The global EV calamity

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The years just keep getting warmer. I mean this facetiously.

At first, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told us 2016 was 0.94 degree warmer than the 20th-century average. Then the agency raised its estimate by several steps to 1 degree in 2020 before dropping it back to 0.99 perhaps under Trump influence.

With Democrats back in charge under President Biden, 2016 started getting warmer again, reaching 1.03 degrees in 2023. The latest NOAA chart shows it 1.04 degrees warmer than the baseline. Consider it a small evidence of what David Samuels, in a widely noted article, calls the legacy of Obama-era “permission structures." By permission structures, he means a “whole of society" strategy of pressure and subtle bullying to force buy-in of Obama goals.

I hit on a similar formula in 2012 when I explained how Mr. Obama imposed his will by giving voters “permission to think highly of themselves for thinking highly of him." One residue, which NOAA obviously participated in, was the permission structure behind today’s gathering boondoggle created by Obama-era mandated investment in electric vehicles. A feature Mr.

Samuels stresses is an Obamaesque ability to substitute new, instantly embraced ideas for old, instantly embraced ideas. In his first two years, Joe Biden justified his giant increase in EV subsidies and mandates by citing the “existential risk" of global climate change. Then that argument was junked overnight.

EVs became a “strategic" technology that must be protected from Chinese competition. Both arguments were nonsense, as I belabored here, yet were seamlessly echoed in the media in turn. Subsidizing green-energy consumption is simply to subsidize energy