The Electric Vehicle Is Driving Away with Our Freedom
Bob Tomaine NaturalGasNOW
Contributing Writer
[Editor’s Note: Bob Tomaine destroys the myth that the electric vehicle is anything but an approaching disaster for freedom of the individuals and their right to travel at all.]
Pigs and electric vehicles apparently have far more in common than any normal person would believe or until recently would even have suspected.
The connection traces – of course – to California, whose government and bureaucracy know themselves to be much smarter, more compassionate and just generally better all around than their counterparts throughout the country. In another of its “Propositions,” No. 12 regulates the manner in which pigs are raised for food production destined for California, meaning that a pig raised in any state must be raised in compliance with California law if the producer plans to sell in California. Stated differently, California is now regulating an activity in the rest of the United States and by extension, seemingly in other countries, too.
The disappearance of freedoms, whether through regulation or pressure, is more than a wild-eyed conspiracy theory. Much of the “news” media somehow manage to remain oblivious.
Not surprisingly, there’s pushback, just as there’s pushback for another Californiaism, a ban on cars powered by anything other than electricity, but the situations aren’t exactly parallel. The truth is that – although few among the general public realize it – a number of states have willingly signed on to accept California’s position that vehicles powered by internal-combustion engines need to be eliminated.
There’s both tragedy and comedy where mandating electric vehicles has become the latest cause among those who need causes. Consider the goings-on in Maine, where the procedure is interesting in that it effectively gives a handful of residents control over everyone else. That’s the tragedy, while the comedy comes in the point made by State Representative Joshua Morris when he raised the matter of power outages in Maine winters and their impact on charging vehicles.
Never mind the rarely cited – and very obvious – truth that if everyone there drives an electric car, that’s going to put a considerable new load on the state’s power grid. But even setting aside the possible interruptions to electric service and the resulting immobilization of electric vehicles, those pesky subfreezing temperatures ensure conditions not exactly ideal for showcasing an electric car’s wonders. Maine in winter can be brutal and so perhaps even more than most places, an electric there would be fine for short trips and commutes only during a part of each year.
The first solution would be ownership of a gas-powered vehicle for those months when electrics aren’t at their best. The second is the one that many on the left would prefer, mass transit, regardless of the fact that Maine and bus or train travel aren’t a perfect match when it comes to practicality.
Maine’s push, unfortunately, isn’t unique among the states, but at the same time, bans on non-electrics are being bolstered by automakers’ combination of political correctness, smug self-assurance and being out of touch with their customers. The latter two have caused the American auto industry serious problems in the past, but the manufacturers aren’t very good at learning from history.
No doubt, such moves by those major players are being met with giddy delight by President Joe Biden and his loyalists. They do, after all, reinforce the sense of success in the left’s efforts to control more and more of Americans’ daily lives under the inexplicable guise of “environmental concern.” The ongoing attacks on natural gas are excellent illustrations, as are the delightfully absurd – even if they are completely unjustifiable – regulations aimed at household appliances.
Short of a major political change or mass awakening of Americans, there’s no reason to believe it’s going to stop at that level, as there are those who wouldn’t be happy if all appliances were solar-powered and all cars were electrics.
But all of this hasn’t escaped the attention of United Auto Workers, an interesting development by a group normally in solid support of the left, and some True Believers are getting smacked in the face with reality. Critically, the intensifying efforts to mandate and control not only aren’t going unnoticed, they’re also not going unchallenged, one way or another.
The line mentioned above about what happens to those who ignore the lessons of history is as true today as it’s ever been and a relatively recent piece of history shows the result of control versus the result of freedom. Those who should familiarize themselves with it are probably the least likely to do so.
Text and Photo Copyright 2023 by Bob Tomaine
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