The push to make electric vehicles (EVs) mandatory is heating up. If the Irish government has its way, there will be 945,000 electric vehicles on the country’s roads by 2030. By 2035, diesel and petrol cars will be phased out entirely. The phasing out, we’re told, is something to be celebrated. After all, diesel and petrol cars are bad for the environment. EVs, on the other hand, are anything but.
However, if something sounds too good to be true, that’s because it probably is. Contrary to popular belief, EVs are not a climate-friendly panacea. In fact, as recent studies show, the rapid switch to EVs is incredibly harmful to the environment. EVs are not the product of immaculate conception. The aggressive production of, and soaring demand for, these vehicles is causing a sizable carbon footprint. Many manufacturers of EVs use electricity sourced from non-renewable resources to create these “eco-friendly” vehicles. In short, the rapid production of EVs is intimately associated with excessive greenhouse gas emissions. Some argue, rather persuasively, that the production of EVs is actually worse for the environment than the production of gas-powered vehicles.
Nevertheless, while drivers of gas-powered vehicles continue to be demonised, the holier-than-thou narrative surrounding EVs continues unabated. The gaslighting of gas-powered vehicle owners is real. EVs don’t just come with an environmental cost; they come with a human one, too. A significant human cost, I might add.
You see, without child labour, governments around the world, Irish one included, couldn’t meet their ambitious/delusional EV goals.
Rare metals like lithium and cobalt are the core ingredients of EV batteries. A staggering 75 percent of the world’s cobalt, used in roughly half of EVs, is found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a war-torn country synonymous with unspeakable acts of brutality. It’s also a country synonymous with child labour.
This, however, doesn’t seem to bother EV evangelists.
A recent study conducted by researchers at New York University and the Geneva Center for Business and Human Rights shows that major EV and battery manufacturers are doing little, if anything, to ensure the cobalt they’re using isn’t the product of child labour.
In the DRC, mines employ some 250,000 miners. At least 40,000 of these employees (though, ‘slaves’ is probably a better term) are children. Like fox terriers, these children, some as young as 6, enter vertical tunnels that cannot accommodate adults. In these sauna-like environments, children dig for cobalt for up to 12 hours per day. What tools do they use? Their bare hands. Even more concerningly, these children are not provided with masks or gloves. How much do they make? Sometimes as little as a dollar a day.
Cobalt miners regularly suffer from lung disease and heart failure. Excessive exposure to cobalt has been shown to cause cancer. We have heard a lot about “blood diamonds,” but what about “blood batteries”?
All this talk about saving the environment, but what about saving the poor children who are working themselves into early graves?
Interestingly, China – more specifically, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) – owns the vast majority of Congolese mines. As someone who lived in China for two years, I say the following with a complete sense of certainty: the Chinese government and human rights abuses go hand in hand. EVs are the product of modern-day slavery.
Another concerning matter involves the strain of EVs on a nation’s power grid. As I have noted before, in the US, where the EV craze (like most crazes) originated, lawmakers are scrambling to ensure that the nation’s power grid can meet the rise in EV ownership. By 2030, according to Bloomberg, more than half of car sales in the US will be electric. The United States’ power grid is ill-equipped to shoulder the load. By the end of the decade, it will take 5.4 gigawatts of energy storage to charge all of the EVs in the US. As I wrote, “To put 5.4 gigawatts into perspective, one nuclear power plant produces 1 gigawatt of energy. The United States currently has 55 power plants. To facilitate the new EV revolution, the United States requires many more.”
What would happen if, say, the power grid was to fail in the US…or Ireland?
Like the US, Ireland also has an incredibly weak power grid, one entirely incapable of coping with the rise in EVs.
Ireland is already experiencing a sharp rise in killings, violent robberies, sex assaults, and domestic violence. Imagine the mayhem that would ensue following a wide scale blackout? Imagine the streets of Dublin and Galway city plunged into complete darkness, for hours, maybe days, at a time. This is not hyperbole. The Irish grid, in its current state, is not fit to cope with the EV onslaught.
But the Irish government, very much in favor of an “act now, ask questions later” approach, doesn’t appear to recognise this rather obvious fact. Or maybe it does, and doesn’t really care. That sounds about right. What do you think?