The Unbearable Lightness of EVs

From Green Energy Reality Check: It's Not as Clean as You Think | Manhattan Institute (manhattan-institute.org):

 A lithium EV battery weighs about 1,000 pounds.(a) While there are dozens of variations, such a battery typically contains about 25 pounds of lithium, 30 pounds of cobalt, 60 pounds of nickel, 110 pounds of graphite, 90 pounds of copper,(b) about 400 pounds of steel, aluminum, and various plastic components.(c)

• Lithium brines typically contain less than 0.1% lithium, so that entails some 25,000 pounds of brines to get the 25 pounds of pure lithium.
• Cobalt ore grades average about 0.1%, thus nearly 30,000 pounds of ore.(e)
• Nickel ore grades average about 1%, thus about 6,000 pounds of ore.(f)
• Graphite ore is typically 10%, thus about 1,000 pounds per battery.(g)
• Copper at about 0.6% in the ore, thus about 25,000 pounds of ore per battery.(h)

 In total then, acquiring just these five elements to produce the 1,000-pound EV battery requires mining about 90,000 pounds of ore.

From Will the U.S. Mine for Rare Earth and Exotic Minerals? - American Thinker

• The U.S. has only one operating rare-earth mine – Mountain Pass – which lost over two years of production due to a 2016 bankruptcy. Mountain Pass sends their mined ore to China for processing due to high environmental compliance costs – including regulatory minefields and a byzantine quandary of local, state, and federal rules.

From Sustainable shipping: solutions for the future of shipping (solarimpulse.com)"

• Shipping materials will account for around 17% of global CO2 emissions in 2050.

It's almost like 'Environmentalism' was funded by the Chinese to encourage Western companies to ship production to China. Huh.... how odd....  So, how many strip mines does it take to make one Tesla? 

Define "Free Market"

For years, I have heard liberatarians, conservatives and liberals, people of every stripe, make various statements about "the free market." But none of them define what it is. Some of them seem to think various conditions make a market "un-free", but no one can seem to agree on what those conditions are, nor do any of the conditions they specify seem to make any sense.

For example, how is it NOT a "free market" when the government gets involved in the market? The government is just one more market player that can be duped, played, cajoled into taking or providing capital, just like any other market player. Every player in the market is free to do whatever they want to do. Every action has consequences - as long as you are willing to accept the possible consequences, then what's stopping your action? 

What people seem to want is not a "free market", but an "equitable market", where everyone has a good outcome. That's impossible. It cannot be done. As long as people vary in their abilities, there will be some people who are 3 or 4 standard deviations better at dealing with current market conditions than anyone else is. As those people apply their skills, they will inevitably create a monopoly in their industry simply because they are so much better at that industry than anyone else is. 

When the monopoly exists, players who are not as good at playing be current rules will try to change the rules, and they will use as their justification the idea that "the market is not free." If they successfully change the rules - shock! - the new rules favor their style of play instead of that of the old market leader. Then they become the monopolists and a new set of players try to change the rules to benefit themselves at the cost of the current leader. 

And that's the point. EVERY market is a free market. The USSR, Communist China, the US, corporate monopoly, oligarchy, mob rule, war, peace, chaos, quiet, pick-your-favorite environment, whoever is currently on top in that environment got there because they figured out how to turn the existing system to their advantage. Anyone is free to figure that out - it's just harder for some groups in some circumstances  to figure that out than it is for those same groups in other circumstances. Some circumstances favor one set of skills, some circumstances favor another set of skills. We go 'round and 'round in our perpetually, universally free market as everyone tries to game the rule set to their own advantage. 

But the economy is absolutely man-made, completely free, and all the actors in it can take whatever risks they want to amass whatever advantages they can. To say that one rule set is "free" while another rule set is "unfree" is simply to say that you personally find the first rule set advantageous while you don't find the second set advantageous. In that sense, "free market" is a phrase that has no meaning.

Payback is a Bitter Pill

China Joe Biden is a Chinese Communist Party shill, there's no question of that. The question is, has he opened the southern border in order to allow China to smuggle fentanyl into the States? Lots of people are now pointing out that this is at least a side effect, if not an intended outcome, of Biden's border policies. 

Now, I am not opposed to open borders because: 

1. our country was founded as an open borders country, 
2. Aquinas was fine with open borders, 
3. the Holy Father is fine with open borders,

But, even if none of that were true, the fact that China is importing a powerfully addicting illegal drug into the United States is unsurprising. If this were a movie, we would expect this to be the end of the reel, wherein after the protagonist suffers endless outrages, he wreaks havoc upon his tormentors. Given what we did to China, and in deference to America's favorite Hollywood ending, China owes us at least that courtesy. Sit back, grasshopper, and I will tell you the tale:

China had much to sell the West, but the West produced virtually nothing China needed or wanted. As British and American citizens consumed tea in great quantity but failed to produce anything the Chinese wanted, the threatening imbalance of trade between East and West became acute.

Both British and American companies solved the problem by illegally importing opium into the Chinese mainland. Chinese officials had long outlawed the drug because they recognized it as a poison. By the late 1700's, however, Britain had control of India’s poppy fields and her navy made it possible to smuggle tons of the stuff across the Chinese border and into Chinese harbors. American businessmen, having no access to Indian poppies, dealt themselves into the illegal drug trade by encouraging Turkish farmers to plant poppies so they, too, could grab part of the drug business.

China responded by confiscating and destroying the huge opium stocks in British warehouses on Chinese soil. Britain went to war to recover the cost of the lost opium, not once, but twice (1839-1842 and 1856-1860). The resulting British victories not only opened Chinese ports to the Western importation of opium, it also gave American citizen Warren Delano, FDR’s grandfather, the enormous wealth which FDR would use to such excellent effect in his own presidential election campaigns. In short, it is not too incorrect to say that FDR's presidency was made possible in part via drugged Chinese slaves.

That's correct: Franklin Delano Roosevelt's grandfather imported opium into China despite the fact that China had outlawed opium. This illegal opium trade led directly to the Opium Wars that destroyed China as the centuries-long Asian superpower. It led directly to the burning of the Old Summer Palace, which still angers the Chinese, and to the subjugation of China for centuries by the West. The grandson of one of the major Chinese drug runners became the President that lorded it over them during WW II. 

China never forgot that.

Now, China seems to be returning the favor.

And we are left to whine that payback is a bitter pill.