AMAC EXCLUSIVE
On March 20, the Biden administration issued what the New York Times called “one of the most significant climate regulations in the nation’s history.” That claim appears to be true – just not for the reasons that the Times suggests.
The new EPA rule is designed to ensure that the majority of new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the United States are all-electric or hybrids by 2032. It requires a drastic reduction in CO2 emissions by cars and trucks, supposedly a major cause of global warming, that effectively dictates that gasoline-powered cars can constitute no more than 30 percent of auto sales by 2032.
Although the new rule reflects a slight moderation in the pace of required emissions reductions to 2032 from the previous target of 2030, it would still require an enormous transformation in the auto industry since electric vehicles (EVs) made up only 7.6 percent of new auto sales in 2023. It amounts, as observed by the New York Post, to “the most aggressive attack on internal combustion” undertaken by any country in the world.
Currently, despite significant government incentives, the average price of a new EV is roughly $50,000, according to the Wall Street Journal. Just to meet existing government mandates, manufacturers are already having to subsidize EV sales by raising prices on gasoline-driven cars.
Meanwhile, Stellantis, which owns Jeep as well as Chrysler, is “reducing deliveries of popular gas-powered vehicles to states that are already following California’s strict EV mandate” – just months after laying off hundreds of workers. In effect, as the Journal editorial puts it, “Middle-class Americans in Fargo are paying more for gas-powered cars so the affluent in Napa Valley can buy cheaper EVs.”
But will Biden’s new rule even reduce pollution, including CO2 emissions? As the Journal notes, although gas-powered cars emit more particulate matter than EVs do, “battery-powered cars are heavier and cause more wear and tear on roads and tires, which produces more soot.”
Additionally, “generating electricity and producing the batteries that power EVs” produces more pollution. Just to take one example, a new Kansas battery plant scheduled to receive billions of dollars from the (so-called) Inflation Reduction Act “is forcing a local utility to keep open a coal plant that was scheduled to close” – despite the fact that coal is considered the “dirtiest” of fossil fuels.
There’s another problem with Biden’s plan as well, highlighted in the lead story in the Times on March 18 entitled “Energy Appetite in U.S. Endangers Goals on Climate.”
Over the past year, the story reports, “electric utilities have nearly doubled their forecasts of how much additional power they’ll need by 2028 as they confront an unexpected explosion” in demand, owing partly to “millions of electric vehicles being plugged in” – well before the 2032 EPA mandates kick in. “In an ironic twist,” as the Times puts it, “the swelling appetite for more electricity, driven not only by electric cars but also by battery and solar factories and other aspects of the clean-energy transition, could also jeopardize the country’s plans to fight climate change.”
In other words, new sources of power will have to be constructed to meet the growing demand for electricity that EVs and other supposedly “clean energy” devices will require. It would be foolish to anticipate that this demand can be met by wind and solar power, given the inherent unpredictability of wind and (in most cases) solar power.
And shouldn’t lovers of nature be alarmed by the hundreds of thousands of birds already being killed annually by windmills? The only alternative to new fossil-fuel plants, then, would be nuclear power – but assuming that the irrational objections of ostensible environmentalists to it are overcome (objections that have led to the closing of working nuclear plants in New York and Massachusetts), constructing nuclear plants, owing partly to regulatory and popular obstacles, is a multiyear process.
The environmental benefits of an “EV revolution” are rendered even more doubtful by the harm caused by mining the minerals that EV batteries require. According to a report by Earth.org (a nonprofit organization that in principle favors electric cars) titled “The Environmental Impact of Battery Production for Electric Vehicles,” “the notion of sustainability on account of battery use” is “still up for debate,” given the “high environmental cost” of mining the lithium, cobalt, and nickel that car batteries require.
While mining’s initial environmental damage “comes from the toxic fumes released during the mining process and the water-intensive nature of the activity,” Earth.org reports, which have caused protests in China and Tibet (currently the chief source for the minerals), “the additional environmental cost of transporting” these heavy batteries “results in a higher carbon footprint” than is caused by internal-combustion engines. Since almost four tons of CO2 “are generated during the production process of a single electric car,” such a vehicle would need to be used for at least eight years to offset the emissions created by its construction. But the batteries might very well not retain their full capacities for that long.
Additionally, the production of lithium is an extremely water-intensive practice, which has generated “heavy water depletion” in Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia, as well as in Nevada. Nickel and cobalt mining have also been found to have similar effects in Cuba and the Philippines. Reducing these effects, Earth.org concludes, would require radical changes in the mining process, such as “shifting to low-carbon hydrogen and biofuels to process lithium.” It would appear doubtful that such changes will occur prior to the EPA’s 2032 deadline.
It is unlikely that most advocates of the EPA’s new regulations have taken account of these facts. In fact, owing to the mediocre state of high school science education, it isn’t even obvious that most people realize that the electricity needed to charge EV batteries must be supplied by power plants that currently run on fossil fuels. One wonders, indeed, what percentage of the population realizes that CO2, far from being a “pollutant,” is a substance that they exhale every minute – and something on which virtually all plant life depends.
But here’s a final question: in its quest to electrify the nation’s transportation, is the Biden administration even motivated chiefly by a quest to “save” the planet from climate change?
Reasons for doubting this are supplied by statements issued by members of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s recently restored Advisory Committee on Transportation Equity. (The committee had been established during the Obama administration, but was abolished by President Trump.) Among the 24 members that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg appointed to the committee are several who argue that cars not only cause climate change but promote racism, and thus should be phased out as much as possible.
In an interview with the Washington Free Beacon, one appointee, Andrea Marpillero-Colomina, a “spatial policy adviser,” who (according to her website) “researches the intersections of infrastructure, policy, and place,” and whose “passion is figuring out new, accessible ways to make cities work and feel better for the people who inhabit them,” stated that while she is not “advocating for a complete erasure” of cars, she intends to push Buttigieg to move America away from our reliance on private motor vehicles.
Her “interest” in serving on the equity committee, she further explained, “is to raise the question and push the Department of Transportation to really think about: What are some equitable, environmentally sustainable, economically beneficial, and feasible alternatives to policy that is car-centric?” She added, “How can we reimagine streets to prioritize people instead of cars? How can we create streets that are inclusive of modes other than cars?”
More bluntly, Marpillero-Colomina elsewhere has stated that “all cars are bad” given the “myriad of environmental issues and conditions” that they cause.
Another appointee to the committee, self-described “transportation nerd” Veronica Davis, similarly argued in an August 2023 essay that cars perpetuate “systemic racism” and are therefore “the problem” in America’s transportation system.
Last July, Davis, currently the Director of Transportation and Drainage Operations for Houston as well as the founder of an “environmental and urban planning consulting company,” released a book titled Inclusive Transportation: A Manifesto for Repairing Divided Communities. In it, she espouses “a different way of thinking” to “address healing the damage done by cars.” In describing the problems of transportation, she explains (in an unintentional pun?), “all roads lead back to cars.”
According to Davis, “Vehicles have wreaked havoc on the environment and communities… Racism shaped the urban and suburban areas, where even today we see the residual effects.”
Not having read Davis’s book, I cannot recount the alternatives she recommends to automobiles (nor can I imagine that most people who think themselves victims of historic racism would want to have their cars confiscated as a remedy). It is true that residents of densely populated urban cores, where street parking in some neighborhoods is scarce, and which often have elaborate subway and bus systems, do without car ownership (just renting cars as needed for out-of-town trips).
It is doubtful, however, that renouncing car ownership at large would work well in any city – to say nothing of the large percentage of Americans who inhabit the suburbs and our vast countryside. It probably isn’t feasible to bike for long distances within cities, unless you’re in really good shape. And waiting for a bus or train can use up an awful lot of time.
It seems unlikely that President Biden, should he win a second term, will make phasing out automobiles an explicit part of his agenda (even though his EPA mandates will make them a great deal more costly). But the statements issued by members of his commission on Transportation Equity suggest an ideological fanaticism that may underlie the extremism of the emissions rules that the EPA has just announced.
David Lewis Schaefer is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at College of the Holy Cross.
