The problem with Canada's embracing of a green world.

[I am Groot]

This article points out just what the drawbacks are of going all in on green energy. This is something the media and politicians prefer to ignore as they extol the virtues and benefits of electric vehicles and solar power. Increasing the cost of energy makes us poorer and China richer. Not all of us, of course. The wealthy who have invested in Chinese companies are making out fine. But middle-class people in the West are already struggling to heat their homes and fuel their cars.

 

The shift to electric cars is certainly no win for the West’s working and middle classes. But it is an enormous boon to China, which enjoys a huge lead in the production of batteries and rare-earth elements needed to make EVs, and which also figure prominently in wind turbines and solar panels. China’s BYD, which is backed by Warren Buffett, has emerged as the world’s top EV manufacturer, with big export ambitions. Meanwhile, American EV firms struggle with production and supply-chain issues, in part due to green resistance to domestic mining for rare-earth minerals. Even Tesla expects much of its future growth to come from its Chinese factories.

Building cars from primarily Chinese components will have consequences for autoworkers across the West. Germany was once a car-manufacturing giant, but it is expected to lose an estimated 400,000 car-factory jobs by 2030. According to McKinsey, the US’s manufacturing workforce could be cut by up to 30 per cent. After all, when the key components are made elsewhere, far less labour is needed from US and European workers. It’s no surprise that some European politicians, worried about a popular backlash, have moved to slow down the EV juggernaut.

--

This dynamic is found across the entire sustainability agenda. The soaring energy costs in the West have helped China expand its market share in manufactured exports to roughly equal that of the US, Germany and Japan combined. American manufacturing has dropped recently to its lowest point since the pandemic. The West’s crusade against carbon emissions makes it likely that jobs, ‘green’ or otherwise, will move to China, which already emits more greenhouse gases than the rest of the high-income world. Meanwhile, the Chinese leadership is looking to adapt to changes in the climate, instead of undermining economic growth by chasing implausible Net Zero targets.

There are clear class implications here. California’s regulators recently admitted that the state’s strict climate laws aid the affluent, but hurt the poor. These laws also have a disproportionate impact on ethnic-minority citizens, creating what attorney Jennifer Hernandez has labelled the ‘green Jim Crow’. As China’s increasingly sophisticated tech and industrial growth is being joyously funded by US venture capitalists and Wall Street, living standards among the Western middle class are in decline. Europe has endured a decade of stagnation, while Americans’ life expectancy has recently fallen for the first time in peacetime. Deutsche Bank’s Eric Heymann suggests that the only way to achieve Net Zero emissions by 2050 is by squelching all future growth, which could have catastrophic effects on working-class and middle-class living standards.

Rather than the upward mobility most have come to expect, much of the West’s workforce now faces the prospect of either living on the dole or working at low wages. Today, nearly half of all American workers receive low wages and the future looks worse. Almost two-thirds of all new jobs in recent months were in low-paying service industries. This is also true in Britain. Over recent decades, many jobs that might have once supported whole families have disappeared. According to one UK account, self-employment and gig work do not provide sustenance for anything like a comfortable lifestyle. Rates of poverty and food shortages are already on the rise. As a result, most parents in the US and elsewhere doubt their children will do better than their generation, while trust in our institutions is at historic lows.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/04/24/the-inhumanity-of-the-green-agenda/

 

[eyeball]

Well, the solution is obvious, stop wheeling and dealing with dictators.

Starting 25 - 30 years ago when it was pointed out how economic globalization would only make dictatorships stronger and us weaker.

We've not just hollowed out our economy we've completely excavated everything beneath it's foundations.

[BeaverFever]

2 hours ago, I am Groot said:

This article points out just what the drawbacks are of going all in on green energy. This is something the media and politicians prefer to ignore as they extol the virtues and benefits of electric vehicles and solar power. Increasing the cost of energy makes us poorer and China richer. Not all of us, of course. The wealthy who have invested in Chinese companies are making out fine. But middle-class people in the West are already struggling to heat their homes and fuel their cars.

 

The shift to electric cars is certainly no win for the West’s working and middle classes. But it is an enormous boon to China, which enjoys a huge lead in the production of batteries and rare-earth elements needed to make EVs, and which also figure prominently in wind turbines and solar panels. China’s BYD, which is backed by Warren Buffett, has emerged as the world’s top EV manufacturer, with big export ambitions. Meanwhile, American EV firms struggle with production and supply-chain issues, in part due to green resistance to domestic mining for rare-earth minerals. Even Tesla expects much of its future growth to come from its Chinese factories.

Building cars from primarily Chinese components will have consequences for autoworkers across the West. Germany was once a car-manufacturing giant, but it is expected to lose an estimated 400,000 car-factory jobs by 2030. According to McKinsey, the US’s manufacturing workforce could be cut by up to 30 per cent. After all, when the key components are made elsewhere, far less labour is needed from US and European workers. It’s no surprise that some European politicians, worried about a popular backlash, have moved to slow down the EV juggernaut.

--

This dynamic is found across the entire sustainability agenda. The soaring energy costs in the West have helped China expand its market share in manufactured exports to roughly equal that of the US, Germany and Japan combined. American manufacturing has dropped recently to its lowest point since the pandemic. The West’s crusade against carbon emissions makes it likely that jobs, ‘green’ or otherwise, will move to China, which already emits more greenhouse gases than the rest of the high-income world. Meanwhile, the Chinese leadership is looking to adapt to changes in the climate, instead of undermining economic growth by chasing implausible Net Zero targets.

There are clear class implications here. California’s regulators recently admitted that the state’s strict climate laws aid the affluent, but hurt the poor. These laws also have a disproportionate impact on ethnic-minority citizens, creating what attorney Jennifer Hernandez has labelled the ‘green Jim Crow’. As China’s increasingly sophisticated tech and industrial growth is being joyously funded by US venture capitalists and Wall Street, living standards among the Western middle class are in decline. Europe has endured a decade of stagnation, while Americans’ life expectancy has recently fallen for the first time in peacetime. Deutsche Bank’s Eric Heymann suggests that the only way to achieve Net Zero emissions by 2050 is by squelching all future growth, which could have catastrophic effects on working-class and middle-class living standards.

Rather than the upward mobility most have come to expect, much of the West’s workforce now faces the prospect of either living on the dole or working at low wages. Today, nearly half of all American workers receive low wages and the future looks worse. Almost two-thirds of all new jobs in recent months were in low-paying service industries. This is also true in Britain. Over recent decades, many jobs that might have once supported whole families have disappeared. According to one UK account, self-employment and gig work do not provide sustenance for anything like a comfortable lifestyle. Rates of poverty and food shortages are already on the rise. As a result, most parents in the US and elsewhere doubt their children will do better than their generation, while trust in our institutions is at historic lows.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/04/24/the-inhumanity-of-the-green-agenda/

 

The major flaw of this article is fact that the green strategy now includes bringing the new economy greentech jobs to western nations and isolating China from the new green economy while at the same time reducing the power of petro-states like Russia Iran and Saudi. 

[I am Groot]

1 hour ago, BeaverFever said:

The major flaw of this article is fact that the green strategy now includes bringing the new economy greentech jobs to western nations and isolating China from the new green economy while at the same time reducing the power of petro-states like Russia Iran and Saudi. 

Yeah? How's that going so far? The West are the only countries penalizing themselves with high energy costs. China, India and the rest are still building coal plants. Sure, there's talk of tariffs but it's just talk.  As for isolating Russia, did you know that Russia is by far and away the largest source of enriched uranium needed to power the world's nuclear reactors? It supplies the fuel for almost all of Europe's nuclear reactors. Meanwhile, China supplies the batteries and solar panels and other necessary parts for solar and wind power plants, along with controlling most of the rare minerals.

[herbie]

China and India are still pissing in the pool? I guess that means we should too according to your reasoning.

[CdnFox]

53 minutes ago, herbie said:

China and India are still pissing in the pool? I guess that means we should too according to your reasoning.

No one will notice if we do or don't.  We don't even make a blip.

If we really wanted to do something about carbon and climate change we'd focus on creating affordable tech to replace the current tech, and also focus on how we can remove carbon from the air now.  Trudeau said he was going to plant 2 billion trees, i think he planted about 30.   If we had a gov't that actually DID plant that many trees it would actually make a difference.

 

[herbie]

2 hours ago, CdnFox said:

If we really wanted to do something about carbon and climate change we'd focus on creating affordable tech to replace the current tech, and also focus on how we can remove carbon from the air now.

What the hell do you think we've been doing ?

[CdnFox]

21 minutes ago, herbie said:

What the hell do you think we've been doing ?

Lying about it.  Trudeau hasn't done a thing to move forward technology to a point where it's going to replace current electrical generation. If anything he's stood in the way of our nuclear plans and yet just announced that he's all in favor of our nuclear industry.  He promised to plant 2 billion trees, which actually would remove an insane amount of carbon, and then competely bailed on it.

He's done nothing to foster battery tech development. The closest he's come is giving a foreign automaker 13 billion in cash and credits to build tech we know isn't really going to cut it rather than develop anything new.

Why do you think we've failed to meet our paris accord targets?

what the hell did YOU think they'd been doing? Did you think that the carbon tax actually cleaned the air? LOL!

[herbie]

I didn't know Trudeau was an engineer. Thought he was a politician.

Who you're whining about cuz he gives concessions to encolurage environmentally positive things. And that they're not happening fast enough. Or maybe you've never been anywhere to see those fields of windfarms, the dams under construction or lived anywhere the town's filling up with treeplanters right about now.

I know you just want to trash Trudeau, but try reasoning that isn't totally schizophrenic.

[I am Groot]

17 hours ago, herbie said:

China and India are still pissing in the pool? I guess that means we should too according to your reasoning.

My reasoning is if the Chinese and Indians are still pouring water into the pool from firehoses it serves little purpose for us to go bankrupt trying to bail it out with our dixie cup.

Edited May 1, 2023 by I am Groot

[Nefarious Banana]

Plant the trees . . . my grandsons will log them in 40 yrs.  Remember the logger when you reach for the ass-wipe  ???