Even ‘EV’ Elon Musk mocks Biden’s ‘green’ hucksters
Charles Gasparino, New York Post
You know things are getting bad for Team Biden when Elon Musk is mocking its ludicrous push for everything green.
That’s right. The dude who made his billions off the greening of America with his electric-car company known as Tesla is now gaslighting the Biden administration’s delusional agenda.
Musk is known to speak his mind, so I’m not totally shocked he’s now throwing shade on Team Biden’s latest green gimmick — that we should immediately dump our nasty gas guzzlers for the allegedly affordable electric vehicles offered by Tesla and, increasingly, the mainstream automobile industry.
But what’s surprising me is that even financial executives who have embraced the green revolution, people like Larry Fink, the CEO of money-management powerhouse BlackRock, are increasingly urging caution on the overnight transition to a green economy, including an immediate embrace of electric vehicles.
The consequences, they warn, will be rapid inflation even above the pace we’re seeing now. It’s a massive tax on the poor and working class who will have to pay more to travel to work and eat given the costs associated with energy consumption. As oil is climbing to $150 a barrel and gas prices head toward $8 a gallon in some places because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it’s the last thing we as country need right now.
It’s scary that those words of caution haven’t pierced the thick skulls of the policymakers in DC. Proof was last week’s bizarre press conference featuring Vice President Kamala Harris and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who claimed that, soon, every car will be clean and electric and it will save the world from . . . Vladimir Putin.
Neither Harris nor Buttigieg mentioned Putin by name, but he was clearly top-of-mind. Oil and gas prices are spiking because of US sanctions designed to cut off sales of Russian oil that finances its war machine, they suggested.
Not mentioned: Prices are also rising up because Harris, Buttigieg and their boss, President Biden, continue to handcuff US oil drilling at the behest of the environmental lobby.
Like hawking used cars
That last reason is why they needed a PR head fake about the benefits of turning green even if it fell flatter than a pancake. During the event, Harris sought to be inspiring, but came off as someone hawking used cars. She said the American people should sit back and “imagine a future” where every car, bus and truck is powered by electricity. It can happen sooner than you think, our VP assured us, where “the freight trucks that deliver bread and milk to our grocery store shelves and the buses that take children to school and parents to work . . . produce zero emissions. Well, you all imagined it.”
She got one thing right: “It’s all imaginary” was my first thought. If EVs were so user-friendly, wouldn’t we all be buying them already?
So I reached out to savvy Wall Street types for a gut check. Here’s what they told me: Of course electric cars hold out great promise, but they’re not going mainstream tomorrow or even next year or maybe not the next five years.
Why? They’re expensive for the average person (average cost of around $56,000). Electricity doesn’t grow on trees; It’s created by burning those dreaded fossil fuels or by inefficient wind turbines. You will need nuclear power to ramp up capacity to meet the imaginary levels of our VP.
And how many nuclear plants will the environmentalists running the Biden administration really allow?
Electric vehicles also run on batteries. Those batteries rely on nickel, lithium and cobalt, minerals where China has become a significant refiner. That’s why China has also become a top manufacturer of EV batteries.
n their delusional press conference, the dynamic duo seemed oblivious to the obvious logic that if we follow their lead, maybe someday we will become less dependent on Putin’s oil but more dependent on Communist China’s cobalt.
They’re also oblivious to the fact that their green revolution must be an evolution. Don’t believe me or my Wall Street sources, but listen to Musk — the electric-vehicle king.
“Obviously this would negatively affect Tesla, but sustainable energy solutions simply cannot react instantaneously to make up for Russian oil & gas exports,” he recently tweeted.
As for the investment fad known as ESG (Environmental Social Governance) that’s pushing companies to overnight adopt everything green including EVs, Musk says they “have been twisted to insanity” and “should be deleted if not fixed.”
Good advice. Too bad Team Biden won’t listen.
Niall a DeSantis man
Last week’s supposedly hyper-secretive media mogul bash by super-banker Aryeh Bourkoff of LionTree Advisers got off to a rough start, I am told. Last Sunday night, the honchos were greeted with a speech from the Scottish historian and public intellectual Niall Ferguson.
If you know Ferguson, he’s the political opposite from most of the lefty media types who attend this confab, which made for some tense moments when he endorsed a conservative rising star, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, for president in 2024.
“We need a strong president,” Ferguson said, I have confirmed. “God forbid it’s Hillary Clinton. Not Donald Trump. Can’t be Kamala Harris. Perfect person: Ron DeSantis.”
When the crowd started to moan, Ferguson said: “Who do you think will stand up to Putin, Pete Buttigieg?
