☆ Prop 30 to promote “green (energy) shoots” via EV market?
UC Berkeley energy professor James Rector, senior “Clean Transportation” engineer David Reichmuth, and energy consultant Ronald Stein analyze California’s Proposition 30 and its promises to boost zero-emission vehicle infrastructure. Their varied takes on the initiative below. An Opp Now exclusive.
James W. Rector, UC Berkeley Geophysics and Energy Professor:
EV’s are not even close to zero-emission vehicles. In fact, they are bigger polluters than gasoline-powered vehicles.
1) The manufacturing of EV’s is anything but zero emissions. In fact, it is estimated that you would need to drive a gasoline powered car for 2–4 years before you would equal the emissions created in the manufacturing of an EV. Moreover, additional emissions and toxic pollution are generated in the mining for battery materials such as lithium and cobalt. In the Congo, cobalt mining is a socio-environmental tragedy. In the Andes, serious damage to desert acquirers has been created by lithium mining. These are just two of many examples.
2) When you consider that 45 percent of the electricity used for an EV comes from natural gas, it’s clear that even driving an EV is emitting greenhouse gases. While renewables continue to grow, it will be a generation or more before we won’t be using large amounts of natural gas for backup power.
3) In terms of Greenhouse gas emissions, EV’s are a slight (maybe 20 percent) improvement over gas powered vehicles. However, the particulates sent into our air and water (due to tire and brake wear) are 10–100 times more than particulates from tailpipe emissions. Since EV’s are 20 percent heavier than the comparable gas-powered car, EV’s emit 20 percent more particulate pollution. For larger particles that pollute our streams, lakes, oceans, snowpack, groundwater, and farmland, the effect of tire and brake wear is even more damaging.
4) We know the damage that pollution brings, and we know that it negatively affects each Californian now. By contrast, GHG emissions have not been demonstrated to have significant negative societal impacts as of yet. For example, the wildfires in CA are only slightly exacerbated by global warming with natural weather fluctuations and forest management being far more important. So reducing Greenhouse gas emissions won’t reduce wildfires much if at all.
5) Finally, less affluent people simply can’t afford new EV’s. Why should the poor be subsidizing wealthier people, particularly for no environmental benefit?
Since EV’s clearly provide no significant environmental or social equity benefit, they shouldn’t be subsidized by taxpayers.
David Reichmuth, Senior Engineer in the Clean Transportation Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists:
Gasoline-powered vehicles produce more than one quarter of California’s human-caused emissions, more than agriculture and commercial and residential buildings combined. Switching from gasoline and diesel engines to electric motors is one of the most effective ways to reduce both global warming emissions and the air pollution that make air quality in parts of the Golden State the worst in the nation. That’s why we need to put more zero-emission vehicles on the road as quickly as we can.
Proposition 30 would help accomplish that by making electric vehicles accessible and affordable to many more California residents. At least half of the estimated $4 billion raised each year would be spent on projects that benefit low-income residents or those who live in heavily polluted communities.
A recent report by the Union of Concerned Scientists demonstrates that driving the average electric car in California reduces emissions by over 70% compared to the average new gasoline car, a benefit that will only grow over time as California’s electric grid gets cleaner with more generation from renewable sources.
Prop. 30 provides a long-term source of revenue to fund clean transportation as opposed to state budgets that can change with the political tide or vehicle incentive programs that have historically run out of money.
Ronald Stein, Energy Consultant, Columnist/Author, and The Heartland Institute Advisor:
In developing countries, the mining for the exotic minerals and metals required to create the batteries needed to store "green energy" are exploiting child labor, and are responsible for the most egregious human rights’ violations of vulnerable minority populations. These operations are also directly destroying the planet through environmental degradation.
The 2022 Pulitzer Prize nominated book Clean Energy Exploitations: Helping Citizens Understand the Environmental and Humanity Abuses That Support Clean Energy, which I co-authored with Todd Royal, does an excellent job of discussing the lack of transparency to the world of the green movement’s impact upon humanity. New revenue stream to subsidize zero-emission vehicles are providing financial incentives to the developing countries mining for those “green” materials to further exploitations of poor people in developing countries. I’m sure that folks had a chance to view the 2006 movie Blood Diamonds starring Leonardo DiCaprio, which portrays many of the similar atrocities now occurring in pursuit of the “Blood Minerals” for those exotic minerals and metals to support the “green” movement that continues promoting environmental degradation to their local landscapes, and imposes humanity atrocities to citizens with yellow, brown, and black skinned workers being exploited for the green movement.
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