Americans Are Losing Interest in Wind, Solar and EVs
Plus: Big Oil Wants to Become Big Lithium; Scissors from Scrap Metal; and more about the real costs of renewable energy and digital tech, and how we can do better.
Americans Are Losing Interest in Wind, Solar and EVs
Hundred-degree heat waves are roasting millions across the US. Last year was the hottest ever recorded. In response, growing numbers of Americans are demanding their leaders take action to slow climate change. Nah, just kidding. Actually, growing numbers of Americans are saying, “Whatever, let’s just keep on burning fossil fuels.”
That’s the dispiriting top finding of a new Pew Research Center study. It found that support for wind and solar power have respectively dropped by 11 and 12 percent since 2020. Large majorities still favor those renewable technologies, but the downward trend is clear, consistent and very disturbing.
Things look even worse on the electric car front. Last year, 38 percent of Americans said they would consider buying one; now, only 29 percent say so.
The drop in support for renewables is thanks almost entirely to one group: Republicans. Democrats’ support for wind and solar has barely budged, hovering around the 90 percent mark for the last four years. Among Republicans, though,, support for both power sources has plummeted. Why? Maybe because Donald Trump keeps telling them that climate change is a hoax, renewable energy is a scam, and Biden’s massive subsidies for wind, solar and EVs are a “plan to make China rich.” Apparently deep-red Texas, Georgia and Florida are in on this fiendish plan, because tens of billions of investment dollars are pouring in to those states to build wind, solar and EV facilities.
Not that Republicans are entirely to blame. The number of Democrats interested in buying electric cars, and who say climate change is a “very big problem,” is also eroding. Happy heat-domed Fourth of July to one and all!
Big Oil Wants to Become Big Lithium
You know who does believe in electric cars? Oil companies. The Economist reports that ExxonMobil just signed an agreement to provide lithium to a South Korean outfit that supplies EV batteries to Ford and Hyundai. The metal will presumably come from ExxonMobil’s newly opened lithium mine in Arkansas, part of the fossil colossus’ multi-billion dollar move into low-carbon investments. Meanwhile Occidental Petroleum and Equinor, Norway’s national oil company, have struck partnerships with lithium producers.
That’s because a. the people who run these companies are not stupid, whatever else you might say about them. American consumers might insist that their gas-burning cars will have to be pried from their cold, dead grip on the steering wheel, but most of the industrialized world is shifting to electric. And b. oil companies are well positioned to get into the lithium game. Much of the metal is extracted from underground brine reservoirs, and oil companies have long and deep expertise in finding and tapping into underground liquids.
Oil outfits are moving to cash in on the energy transition in other ways. Occidental has launched a carbon-capture subsidiary, and other companies are sinking billions into renewables. Who knows, maybe decarbonization won’t break oil companies after all—maybe it will save them.
How We Can Do Better: Scissors from Scrap Metal
In the Indian city of Meerut, some 70,000 people earn their living making scissors—a local industry that dates back 350 years. The scissors are made from melted-down scrap metal, and the process, as detailed in this Popular Mechanics video, is a wonder to behold. Craftspeople, many of them members of families that have been in the trade for generations, melt down metal castoffs in floor-pit furnaces, pour the molten metal into molds, and then shape, grind, hone, assemble and polish the resulting pieces into handsome pairs of scissors. Each pair passes through nearly two dozen sets of hands along the way—and the operative word is “hand.” Every stage is carried out with hand tools, most of them powered with nothing but human muscle.
It’s an impressive and also disturbing process. The scissors-makers are working amid white-hot molten metal and blizzards of sparks wearing nothing but sandals, slacks and T-shirts. Almost none of them wear anything resembling protective gear. This type of small-scale, local recycling provides lots of jobs and is in principle good for the planet. But surely we can make it a little better for the people actually doing it.
More News Worth Knowing
China Tightens State Control of Rare Earth Metals
Extreme Heat Makes Trash Picking Even More Dangerous
House Dems to Biden: Block Deep Sea Mining
Cyanide-laced mud leaks out of gold mine in Ivory Coast
Happy Canada Day, Fourth of July, and whatever else is worth celebrating! I’m taking next week off. See you soon!