Some of the Environmentalists Seem to Want Us to Return to Nineteenth Century Living

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The two articles were not that far apart on the main page of The Wall Street Journal’s website. The first was rather innocuous:

Ford Invests $3.5 Billion in Michigan Battery Plant With Chinese Partner’s Technology

The facility will help the auto maker reach a goal of producing 2 million electric vehicles annually later this decade

By Ryan Felton and Nora Eckert | Monday, February 13, 2023 | 1:47 PM EST

Ford Motor Co. is investing $3.5 billion to build a battery plant in Michigan with help from China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co.  Ltd., a win for the auto maker’s home state, which has seen many recent automotive projects head elsewhere.

The facility, which will be built in Marshall, Mich., about 100 miles west of Detroit, is expected to create about 2,500 jobs, Ford said Monday. The auto maker said a wholly-owned subsidiary would manufacture the battery cells using technology and expertise provided by CATL, the world’s largest maker of batteries for electric vehicles.

Ford is seeking to boost its domestic EV-making supply chain to help it produce 2 million electric vehicles a year globally by the end of 2026. The company has secured about 70% of the battery capacity needed to reach its 2026 goal, it has said.

Auto makers are working to secure key minerals and build battery factories as they rush to produce more electric vehicles. Financial incentives for North American production of battery cells and materials included in the federal Inflation Reduction Act passed last year has accelerated those efforts, executives and analysts say.

There’s a lot more at the original, mostly business-related to battery production. But to the right and just a hair further down was this gem:

The Climate Crusaders Are Coming for Electric Cars Too

A new report makes clear the ultimate goal: tiny, uncomfortable apartments and bicycles for all.

By Allysia Finley | Sunday, February 12, 2023 | 3:15 PM EST

Replacing all gasoline-powered cars with electric vehicles won’t be enough to prevent the world from overheating. So people will have to give up their cars. That’s the alarming conclusion of a new report from the University of California, Davis and “a network of academics and policy experts” called the Climate and Community Project.

The report offers an honest look at the vast personal, environmental and economic sacrifices needed to meet the left’s net-zero climate goals. Progressives’ dirty little secret is that everyone will have to make do with much less—fewer cars, smaller houses and yards, and a significantly lower standard of living.

Of course, that’s just the introduction, and fairly alarmist, but Allysia Finley, the article author, was a Californian, educated at Stanford, and a writer for the Stanford Review and later the Orange County Register. She has seen, first hand, the idiocy of the left coast and how, too often, the silliness that starts in the Pyrite State metastasizes to other parts of the country.

Further down she notes:

The report concludes that the auto sector’s “current dominant strategy,” which involves replacing gasoline-powered vehicles with EVs without decreasing car ownership and use, “is likely incompatible” with climate activists’ goal to keep the planet from warming by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial times. Instead, the report recommends government policies that promote walking, cycling and mass transit.

I’ve never lived in New York, and can only imagine what having to lug home your groceries on the subway would be like. But a short time in an apartment on a very narrow street on San Marco Island, in Venice, where there are no cars allowed, drove home to me the joys of having to shop for groceries in a small store, and then carry them all back to the third floor apartment. As I approach my seventieth year, though I’m still in pretty good shape, I have to wonder for how much longer I could do that.

It does, though, explain the small refrigerator and tiny kitchen; it’s not like you’d lug a week’s worth of groceries home!

Governments, the report says, could reduce “financial subsidies for private vehicles,” such as on-street and free parking. They could also impose charges on pickup trucks and SUVs (including electric ones) and build more bike lanes. Urbanites who suspect the expansion of bike lanes in their cities is intended to force people to stop driving aren’t wrong.

But what about suburbanites who need cars to get around? Reducing “car dependency” will require “densifying low-density suburbs while allowing more people to live in existing high-density urban spaces,” the report says. Translation: Force more people to live in shoe-box apartments in cities by making suburbs denser and less appealing.

Perhaps, to New Yorkers, that doesn’t sound like anything too much different from their lives today, but most people don’t live in Manhattan. And even in New York City, people in Queens and — horrors! — Staten Island aren’t living in the fifth-floor walkups that so many people associate with NYC.

All this may sound crazy, but it isn’t a fringe view on the left. A Natural Resources Defense Council report last year on lithium mining also concluded that the government needs “to reduce long-term dependency on single-passenger vehicles.” The Inflation Reduction Act included billions of dollars to promote bicycling and so-called livable neighborhoods.

Me? I live on a farm, and the nearest grocery store — and not that great a one — is six miles away, and a decent one is about 25 miles from our humble abode. Of course, I depend on my F-150 for work on the farm, but urban writers really don’t understand anything about that.

The looming shortage of minerals will cause prices for EVs—the only cars Americans will be allowed to buy if Mr. Newsom and his green friends have their way—to rise inexorably. Soon Americans may not be able to afford to buy a car even with a government subsidy. Then they will have no choice but to use mass transit or dust off their old 10-speed bike.

Note, too, that there won’t be nearly enough minerals to make the massive batteries necessary to back up an electric grid powered by unreliable wind and solar. So Americans will have to consume less energy—for instance, by setting their thermostats to 80 in summer and 65 in winter—and pay more for it.

Progressives’ ultimate goal is to reduce consumption—and living standards—because they believe humans are a menace to the Earth.

I would like to think that even the most dedicated of environmentalists would realize that what they want is simply not compatible with modern, American life, but I worry that the people who won’t be seriously affected, the New Yorkers who live in multi-million-dollar apartments in Central Park West, or luxury apartments in Center City Philadelphia within walking distance of their law offices, those who’ll be able to afford a luxury electric vehicle even if the mass of the plebeians will not, will somehow buffalo the mass of the public into thinking that this is the only way.
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11 thoughts on “Some of the Environmentalists Seem to Want Us to Return to Nineteenth Century Living”

  1. This seems like such a waste of effort. No one has been able to prove that rising carbon dioxide levels will harm us. In fact more carbon dioxide is beneficial to plants that get all their growth from the carbon dioxide in the air. Less carbon dioxide, fewer green plants. I predict that electric cars will never be mainline simply because we will never have enough electricity to support them. And I do not believe that Americans will ever accept having the whole landscape covered with solar panels (made in China, by the way). What will life be like in 20 years? Will there still be electric cars, or will we be living in cold dark homes? Maybe the next administration will wake up.

  2. Ask the expert about why there would be a decrease in the minerals required for us to sustain anything. If their answer is anything, other than “We stopped the searching, mining and production of all those minerals”, it is a lie.
    Put roadblocks up and the road is not useable. Take a bulldozer up against the roadblock and a problem or fifty will get solved.

    Nothing but a bunch of hypocrites. What they really want is for all of mankind to die off, well, except for them. This garbage is a religion, primarily a cult.

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  6. More like the 13th century, but YOU will not be permitted anything but electricity to light and warm your cell or cook, but only when available (1.5 hours per day).
    The top 3% will have absolutely NO restrictions on power or “Carbon pollution”.

  9. “Some”???? The very definition of environmentalist has become synonymous with those who wish for the rest of us to resort to cave living. If the Looney Tunes environmentalists have their way, we will all be huddled around each other for warmth while they fly off to southern climes for the winter.
    they haven’t stopped to think that without the hated fossil fuels, charter jet planes don’t fly, yachts don’t make ice cubes, and there is no way to replace the dead battery in the EV.
    The overt program to remove carbon from the planet has begun. Just remember, you are the carbon they want to remove.
    I may be paranoid, but I’m not stupid.

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