On Saturday The Western Journal posted a commentary about President Biden’s energy proposals. I am not exactly sure who is running the country right now, but in my mind they have absolutely crossed the Rubicon with this proposal.

The article reports:

President Joe Biden kicked off his virtual Earth Day climate summit on Thursday by announcing his administration’s very ambitious plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than 50 percent from 2005 levels by 2030 and enable the U.S. to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

Sacrifice on the part of every American will be necessary in order to achieve these goals. It will change our diets, force us to purchase electric cars and dictate the way we heat our homes.

The Daily Mail published a report on what adjustments will be required of us.

…The plan “would require Americans to only consume about four pounds of red meat per year, or 0.18 ounces per day” which “equates to consuming roughly one average sized burger per month.”

…Electric cars account for approximately two percent of annual new car purchases in the U.S., according to the report. Biden’s plan reportedly calls for that figure to rise to 65 percent by 2030. Additionally, “10 percent of new truck sales would need to be electric.”

The Mail estimated the average price of a new electric car at $55,000.

…The Mail pointed out that “[n]early 25 percent of homes would need to be heated by electricity, rather than natural gas or oil, to help reach Biden’s emissions goal by 2030. The average cost to install an electric heat pump, which an all-in-one heating and cooling unit, is about $5,613, according to figures home HomeAdvisor.”

Some things to note here. Where does the electricity to heat the homes come from? Has anyone considered the labor conditions and environmental impact in mining the lithium needed for the batteries to run electric cars? Also, seriously, what impact on the American economy would cutting red meat consumption to 4 pounds a year per American? How would that impact the cattle industry, the farmers, etc.?

In November 2020, The Institute for Energy Research reported the following:

During the Obama-Biden administration, hydraulic fracturing was accused of causing a number of environmental problems—faucets on fire, contamination of drinking water, etc.—but the administration’s own Environmental Protection Agency could not validate those accusations.  Now Biden is planning to transition the transportation sector to electric vehicles that are powered by lithium batteries and require other critical metals where China dominates the market. Mining and processing of lithium, however, turns out to be far more environmentally harmful than what turned out to be the unfounded issues with fracking.

In May 2016, dead fish were found in the waters of the Liqi River, where a toxic chemical leaked from the Ganzizhou Rongda Lithium mine. Cow and yak carcasses were also found floating downstream, dead from drinking contaminated water. It was the third incident in seven years due to a sharp increase in mining activity, including operations run by China’s BYD, one of the world’ biggest supplier of lithium-ion batteries. After the second incident in 2013, officials closed the mine, but fish started dying again when it reopened in April 2016.

…Environmentalists expressed unfounded concerns about fracking, but they need to be worried about replacing fossil fuels in the transportation and electric generating sector with electric vehicles and renewable energy where lithium, cobalt and other critical metals are needed to produce these technologies. Mining, processing, and disposing of these metals can contaminate the drinking water, land and environment if done improperly as seen from several examples. And, since China dominates the global market, it just switches what once was U.S. reliance on the Middle East to U.S. reliance on the People’s Republic.

We might want to rethink this.