The Big Switch will cost trillions and massively change
America – not for the better
Duggan Flanakin
The election of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and their
ultra-progressive cabinet will hasten the death of the internal combustion
engine in the United States, despite the nearly even party split in the House
and Senate. They will just take their narrow victory as a license to implement
all manner of decisions in the name of saving the planet. Or so we’re told. And
maybe they’re right.
President-elect Biden has promised his $2-trillion “climate
change” plan will include “rigorous new fuel economy standards aimed at
ensuring that 100% of new sales for light- and medium-duty vehicles will be
zero emission vehicles (ZEVs).” VP-elect Harris has called for beginning this
ban by 2035, perhaps even sooner, if they can maintain their momentum for
fundamentally transforming America.
Once the sale of new gasoline engine vehicles is banned,
the only question remaining is, How long before driving such vehicles is also
outlawed? Harris has promised that, under “my plan, by 2045 we will have
basically zero emission vehicles only. 100% by 2045.”
Of course, that means zero emissions in the USA, assuming
all electricity generation is also zero-emission for charging batteries –
despite enormous emission increases in places where battery minerals are mined
and processed, and batteries are manufactured (which likely won’t be in
America).
To jumpstart the government-mandated
transformation of the 99.5% of US vehicles that are not yet ZEVs, Biden ally
Sen. Chuck Schumer plans to introduce legislation authorizing $454 billion “cash for clunkers”
incentives or rebates, to help people replace gasoline-powered vehicles with
super-expensive all-electric vehicles (EVs). Schumer’s plan also includes
building a half million new EV battery charging stations, and replacing the
entire US government vehicle fleet with EVs.
That’s almost one-quarter of Biden’s $2-trillion climate
plan right there. The rest of the massive Green New Deal (GND) will likely cost
at least Bernie Sanders’ $16-trillion scheme, if not far more.
Not since Henry Ford introduced the assembly line for his
Model T in 1913 has America faced such a transportation transformation. The Big
Switch to an all-EV fleet will bring equally massive changes to American
society, create new winners and new losers, make owning any vehicle a near
impossibility for poor and even middle class families, and shift the balance of
world power away from countries that ensure “the free flow of oil at market
prices” to those that mine GND minerals (mostly China and Russia).
The Big Switch has been in the works for years. As early
as 2017, many countries had already announced dates for banning internal
combustion engines (ICEs). Norway said its 2025 date was just a “suggestion,”
but Germany, France and the United Kingdom set “firm” dates of 2040, while the
Netherlands pushed the funeral to 2030. Austria,
Denmark, Ireland, Japan, Portugal, South Korea and Spain also set dates, as did
India – and several American states, such as (naturally) California.
Major automakers also pledged to end ICE vehicle
production soon, even though 2017 polls show that only 30% of millennials (and
much lower percentages of older drivers) were willing to “invest” in an
electric vehicle. That’s even before considering studies by economist Tilak
Doshi and others that even after 50,000 miles on the road, the typical EV has
effectively emitted some 76% as much carbon dioxide as a gasoline-powered
vehicle.
That’s because, as economist Bjorn Lomborg
explained, EV batteries are the product of emission-intensive
mining, mineral processing and manufacturing operations, and because the electricity for
recharging the batteries often involves additional CO2 emissions.
The term “zero emission vehicles” is obviously a deliberate misnomer,
since emissions are just transferred from wealthy Western countries to other
nations, where they go steadily upward.
The Big Switch will create jobs in some sectors. But it
will also cause major declines in jobs in the oil and gas industry, declining
revenues for convenience stores that profit from gasoline sales, and
significant manufacturing cost increases for petrochemicals, automobile and
truck tires, roof shingles, plastics, pharmaceuticals and a host of other
consumer products that rely on oil and gas for raw materials.
All that also means huge decreases in lease bonus, rent,
royalty and tax revenues for fossil fuel states.
Electric vehicle mandates will also harm auto repair and
insurance industries. An EV drivetrain has around 20 moving parts,
compared with up to 2,000 for ICE vehicles. However, these parts tend to be
more expensive and (at least in the near term) less readily available. This
means EVs needing repairs or new parts will sit longer in garages and repair
shops, and delays in parts availability will increase the overall cost of EV
maintenance and ownership. Will insurers cover these added costs?
The Big Switch will also mandate major shifts in tax
policy for local and state governments and the federal government, all of which
rely heavily on gasoline taxes to pay for highway maintenance and repair. The
18.4-cents-per-gallon federal excise tax goes to the Highway Trust Fund
that pays for much of this (with a separate small tax covering remediation of
leaking underground fuel storage tanks).
As gasoline sales continue to decline, will Washington
find a way to replace this lost revenue?
(Related questions: How will driverless vehicles handle
all the proliferating, expanding and deepening potholes? And what will happen
to family vacations in cars that require hours of charging for every half-hour
of driving? to our tourism and hospitality industries and fundamental
freedoms?)
Highways maintained by state and local gasoline taxes are
already threatened
by declining revenues, thanks to EVs, hybrids and higher-mileage ICE vehicles –
and to the 2020
pandemic, which cut highway driving by 64% in April 2020 and
significantly ever since. Some states are adding or increasing electric vehicle
registration fees: Alabama’s is now $200 for EVs and $100 for plug-in hybrids
(a quarter of which will fund EV charging stations), while California began
imposing a $100 annual EV fee last July.
That’s not all. People today can purchase
an older gasoline-powered vehicle that will pass inspection for well under
$2,000. Batteries for these vehicles cost under $200, and many really older
vehicles can be repaired by amateur mechanics. By contrast, replacing an EV battery
can cost up to $6,000 (or much more), making even used electric vehicles
unaffordable for tens of millions of Americans in a nation where half of all vehicles
are over ten years old.
Meanwhile, China, India and dozens of other countries are
building thousands
of new coal and gas-fired electrical generating plants – and putting millions
of new ICE vehicles on their roads. So there will be no reduction in global
emissions, which means all this pain and disruption in the USA will bring
absolutely no benefits, even if CO2 does drive climate change.
Moreover, as recently as 2017, industry experts
said EVs will likely reach only 25% of all vehicles worldwide by 2050. People
in other countries don’t want and cannot afford them, either.
Equally significant, the Biden-Harris plan also includes
a total phaseout of fossil fuels for producing electricity – along with the
major increase in electricity needed to keep EVs moving. Even if Biden, Harris,
Democrats and Greens accept nuclear energy as a “renewable” (or at least
zero-emission) fuel, building enough new nuclear power plants will take
decades.
But then, when did Moscow or Beijing ever meet all, most
or even some objectives of their Five-Year Plans? Does anyone really think
centralized government planning will work better here? More critically:
Will We the People be able to raise and discuss these
issues in public forums? Will Republican Members of Congress have any
meaningful opportunities to do so during committee hearings or floor debates?
Or will we all just be canceled, censored, silenced and
browbeaten into submission in the newly progressive, intolerant and Divided
States of America, amid more phony calls for unity and comity?
Duggan Flanakin is Director of Policy Research at the
Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org)
