Winning hearts and minds
Facts are great, but how do you beat emotions?
Each week during the legislative session I get an e-mail from the Delaware GOP’s House legislative caucus, one which usually details what they’re trying to accomplish with their limited numbers. Its main subject last week was the electric car mandate the state is trying to regulate into existence, and one of the methods was to introduce a pair of bills, as they explain:
The first bill would only allow DNREC to adopt the Advanced Clean Car II regulations with the consent of the General Assembly. The second measure would remove DNREC’s ability to promulgate the regulations by removing its authority to adopt any rules dealing with vehicle sales mandates. Both pieces of legislation would be retroactive to March 1, 2023.
I looked at the Delaware legislative site and noticed no such bills had been introduced yet. Regardless, these bills will likely be locked in Pete Schwartzkopf’s desk drawer for the duration of the session.
Knowing that, I wanted to share some thoughts on how we got here in the first place.
Remember way back in the 70s and 80s when we began being told all that pollution was going to bring about some sort of climate change? (First it was another ice age, then it was global warming.) Once enough of society became amenable to the idea that our actions could actually influence the climate to the point that sea levels would dramatically rise, the call began for government to get involved. They even had an assist from OPEC curtailing the oil spigots (since American oil companies, seeing declining production, decided to go where oil production was cheap and plentiful) to a painful point: remember gas lines and rationing based on license plate number? I do; heck, I remember the freakout when they had to convert the pumps because gas went over a dollar a gallon and older, analog pumps were only equipped for a 99.9 cent maximum.
We were told for decades that we were approaching “peak oil” and, thus, we had to wean ourselves off the black gold. Having become conditioned for government to get involved, they were glad to take up the invitation. One approach was the CAFE standard dictate, which began under President Ford but has generally increased with each Democrat administration. Another brilliant government idea was gasoline being blended with ethanol, originally as an octane booster to replace lead, but later (under Bush 43) as a mandate and carveout which was a boon for Iowa corn farmers but not too cool for small engine owners.
Unfortunately for government, the energy industry found a way to create very cheap energy using hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”) technology, which meant the press had to work overtime to make that a bad guy by overstating the amount of environmental harm it creates. By hook or by crook (mostly the latter) they are trying to set us up to adopt electric vehicles whether we want them or not - most of us don’t.
I equate a gasoline-powered car with freedom, and it’s relatively true: on a whim I can be up in the mountains at a cabin in just a few hours at the cost of maybe $40 for a tank of gas. I usually top off the car on the way; it takes me ten minutes max.
On the other hand, perhaps what is needed is a mental image of electric cars, one where they have a giant cord attached to them because it’s true. They can only go so far on a charge, and that distance is affected by factors like payload, outside temperature, and draining of the battery power for other uses, such as climate control in the car. Recharging is no simple feat and can take an hour or more, if you can find a suitable charging station. (This is why big federal money is subsidizing charging stations along major highways.) But where I go to get away I’m several miles from a gas station and who knows how far from a suitable charger, in a place I most likely don’t want to spend my precious free time at.
So ask yourself: why is government so hell-bent on making us drive electric cars? It’s not the climate because the climate can take care of itself: if Mother Nature says we’re going to have an ice age, we’re having an ice age. If mankind could really affect the climate, don’t you think by now we’d have created perpetual summer so we could grow more food? So that’s not it.
Is it the usage of “dirty” oil? Sure, oil isn’t clean-burning, but natural gas is cleaner and nuclear power gives off zero carbon, if you’re keeping score. Apparently extraction of heavy metals (and exploitation of part of the world’s population) from nations that don’t like us and don’t give a fig about environmental regulations is much cleaner for the planet because that’s what they want.
Here’s your reason, folks. It’s a simple seven-letter word: c-o-n-t-r-o-l. They know you can’t move around as easily in an electric car and its inconvenience will make you want to live closer to your work and activities. And I’m not the only one who thinks along these lines.
Here in Delaware, it’s a classic confrontation. Many of those who live upstate above the C & D Canal have the means, infrastructure, and votes to ramrod such a mandate on the rest of us who live where the chickens are raised and the crops are grown. They couldn’t care less that we drive 18 miles each way to work and pass all of one potential charging station on the way until we reach the comparatively big city of Salisbury.
But they do care about maintaining power in the face of opposition, so they’ve allowed their unelected henchmen in the bowels of government to do their dirty work, with the fig leaf of just following a provision they may have wrote for other purposes, but one that creates an excuse. We don’t follow all of California law, so why do this one? I think I spelled it out already.