We’re Taking Bets: How Long Before Environmentalists Start Attacking EVs?

Today, you’re not allowed to say a bad word about electric cars. They’re planet savers, after all. Environmentalists tell us so. But there will come a day — in the not-too-distant future — when the climate change fanatics will decide that EVs are planet killers, too.

We’ve seen this bait-and-switch tactic before.

Back in 2007, energy producers pumped money into environmental groups to promote natural gas. The Sierra Club used the funds to mount a “Beyond Coal” campaign touting the benefits of gas. Joe Romm, a climate advocate at the Center for American Progress, declared that natural gas “may be the single biggest game changer for climate action in the next two decades.”

Then came the fracking revolution, and the resulting abundance of natural gas caused power plants across the country to switch to gas from coal. Then environmentalists decided natural gas wasn’t so good after all. By 2015, they were at war with it. The motto for the Sierra Club’s new “Beyond Natural Gas” was “Dirty, Dangerous, and Run Amok.”

Environmentalists tried to stop fracking, opposed new pipeline development, and then started pushing for bans on gas-fueled appliances.

More than 70 cities in California alone have voted to ban natural gas hookups in new homes. New York became the first to impose a statewide ban. Sarah Fox, an associate law professor at Northern Illinois University School of Law, gleefully told CNN that this ban “is becoming a mainstream policy.”

Soon it will be the auto industry’s turn.

Just as natural gas producers before them, they are bear-hugging green groups and working arm-in-arm with government while promising to bring forth a magical electric car future.

GM says it will be all-electric by 2035. (In the first quarter of this year, EVs accounted for a grand total of 3.4% of GM sales.) Ford aims to have electric vehicles make up half of its sales by 2030. Toyota says it will be “carbon neutral” by 2050.

States are getting into the act, with California announcing a ban on the sale of gas-powered cars starting in 2035. Other states have followed suit. The Biden administration plans to impose emissions regulations so strict that they would force two-thirds of all cars sold to be electric by 2032.

Consumers don’t want these cars, yet environmentalists are determined to force them into the market “for the greater good.”

So our prediction is this: As soon as automakers have gone over the edge with EVs, and as soon as government mandates start to kick in, environmentalists will declare them “dirty, dangerous, and run amok.”

We’re already seeing the early stages of this bait-and-switch. This week, the Los Angeles Times blasted GM killing off its compact Bolt to make room for battery-powered EVs. The Times said that “Replacing the Chevy Bolt with electric SUVs would be a climate tragedy.”

Wait. Climate tragedy? Really?

Turns out, only certain EVs are now acceptable to environmentalists.

“Electric vehicles are on the whole better for the planet than gas-powered vehicles, but bigger, heavier, and less efficient EV models have more environmental impacts than smaller ones,” the Times editorial board sniffed.

It is now calling on regulators to not just force car buyers to give up their trusty internal combustion engines, but trade them in for “small, zero-emission cars that most people can afford to buy.” It won’t be long before green mobs start slashing tires of electric trucks and SUVs.

At some point, no electric car will be good enough. Environmentalists will “discover” that building car batteries is massively damaging to the environment. They will be shocked to learn that EVs aren’t “zero emission” at all, because the electricity used to charge them still largely comes from fossil-fuel-powered generators. They will decry the fact that EVs are making human-right-abusing despots fabulously rich. They will say EVs aren’t doing nearly enough to stop the climate “crisis.”

The only solution, they will say, is that we give up private ownership of cars, move to “15-minute” cities, cram into public transportation — until they decide that these encumbrances aren’t sufficient to fight “climate change.”

Unlike predictions of climate doom, we are 100% certain that this future will come to pass if we keep trying to placate the climate zealots on the left.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board