93% of the financial burden falls on the taxpayer—as the NY Post authors also write:

This is socialism for the rich: a transfer of costs from higher net-worth individuals to middle- and lower-income taxpayers.

It’s the equivalent of levying taxes and fees on public-transportation users and those who walk or bicycle to work and using the money to reduce the price of gasoline.

At this stage, E.V.s, if forced to stand on their own, are an utter failure, and as I noted in my previous blog, bad ideas and inferior products only find security in a “free” market… rigorously controlled by big government fascists. If our market were truly free, an extremely expensive car that can spontaneously combust, only works in a limited temperature range, occasionally malfunctions and locks occupants inside before rolling backwards into bodies of water, and costs $17.33 per “gallon” to “fuel” up, would be dead on arrival—as it should be.

House Votes To Overturn Biden’s EV Mandate that Cars Produced in the US be Fully Electric by 2032.

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U.N. CONFERENCE PUSHES ANTI-HUNTING ‘MEATLESS’ AGENDA TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE

Leaders of the world’s developed and undeveloped countries are gathering in Dubai for the 28th U.N. Convention of Parties (COP28) on climate action. It’s a global confab for privileged leaders to fly their private jets around the world – including Vice President Kamala Harris and U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry – to meet and talk about “climate science.”

But anti-hunting, animal rights activists are piling on the climate agenda this year with major efforts to force developed countries to cut back on burgers and steaks.

“The world’s most-developed nations will be told to curb their excessive appetite for meat as part of the first comprehensive plan to bring the global agrifood industry into line with the Paris climate agreement,” Bloomberg reported. Coincidentally, that’s the same media company owned by the billionaire gun control piggy bank and failed presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg.

U.S. officials should tell U.N. officials to pound sand. It’s a backwards and laughable proposal for many reasons. Such an effort would end up penalizing America’s millions of hunters. And that, consequently, would harm many more millions of less fortunate families in need of good, healthy meals – especially during the holiday season.

Meatless Mandate Manure

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HOW HAMAS BECAME AN ENVIRONMENTALIST AND GUN CONTROL CAUSE

From Queers for Palestine to marchers carrying signs reading, “Palestine is a Reproductive Justice Issue”, the Hamas cause has been vertically integrated throughout the Left. Greta Thunberg was booed after injecting anti-Israel chants into environmental rallies. The BLM movement was a longtime foe of Israel, but Asian Studies departments recently joined in.

The leaders of March for Our Lives and the Sunrise Movement, a gun control group and an environmental protest group, signed a letter to Biden warning that young people wouldn’t vote for him unless he forced Israel to stop attacking Hamas.

How better to promote gun control than by defending mass murderers who used machine guns to kill innocent people and how better to champion the environment than by supporting terrorists who deliberately start fires in Israel. What does Hamas have in common with gun control advocates, environmentalists and abortion activists?

“I think something very bad is happening on the left,” Israel’s Labor leader Merav Michaeli complained. “People who consider themselves to be democratic, progressive, are supporting a totalitarian terror regime that oppresses women, the LGBTQ+ community… The more you go to the left, the more there’s a big mix-up. Something went very wrong on the way.”

The ‘something’ that went wrong is called ‘intersectionality’. That’s why abortion protesters, gay activists, environmentalists, gun control activists and the entire Left have to support Hamas. But intersectionality is also bait and switch. While gay activists have to support Hamas, the Islamic terrorist group doesn’t have to stop throwing them off buildings. Making sure Hamas has enough fuel to fire rockets at Israeli kindergartens may be a reproductive justice issue, but no one expects masked men armed with RPGs to shout, “Allahu Akbar” at a Planned Parenthood rally.

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Why Does My ‘Efficient’ Dishwasher Take a Zillion Minutes for a Load?

For months, Donna King experimented with the various settings of her washing machine, trying to get her clothes to stop coming out covered in detergent residue. In the era of tightening water and energy standards, King thinks the machine just doesn’t use enough water, with clothes emerging nearly dry to the touch.

Counting down the hours

She regularly runs her T-shirts through the machine a second time. The hairstylist in Oak Ridge, Tenn., sometimes brings laundry loads into work to use the heavy duty setup there.
“I’m all for saving the environment but this ain’t the way to do it, if you got to do something two or three times,” the 59-year-old said. “The standard is great on paper, but when it comes to practical and real life situations, it’s a bunch of s—.”
King hacked her machine with a water pitcher—she now adds seven or more pitchers filled with water to the machine, both at the start and midway through the cycle. That extra water tricks the machine into thinking there is a bigger load, so the washer adds even more water.

Donna King hacked her high efficiency washing machine by manually adding water. PHOTO: DONNA KING

King says her clothes now come out cleaner. “There is nothing convenient about any of it,” she said.
Other consumers are also MacGyvering workarounds for their modern home appliances, as planned and current regulations make it harder and slower to wash pots, clean pants and boil pasta.
The Biden administration has proposed tightening federal water and energy use standards further for numerous home appliances, including refrigerators and ovens, in an effort to combat climate change and save consumers money. Under a proposed rule, dishwashers would be allowed to use around 3.2 gallons of water a cycle, down from 5 gallons currently. Appliance makers and environmental groups have put forward a joint proposal for less stringent efficiency increases.

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