Links tagged “transportation”

UN Paris pact could be used to levy carbon taxes, block infrastructure projects. 

Chris Horner: Rejoining the UN Paris climate treaty will immediately subject U.S. energy policy — and thereby economic and to some extent trade policy — to a UN “climate conciliation commission”... Already, as the United Kingdom has shown, developed nations’ courts can be expected to cite the Paris climate treaty in blocking infrastructure development. The UK’s Court of Appeal ruled earlier this year that Heathrow Airport cannot be expanded because that would violate the UK’s ‘net zero’ commitment under Paris.

Then, Canada offered a reminder how progressive politicians will raise taxes in the name of complying with Paris: In Ottawa, “The parliamentary budget officer says the federal carbon tax would have to rise over the coming years if the country is to meet emission-reduction targets under the Paris climate accord.” Now we are reminded that the U.S. can also expect a forum for antagonistic nations to bring their complaints about U.S. policy and claims of non-compliance with Paris’s required “Net Zero” agenda for resolution. ...

Paris requires, and mandates the U.S. revisit and tighten “Green New Deal”-style policies every five years. This is among the many reasons why the Paris climate agreement is a treaty, and also why it never would have been ratified. However, very soon, Americans may nonetheless be subject to its long-envisioned climate court."

Cobalt is an expensive metal used in electric car batteries, costing about $35,000 per ton.
59% of cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Cobalt mining in the Congo is often done by children — as many as 40,000 — working in brutal and unsafe conditions. A euphemism for these children is ‘informal’ workers.

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Also see: Electric cars ‘represent less than a tenth of 1% of the 1.1 billion cars’

Green Killers: Congo’s Miners Dying to Feed World’s Hunger for Electric Cars – Last year about 70% of the world’s supply came from the Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the poorest, most violent and corrupt places on Earth. Much of its cobalt comes from around this town.

Bruce M. Everett: "The last hundred years have seen increasing emissions of carbon dioxide – a benign gas.  In reality, this slight increase in atmospheric CO2concentrations (from 0.03% in the nineteenth century to 0.04% today) has brought nothing but beneficial effects, including increased crop yields and greater drought resistance." ...

"In 2019, despite forty years and trillions of dollars of subsidies, wind energy contributes about 2% of total global energy use and solar just over 1%.  Fossil fuels accounted for 84%, down just two percentage points over the last 20 years." ...

"The US private vehicle fleet is currently on the order of 250 million vehicles, of which approximately 1 million or 0.4% are battery electric vehicles.  Electric cars are at present about twice as expensive to produce as comparable gasoline models, and, like renewable power generation, depend on massive subsidies for their viability." ... 

"The world may someday transition away from fossil fuels, but it’s not happening yet.  All we have so far are predictions, wishful thinking and the waste of large amounts of money for a small impact on a non-problem."

Marc Morano, producer of the documentary film “Climate Hustle 2” www.ClimateHustle2.com, calls the governor’s actions nothing more than a public display of environmental faith: “Gov. Newsom is once again punishing Californians to fight ‘climate change.’ Newsom is going the route of executive order because the legislature would not support a ban on gas-powered cars. All of Newsom’s virtue signaling will do nothing for the climate but will further hammer Californians already suffering from the state’s draconian COVID lockdowns. Electric cars are in many ways more harmful to the environment than conventional cars,” Morano told InsideSources in an exclusive interview.

Morano says that at some point California citizens will decide that environmentalism has gone too far: “The San Francisco Chronicle reports that fewer than 6% of cars sold in California in 2019 fall under the governor’s zero-emission standard. So how does he plan to ban 94% of the cars? Will Californians allow this? At what point will residents of California tell politicians to take their climate agenda and shove it?” Morano asks.

It’s important to remember that CO2 emissions are not just about what comes out of vehicles, but also what goes into vehicles. Electric vehicles might not emit emissions through exhaust pipes like gas-powered cars, but they expend tremendous amounts of CO2 during their production and charging cycles, and require numerous elements—such as lithium, cobalt, and manganese—that must be mined from the earth. While conventional wisdom says electric vehicles are more environmentally friendly and an effective tool to fight climate change, research suggests electric vehicles may have environmental costs that actually exceed those of internal combustion engines when the full cycle of production is included. Jonathan Lesser of the Manhattan Institute, for example, has published research showing that electric vehicles are worse for the environment than modern gas-powered vehicles. ... 

The World Economic Forum has also called attention to the “dirty secrets of electric vehicles,” which includes both adverse environmental impacts and children as young as seven working in cobalt mines in places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where more than half of the world’s cobalt is produced.

We have all seen the photos from Cuba with all their vintage cars from the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s. Well, those photos from Cuba may be a prelude to what California will look like in the decades ahead.

A previous effort to ban automobiles that burn fossil fuel by 2040 was never able to gather enough support to be approved by the California legislature. Yet through the power of a pen, a phone, and a stylish California bear jacket, Gov. Gavin Newsom has decreed that they must be gone five years sooner.

While explicit in targeting gasoline and diesel automobiles, the executive order didn’t include a ban on fracking. Nevertheless, the governor is asking lawmakers “to end the issuance of new hydraulic fracturing permits by 2024.”

A particularly significant point that never came up was California’s contributions to global greenhouse gas emissions. So, allow us to fill in that blank for him. It’s roughly 1 percent.