Greens (and Reds) Don’t Like Cars, Period

Late last month, Joe Biden was mocked for posting a photo of himself in an electric vehicle (a GMC Hummer) that costs $110,000 and up. 

And for touting a $7,500 federal tax credit that doesn’t apply to vehicles that cost over $80,000. [emphasis, links added]

In other words, the 46th president was ripped for confirming the stereotype that electric cars are a vanity passion for rich green liberals.

But what was less noticed, at least by the right, was that left-wing greens didn’t like Biden’s photo-op, either.

On my watch, the great American road trip is going to be fully electrified.

And now, through a tax credit, you can get up to $7,500 on a new electric vehicle. pic.twitter.com/n3iZ9etL4A

— President Biden (@POTUS) January 30, 2023

You see, Middle-Class Joe insists that he wants to replace internal-combustion vehicles with electric vehicles (EV), but the hardcore greens–including those within his own administration–want to get rid of cars, period.

At certain times, as when he is trying to appeal to the far left during his campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination, Biden has said that he wants to get “millions of vehicles off the road.”

But that was then: Now Biden, eyeing his re-election campaign, wants to play the champion of Main Street, where they have cars, not the New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Still, history shows that when green activists draw a bead on something, they often hit their target.

That’s been the whole story of the green movement this past half-century, as it has shifted the Democratic Party from its New Deal blue-collar orientation to its current affluent-suburban affectation.

One of the greens’ key concerns about EVs is lithium. As we shall see, they can’t live without it, but they also can’t live with it.

The World Economic Forum (WEF, think Klaus Schwab and Davos) relates that each EV battery needs about 18 lbs of lithium.

And since WEF calculates that two billion EVs will have to be on the road by 2050 to meet its Great Reset climate targets, that’s a lot of lithium.

And of course, all the lithium a Great Resetted world needs won’t just go into car batteries; the element is needed for a wide variety of industrial and ecological uses.

But lithium production is currently only about 100,000 tons annually, so WEF’s projections show that the needed ramp-up in lithium production will have to be, well, exponential.

For their part, greens don’t like to hear about the exponential growth of anything economic.

A particular flashpoint has been the effort to start up a lithium mine in Thacker Pass, Nevada, near the Oregon border. That proposed $3 billion venture has been met by pushback from a coalition of greens, Native Americans, and NIMBYs.

Needless to say, that was all the signal the Main Stream Media needed to choose a side. NBC News headlined last year: “The cost of green energy: The nation’s biggest lithium mine may be going up on a site sacred to Native Americans.” 

And The New York Times added some more green, liberal perspectives:

The fight over the Nevada mine is emblematic of a fundamental tension surfacing around the world: Electric cars and renewable energy may not be as green as they appear. Production of raw materials like lithium, cobalt and nickel that are essential to these technologies are often ruinous to land, water, wildlife and people.

For its part, the Biden administration, mindful of its environmentalist base as well as its EV goals, has tried to avoid taking sides in the fight. Just on February 7, a federal judge ordered a further review of the project, so its future is unclear.

The hardcore greens want action against lithium—and against EVs and against the Biden administration. 

One such is Kate Aronoff, who writes for The New Republic, a venerable liberal publication, dating back to 1914, that has lately gone woke and left, as well as hard green. 

Aronoff tweeted her own mockery of Biden for his Hummer tweet and then wrote in her magazine, “Investing in mass transit, walkability, biking infrastructure, and other means of reducing personal car ownership . . . could reduce the amount of lithium needed.”

Warming to her anti-auto theme, Aronoff lamented that cars and trucks are getting bigger:

“The best-selling vehicle in the U.S., the F150 Ford pickup truck, has ballooned in size since it debuted in the 1970s … Even the comparatively diminutive Mini Cooper has gotten 64 percent heavier since it debuted in the 1950s, and 61 percent larger.” 

To Aronoff, this is all part of the grave crisis; indeed, the section of the magazine that she writes for is called “Apocalypse Soon” (see below).

The New Republic’s “Apocalypse Soon” section

Moreover, Aronoff is not just worried about lithium, or the size of cars—she’s worried about the cars themselves.

In her article, she cited Andre Gorz, a 20th-century French Marxist, who wrote in 1973, “The worst thing about cars is that they are like castles or villas by the sea: luxury goods invented for the exclusive pleasure of a very rich minority, and which in conception and nature were never intended for the people.”  So we can see: 50 years ago, Gorz was a red who thought cars were only for rich people.  (As a general rule, Marxists need to get out more.)

Read rest at Breitbart

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