Pete Buttigieg gets taken to school.
President Biden signed an executive order saying that by 2030, 50 percent of vehicles sold in America should be electric. Today, depending on whose figures you use, the share of electric vehicles sold in the U.S. is between three and seven percent.
At a July 19 congressional hearing Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky took Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to school on the feasibility of Biden’s executive order. Keep in mind, Massie has a Master of Science degree from MIT. Buttigieg has a Bachelor of Arts in History and Literature from Harvard. Also keep in mind that Massie said upfront that he has been driving an electric vehicle for ten years and that he believes in the technology.
With that all understood, listen as Massie puts it to Buttigieg in a way that we can all easily understand.
Over the course of a year, an American household would use 25 times as much electricity for their electric car as they would their refrigerator if they had 100 percent adoption. And the average family has two vehicles and this would be if the average family had two electric vehicles. Do you think it would strain the grid if everybody plugged in 25 refrigerators in every household?”
The answer is, of course it would. Which Buttigieg somewhat grudgingly admitted before blathering about the administration’s commitment to work with the Department of Energy to “map out” future needs.
Massie offered another illustration that we here in Texas understand with particular clarity.
The average household uses 17 percent of their electricity for air conditioning. That would mean the average household uses 1,870 kilowatt hours per year for air conditioning. If that average household plugged in electric cars, do you know how much more electricity they would use in comparison to the air conditioning that air conditions their whole house?
BUTTIGIEG: No, but again I would emphasize…
MASSIE: Well, let me help you with that first before we go on because the numbers are important. It would take four times as much electricity to charge the average household’s cars as the average household uses on air conditioning.
Let that sink in. With ERCOT admonishing us to curtail our usage today – with only a small number of EVs on the grid – imagine if millions of new EVs came online and plugged in. The U.S. grid is nowhere close to being capable of absorbing the load of millions of new electric vehicles. If Buttigieg doesn’t know that, he should.
Massie wrapped up his schooling of Buttigieg by saying this:
I told you at the beginning of this I’m bullish on this technology. But the numbers and the rate of adoption has been developed using political science not engineering. They’re impractical and if we blindly follow these goals that Biden has set out it, will cause pain and suffering for the middle class.”
Never mind the poor.
But you’re wasting your breath, Congressman. You must realize that not only do Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg not understand any of this, the simple fact is, they don’t care.
True, they don’t care and what’s more, that is their intent. To make us all equal (ly)
miserable.
Most excellent column Mr. Gleiser — right over the target!
To use a LA DA Hamilton Burger’s phrase of TV fame, this man and his boss — the temporary occupant of the office are both.. “incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial” to what is supposed to be their mission.. the well being of WE THE PEOPLE and our UNION.
You are so right in what you say. I’ll add, “they don’t give a flying HOOT” about the American people or our great nation as their actions and those of their fellow “wrecking balls” are demonstrating as they are indeed bent on the destruction of our beloved Republic as founded in freedom and good will in 1776.
But the good news is We The People who care can stop this. It is the duty, if not the highest of calls, to PUSH BACK against these evil doers on every front to SAVE AMERICA. God bless the U.S.A..
Like Forrest Gump says “stupid is as stupid does”. I will take logical physics based engineering over political science every day and twice on Sundays. My background is mechanical engineering in the electric utility industry (power generation) and Mr Massie is 100 percent correct.
Physics does not lie! Our leadership is living in a fantasy world and when you speak like Mr. Massie, their eyes just glaze over, they just don’t get it. ERCOT is already in trouble and it isn’t even August yet. Remember February 2021!!
The entire renewable energy agenda is flawed. Biden and the liberals want to stop using fossil fuels to “save the planet”, even though extracting the raw materials needed to produce lithium batteries is WAY more damaging, not to mention NOT done in the U.S. The post office decided EVs don’t fulfill their needs, ordering ICE vehicles for fleet replacement. Kamala wants schools to use electric buses, too. They must’ve forgotten what happened last winter when the windmills froze! Tesla is already asking to curtail charging during “peak” hours. I have driven by massive wind farms in West Texas that used to grow food, which is getting more expensive and hard to find. Windmills require maintenance and repairs, as well as disposal of used parts. China is buying our farmland and we’re SELLING it to them!! Huge solar farms require batteries for storage, as well as maintenance. Used EVs require replacement batteries just like your cordless drill. The battery is most of the cost of the car. The list goes on and on. Just as Massie implied, EVs have their uses AND limits.
Most elites such as lil pete and kamala harris are educated far beyond their ability to understand to which every time they open their mouths is quite apparent.
lil pete tries to bully his way with words by speaking over the person who is asking questions of him that he has no explanation to not be able to answer…truthfully anyway.
kamala harris uses what they have labelled “word salads” to try and make people THINK she knows what she is talking about, BUT, only makes her look more foolish.
The people they have put into positions such as lil pete and kamala harris are so far below the grade of understanding of the position and what it entails, it is pathetic. The people who actually KNOW what is going on and CAN verbalize it for them are wiping the floor with these incompetent puppets of this administration.
Steve Knight, Outdoor writer for the Tyler Morning Telegraph penned an excellent and very disturbing article on the closure and sale of power plants in East Texas. As an avid fisherman and person who wants to stay cool in the summer and warm in the winter this alarmed me to say the least. In East Texas we have/ had adequate power with interruptions only due to storm damage, the occasional auto accident taking out a power pole, or the rare snake or squirrel blowing up a transformer at the cost of their lives. But it seems the lack of electrical power is going to be common in the not-too-distant future for Texas. Lake Stryker and Lake Monticello plants are already closed. Lake Fairfield and Martin Creek Lake are being phased out and the “For Sale” sign is posted. These are all coal fired and natural gas fired plants in East Texas that are capable of producing many Megawatts of power daily. Other plants around Texas are on the chopping block as well. You can bet your best Gold Cowboy boots wind and solar will not fill this void; neither will a Generac unit at your home. Mayor Pete and company have a plant to snuff out fossil fuels and it seems to be working well. In this current environment an electric car or truck will only add to the drain of power we are steadily losing. November cannot get here fast enough.
We have no patriots in office, just political hacks that care only about power and status. None that truly care about what is best for the future of our country or the middle class. Our next “civil war” will not be about race, but it will be between those that have and those that have not.
The whole debacle of Washington D.C., is that the leftist dems have “forgotten, if not turned their back on” what made the U.S.A. the leader of the world.. best opportunities for our citizens, best standard of living for our families, and best economy for all.
It is FREEDOM and I can’t say that strongly enough. Freedom to innovate, freedom to worship, freedom to build, and unfettered Capitalism, which includes federalism which according to our Founders.. means 50 sovereign States operating more efficiently at the state and local governmental level than a “centrally planned Marxist totalitarian nation*” (*i.e. like communist China) ever could!!
Innovation has always come to the U.S.A. rapidly as our free enterprise system is the envy of the world as it has the inherit ability to quickly “weed out” what works and what doesn’t and it does NOT require or need the government to determine that decision. Our FREE society of FREE citizens of cities and small towns across America determines that, not some central planning nebulous bureaucrat in DC or any state capital.
Sure government can help with innovation, BUT it must never be allowed by We The People to FORCE or CONTROL innovation as the Marxist/fascist/socialist Biden regime is attempting to do.
Because if We The People don’t PUSH BACK HARD, we are faced with allowing Marxist/fascist/communism to “take root” and become a part of AMERICA. I, for one, will fight with all my heart to NEVER allow that to happen, because I love AMERICA.. IT IS MY HOME. The Founders got it right in 1776 and I stand with them.
Richard is right. Without the freedoms we enjoy in this country, we would have no innovation and consequent prosperity. Only free markets innovate. Government does not, the only exception being the innovation of new taxes.
Thank you for your kind words Buddy.
With our token liberal thus far missing in action, I find it easy to agree with everyone who has thus far commented. So what follows are a few random thoughts.
Unless I overlooked it, no one has commented on Biden’s executive order mandating that 50% of all cars sold in the United States must be electric by 2030. I am not talking about the ambiguity here. Does he mean all new cars or all cars both new and used? Rather, I am thinking about the executive order its self, which if left standing, represents our acceptance of dictatorial fiat In place of our existing form of government. It little matters that the next president will reverse Biden’s uttered nonsense regarding cars. What matters is that more and more presidents are morphing into dictators.
Rep. Thomas Massie has a Master of Science degree from MIT. I, a garden-variety businessman with no such degree, have been saying essentially what Massie is saying. And I am making no claim to a special brilliance. Thousands upon thousands of of citizens, with or without university degrees, all understand that the rush toward green energy is a formula for disaster. None of us oppose wind and solar development, but that development must be founded on reality.
I enjoy your columns and listening to “You Tell Me Texas” on the Tyler radio! Massie hits the nail on the head with a couple of facts but there are so many more that confirm what he said, unfortunately the left is not interested in facts or how to accomplish the slightest task. We need leaders that adhere to simple facts. I love reading articles from “The American Thinker”….you would be very good there too. But I just read one I wish you would take a look at by the great M B Mathews who thinks much like you do. The article title is “I Was Wrong About Trump”, 7/27/2022, and proceeds to tell us why, great article! Keep up the excellent work, the Constitution Moment, and your fight for We The People!