So on our road trip back to Florida, I planned last week’s blog to be about electric vehicles. Then Kevin McCarthy was removed from his position as Speaker of the House on Tuesday. So I thought I might write something about that. Then there was the first test of the Federal Emergency Alert (and Wireless Emergency Alert) System in 15 years on Wednesday, and since I once again had thoughts outside what I was seeing on the mainstream, I thought I might put those thoughts into written word, but when I sat down to type, I was paralyzed by too many ideas. And THEN…Hamas carried out a multi-pronged attack on Israel, prompting another intellectual (and emotional) response in me.
I will be honest. This past week was one of those weeks that should reveal to anyone and everyone that we are being overwhelmed by information, by revelations of evil and corruption, by contradicting theories and data sets, and then being asked to take sides on all of it – without any real avenues available to back up those positions with actionable solutions.
And these are just the big things that everyone sees.
What does the vote to oust McCarthy as Speaker indicate about national politics and Congress?
What does the Federal Emergency Alert and Wireless Emergency Alert System test have to do with freedom?
Why should Americans be interested in what is happening in Israel now – and not just blow it off as just another skirmish in an ongoing and never-ending way-of-life war? Does it even impact us here at home?
But then this morning I read an article about an improvised explosive device being detonated in a residential area in Oregon – with the power to blow out car and house windows and take chunks out of the house. And I had some quite disturbing thoughts about that.
And then I read an article about a mother killing her own baby. And that reminded me how the loss of freedom begins with devaluing human life – not realizing or not remembering that every human life has intrinsic value.
By the time I start constructing a profound thought about a current event, something even bigger or more profound starts taking up space in my head and heart – and I wonder if readers would even be interested in my thoughts from something that now seems quite small in comparison to the most recent revelation.
But it is all important. And I think when we talk about “distractions” we start to think that NONE of it is truly important. And I am getting distracted.
The masses have been duped into believing electric cars are somehow part of the answer to the climate crisis. They aren’t. They harm – don’t help – the environment. An attempt to implement EVs universally within a society will harm all the people in that society. And if anyone believes we can go “all-electric” ANY time soon, they have not been on a road trip across the country recently.
The rare earth metals needed for technologically advanced vehicles and batteries are mined by slave labor in dangerous conditions. The mining harms human beings and the ecosystem and the geology of the area from which they are mined. It is not ethical to continue mining to produce more EVs. And it is not environmentally friendly either.
EVs can explode if their batteries get wet. EVs can explode if they get too hot. The chemical fires produced cannot be extinguished with water and are dangerous to approach. Such explosions put more dangerous chemicals into the air.
EVs must be charged. The power has to come from somewhere. The charge is not free. And the batteries hold less charge (go a shorter distance) when it is hot– AND when it is cold. A charge pack for your home can cost thousands – and once EVs go universal, the owner will have to pay for the charge separately anyway. Not to mention, a replacement battery costs as much as a gasoline powered car.
On our way home, we traveled 21 hours and stopped only twice for gasoline. It takes 5 minutes to fill up a car with enough gasoline to drive for seven hours. So in a 21 hour trip, we spent 10 minutes fueling our vehicle.
A “quick” charge for EVs right now is what? 30 minutes? And how far can a vehicle go before needing another charge? When people argue that the infrastructure isn’t ready yet, that is an understatement.
When we did stop for gas, there were 20 pumps at the station and almost all, if not all, of them had vehicles whose owners were pumping gas into them. And that only takes 5 minutes. How many gas stations are in your city? How many gas pumps are along the closest major highway? The reality is the infrastructure developed for gasoline powered vehicles is everywhere. If the station you were going to fuel up at is full, there is usually another station right across the street – or even less than a block away.
Can you imagine all forty cars at the two closest gas stations instead needing to fuel up three times as often for 10 times as long? And so…will we need 30X the number of charging stations as gasoline pumps? Or 300X? Where would these go? Or is the goal to take the ability to own and drive personal vehicles away from the masses and instead encourage everyone to embrace mass transit?
Now let’s talk semis. These huge trucks not only carry goods and food all across the country, but they carry equipment and materials used in manufacturing, construction, and updating our national infrastructure. And on our road trip, these vehicles were EVERYWHERE. I know because everyone always wants to pass them, and then there are so many, it often looks like they are in a caravan.
And they often run on DEISEL. The dirty gasoline! Are we seriously going to attempt to replace the infrastructure our entire economy and society is based on to accommodate electric semis?
What kind of range will they have? What would that cost? How will that impact delivery schedules? How will that impact construction, development, and maintenance of existing infrastructure and structures? And how destructive to the environment would such large and heavy batteries be?
Again, are they trying to discourage quick and precise deliveries and instead force all products and equipment to be transported via rail? What about local deliveries to storefronts and restaurants? Construction sites and rural destinations?
Apply this conundrum to the mail system and the military too.
Anyone advocating for elimination of fossil fuels without answers to these questions wants to take everything from the ordinary citizen. They want to take your freedom of movement (they don’t want you to travel far from home and only have pre-planned stops along a destination route). They want to take away your ability to build on and improve your property. They want to take away your purchasing power. They want to take away your luxurious lifestyle of having the products you purchased yesterday arriving tomorrow. They want to take away small business opportunities and the dream of entrepreneurship. They want your roads and bridges to crumble – along with your water and sewer systems.
There is more I could say and argue about here…but the last thing I will leave you with is this: maybe if the air quality is bad in a particular city, going fossil fuel free in JUST THAT smog-filled city might help that particular situation improve, but this push toward EVs overall HARMS the environment – and does NOTHING to improve overall air quality. One airplane flight produces more emissions than driving your gasoline powered car will in your entire lifetime.
The only clean energy is nuclear energy – yet no one is talking about developing more nuclear power plants. Instead, we talk about solar energy when solar farms destroy entire ecosystems and supplant agricultural food production. And we talk about wind when the windmills kill birds and whales in large numbers – not to mention maintenance and disposal of the systems and equipment – NOR mentioning the large amounts of energy and nonrenewable resources used in their creation in the first place.
This push toward EVs harms the human population by limiting food sources, delaying critical construction and maintenance projects, and is another way to separate the elite from the majority of Americans who are living paycheck to paycheck. The wealthiest among us will still be able to travel at will – while the rest of us will be crowded onto mass transit within a limited geographical area.
I almost want to talk about carbon dioxide as a pollutant and how many “experts” are now saying trees aren’t the answer. But I can’t. Because I am overwhelmed. And McCarthy was ousted from his position of Speaker of the House. And there are unseen implications in the Federal Emergency (and Wireless Alert) System. And Hamas was able to carry out a surprise complex and multi-pronged attack against Israel. (And that’s just this week – along with parents killing their own children and IEDs being detonated in residential areas within the United States.)
But it is important to think about distractions like EVs because if we don’t, just like the IDF was caught off-guard, we will be surprised when the complex and coordinated attack against our freedom reaches its final stages of implementation. And if we are caught by surprise, the ultimate defeat of the American way of life will seem swift and without resistance.
Komentáře