Auto Industry Called Out for Colluding with Biden to 'Grab Subsidies and Raise Consumer Prices'
Big Auto is gleefully colluding with the White House to push President Joe Biden’s radical climate agenda in a move that will fatten their wallets while draining the bank accounts of American consumers.
At a staged marketing event last week, the nation’s biggest carmakers pledged that electric vehicles will comprise 40 to 50 percent of their annual sales by 2030 “in order to move the nation closer to a zero-emissions future consistent” with the Paris Climate Accord.
And if this corporate pandering to the left’s climate alarmism forces consumers to pay more for the gas-powered cars that most Americans prefer, too bad.
EV sales currently comprise just 3 percent of U.S. car sales, so the unholy alliance between Big Auto and Big Government is a massive undertaking designed to bully Americans into switching to overpriced, less-efficient electric cars.
Electric cars typically cost around $55,600 and are mostly used in big cities.
Prioritizing electric vehicles alienates suburbanites — but that’s the Biden administration’s not-so-secret goal anyway.
Joe Biden vows to destroy American’s suburbs by “placing far-left Washington bureaucrats in charge of local zoning.” @Betsy_McCaugheyhttps://t.co/s8Lz9McRvc
— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) July 23, 2020
In a scathing editorial on Aug. 5, The Wall Street Journal blasted the auto industry for selling out American consumers to panhandle for the fat subsidies the Biden administration is enticing them with to prioritize his radical climate agenda.
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“For now, most companies are losing thousands of dollars on every EV they sell, which they compensate for by charging more for the gas-powered trucks and SUVs that the vast majority of Americans still prefer,” the newspaper’s editorial board wrote.
“The companies hope to lower EV costs over time through economies of scale in manufacturing. This is another reason they are begging for government subsidies to increase sales.”
The editorial continued: “But auto makers don’t want to drive the electric highway alone because then they could lose money while others churn out profits. The solution? Collusion with the Biden Administration to regulate competition across the industry and raise prices for consumers.”
Ford, GM, BMW, Honda, Volkswagen, Volvo, the United Auto Workers and Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom all issued glowing statements praising Biden’s radical environmentalism.
“The auto industry is poised to accept the challenge of driving EV purchases to between 40 and 50 percent of new vehicle sales by the end of the decade,” the Alliance for Automotive Innovation said.
The auto lobbyists reminded Biden that carmakers will need huge subsidies to incentivize them to pressure consumers to switch to electric vehicles.
“Federal and state governments — and all stakeholders — will need to provide significant support for consumers, infrastructure and innovation,” the group said.
“The auto industry has stepped up — investments in electrification globally will exceed $330 billion by 2025. But all levels of government will need to do their part for this challenge to succeed.”
The Wall Street Journal, the newspaper of record for business, slammed this “electric vehicle welfare state” for undermining capitalism in favor of “corporate socialism.”
“This isn’t capitalism,” the editorial board said. “It’s corporate socialism, or state capitalism. We hope these corporate titans enjoy their new government ‘partners.’ Maybe they can put Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders on the corporate board.”
Theoretically, making a mass switch to EVs might help combat climate change, but it’s unclear how much this initiative will help — or if the costs outweigh any benefits.
While Democrats and their media lapdogs have been rabidly hyping the narrative that climate change is an imminent “existential threat” to mankind, numerous scientists say this is a partisan lie designed to push left-wing agendas.
Physicist and engineering professor Steven Koonin said climate alarmists are flippantly weaponizing the bogus “crisis” to enrich and empower themselves.
“It’s a fiction of the media and the politicians who like to promote that notion,” Koonin told Fox News host Tucker Carlson in June.
Actual climate change pronouncements over the years. pic.twitter.com/j7mRTTUga3
— Michael Eades, M.D. (@DrEades) January 16, 2015
Despite the constant environmental fearmongering from the left, he said, “human influences” are not responsible for natural disasters such as hurricanes and intermittent heatwaves, which are just as common today as they were in 1900.
“The warmest temperatures have not gone up in the last 60 years,” said Koonin, who was the undersecretary for science in former President Barack Obama’s Department of Energy.
Vincente-Serrrano et al 2020
“Our study stresses that from the long-term (1851–2018) perspective there are no generally consistent trends in droughts across Western Europe.”https://t.co/k0adKj3DN3 pic.twitter.com/kLtNgcQpSM— Roger Pielke Jr. (@RogerPielkeJr) June 17, 2021
Koonin also scolded the scientific community for not pushing back at clueless politicians and media figures promoting climate alarmism.
Allowing these lies to metastasize causes unnecessary public panic and erodes the credibility of legitimate environmental scientists who don’t endorse this mass hysteria, he said.
“It is a failure of the scientific community not to stand up and say, ‘Guys, you know, you have over-egged the custard. You really need to be much more circumspect in how you talk about this,’” Koonin said.
Patrick Moore, the co-founder of Greenpeace, echoed these sentiments when he asserted in February that there is “zero evidence” that we’re in the midst of a climate emergency.
Zero evidence of “climate emergency”.
“Almost everywhere you look, climate change is having only small, and often benign, impacts. The impact of extreme weather events ― hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and droughts ― are, if anything, declining.” https://t.co/YitpkwawKK pic.twitter.com/P6Wq9ICXh0
— Patrick Moore (@EcoSenseNow) February 4, 2021
“It is clear that the highly exaggerated claims … are not so much out of concern for endangered species as they are a front for a radical political, social and economic ‘transformation’ of our entire civilization,” Moore said at a 2019 congressional hearing.
Like Koonin and some other environmental experts, Moore torpedoed climate alarmism as pseudoscientific propaganda whose goal is to redistribute wealth and usher in a new world order.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
