The leftist crusade to strengthen that iron grip government has on our necks continues, as their blatant effort to limit our freedom intensifies. The Democratic blame of climate change on humans has always been an excuse to take as much control of our lives as possible.
We saw that with their shocking behavior with COVID-19, and now courtesy of California, they are all-in with their effort to control our freedom of movement by targeting transportation. Case in point: an August order by a state board banning the sale of gasoline- and diesel-powered cars and light trucks by 2035.
This new scheme using the power of bureaucratic regulations has nothing to do with climate and everything to do with using fear to convince us to give up fundamental freedoms and expand government in the name of the scourge of our own existence. But like every other draconian plan implemented under the pretext of a climate emergency, this will fail and make our lives worse.
The dangerous absurdity of this mandate in America’s most populous state was made clear just days after the diktat when the operator of the state’s power grid told Californians to cut electricity consumption during a deadly heat wave by not charging their electric vehicles or using large appliances between 4-9p.
As Joe Biden might say, not a joke! California’s progressives are so enamored with themselves and their plans to “fundamentally change” this country they neglected to think about how to implement their latest scatterbrained scheme and whether it would actually be a good thing to do.
Consider this: Only 16% of new cars sold in California this year are electric, yet the state isn’t producing enough electricity to allow drivers to charge their vehicles when necessary or even allow your family to be confident running the air conditioner won’t crash the grid. What happens when 100% of cars are electric?
The “inconvenient truth,” to borrow a term from environmental extremist and former Vice President Al Gore: the campaign by the far-left to replace cars powered by internal combustion engines actually has nothing to do with climate change.
Battling climate change is just the excuse to grow government and replace the free market system that made America great with an authoritarian system of control.
Why is the left focusing on our cars in its power grab? Cars with internal combustion engines give us freedom of movement to go where we want and when we want. We can fuel up at gas stations owned by the private sector, not the government and privately storing the liquid gold needs only a gas can or tank, not a machine managed by an outside entity.
Electric cars, on the other hand, are dependent on a steady supply of electricity from power grids regulated by government. If hot weather sparks excess demand or a storm knocks out electric power, electric cars are useless. Rolling blackouts are familiar to Californians because they’re planned and implemented by the state to manage use during peak demand.
Moreover, electric car batteries (and almost all electronic devices) require rare earth minerals. China controls almost 90% of the supply of these minerals. If American automakers become dependent on China to stay in business, our national and economic security will be severely threatened.
Like New York city’s obsession with making driving a car impossible in Manhattan to “nudge” people into relying exclusively on public transportation, moving to an electric vehicle framework gives government control over our freedom of movement from one place to another, how quickly, and our privacy in doing so. The subway and buses operate at the pleasure of the mayor.
In January 2015 then New York Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered the New York City subway system to shut down, the first time in its 111-year history because of snow. Ironically, the subway was originally conceived to allow people to travel through the city during a major snowstorm. But the whim of one man was enough to end the ability of everyone in the city to lose their ability to travel.
Forcing us to abandon the cars most of us now drive is only the first step in the efforts by the left to control our mobility. The next step is to “nudge” as many of us as possible onto these government controlled mass transit systems to further restrict our freedom of movement.
For example, New York City could soon charge drivers of cars traveling through southern Manhattan $23 during rush hours, and charge drivers of large trucks over $100 per trip to reduce traffic. The exorbitant fees are expected to raise about $1 billion a year for public transit.
Citizens reliant on public transportation, in New York and everywhere else, are at the mercy of tiny tyrant whims. They can’t eliminate cars entirely, so their option is to move to electricity, a power source ultimately controlled by the government and manipulatable by malleable emergencies, like, conveniently, climate change.
Not convinced climate is the excuse tiny tyrants will use to control your daily life? Consider this report from the Daily Caller detailing how a Colorado power utility’s smart thermostats “prevented over 22,000 people, who signed up for Xcel’s Colorado AC Rewards program, from cooling their homes past a certain temperature during a heat wave in which temperatures hit over 90 degrees Fahrenheit… The smart thermostats locked home temperatures from going below a certain threshold, telling customers that this setting could not be overridden due to an ‘energy emergency’ caused by high temperatures and soaring energy demand.”
Climate is the pretext, energy is the emergency created by bad governance and deliberately horrible energy policies. We’ve seen that play out with Biden’s numerous executive orders crippling this nation’s energy abundance and independence. But voila, they now have even more ‘emergencies’ with which to control us.