Radical environmentalists say that we need to move to a future in which all of our energy is derived from solar panels and wind farms. They say that all of our cars should be electric and that we should ban any gas-powered vehicles (the far-left governments in California, Oregon, and Washington have plans to ban any new gas-powered vehicles by 2035). They say they want all of this to save the planet from the “existential threat” of climate change.
But what they don’t say and what they don’t want you to know is that it is precisely the activism of the same radical environmentalists that is blocking ANY energy production from happening in America, including new solar and wind projects and electric vehicles. Let me explain.
It takes A LOT of raw materials to develop renewable energy. For instance, a 100 megawatt wind farm requires 30,000 tons of iron ore, 50,000 tons of concrete, and 900 tons of non-recyclable plastics. If we want to meet the left’s renewable energy goals, we would need to increase production of lithium by 500%, cobalt by 460%, and graphite by more than 400%. The problem? Radical environmentalists have a militant opposition to the mining that is required to retrieve these materials.
In Oregon, we have massive lithium deposits. But activists have halted mining activities that could support the production of 1 million electric vehicles annually. Why? To protect the sage grouse – which, if we’re being honest, is basically a fancy chicken. In Nevada, lithium mining is being blocked because of a random species of plant called the Tiehm’s buckwheat that apparently could be endangered but serves no practical purpose (at least not to the extent that it is logical to block mining for lithium for the sake of this plant). Even when companies that wanted to mine lithium in Nevada provided proposals to relocate the Tiehm’s buckwheat so their projects could move forward, the environmental activists refused. And most recently, Joe Biden canceled mining leases on land in Minnesota that would give us copper, nickel, cobalt, and more materials that are all necessary for renewable projects.
Now, to be clear, renewable energy is really only viable from an economic and energy production standpoint with MASSIVE government subsidies (aka your tax dollars). But the radical environmentalists won’t even let us produce the materials here in America that would allow us to use these renewable energy sources where they make sense. They’d rather us import solar panels from China, which are made using slave labor. They don’t want oil and gas. They don’t want the materials necessary to build out renewable energy. All they want to do is virtue signal about climate change and offer ZERO legitimate solutions that would help us continue to reduce our emissions while also providing reliable, affordable, American-made energy. And Joe Biden is happy to appease their radicalism.
