It is easy to understand the Republican position on nearly every subject. They are the poster children of negative polarization, and they have been negatively polarized against all forms of societal progress. If something is good and beneficial for most people with a net worth under seven figures, Republicans will work tirelessly to destroy it. The very definition of conservatism, conserving things that are effective, has been completely upended in favor of a revanchist form of anti-thought that doesn’t get much more advanced than owning the libs and doing whatever their billionaire donors tell them to do.
But why would Democrats join this Republican project to demolish the last hundred years of progress? Aren’t they supposed to be the party looking to push society forward? For many House Democrats, they adhered to that notion in a vote to support California’s landmark requirement that all new vehicles sold in California be electric or nonpolluting by 2035. Climate change is warping the world in myriad ways, none of them good, and it is destroying much of society’s progress, like the very idea of home ownership. Unless we take extraordinary steps to stop the warming of our planet, mankind’s future will be very bleak.
And 35 House Democrats voted to endorse that future last week, joining with Republicans to repeal California’s landmark law. Some of these “Democrats” are predictable Republican allies, like Henry Cuellar. His motivations have long been aligned with being the Democratic Party’s shittiest and most cynical human, but there were plenty of others who shocked the party and climate advocates by joining the Republican effort to stick their heads in the sand and work to doom the rest of us to a climate hellscape.
The New York Times is out with a report today on what happened, and it basically boils down to one word: lobbying. Senator Alex Padilla said, “I chalk it up to the intense and misleading lobbying by the oil industry,” and federal records since January reveal that oil and gas companies as well as automakers, car dealers and so-called free market groups spent more than $10 million lobbying on this bill alone. Add in a seven-figure campaign by the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, and it’s clear how to get these 35 Democrats to vote against what many of them claim to believe in.
Lou Correa, a Democrat who represents Orange County and who joined the Republicans to strike down his state’s law, told the New York Times that “I don’t like giving Trump a win,” but “we just finished an election where every poll I’m seeing, everybody I talk to, says, ‘You guys need to listen to the working class, the middle-class people.’” Who knew the working class could spend eight figures on lobbying!
At the core of this push was the claim that electric vehicles are too expensive and this bill would make them even more expensive, and in classic New York Times stenography fashion, they presented this claim as something of an accepted fact in the article. I’m sure all the lobbyists loved reading that, but it’s not so simple as the unreality they paid to impose on the rest of us.
Yes, the upfront costs for EVs are larger than those for gas cars, but as anyone who has ever owned a car knows, you don’t stop paying for it after driving it off the lot. Not only does refilling it with gas cost more than filling an EV with electricity (around $800 more per year), but gas vehicles require much more maintenance and repairs. You can buy most gas vehicles for cheaper than an EV, but if you add the cost of buying new batteries or the litany of additional moving parts that only gas vehicles have that can and do break, the costs of a gas car add up pretty quickly. A Consumer Reports study in 2023 found that “owning an electric vehicle will save the typical driver $6,000 to $12,000 over the life of the vehicle,” and that with the new $7,500 federal tax credit from the Inflation Reduction Act that is going to be killed by Republicans, consumers are (were?) able to “save as much as $1,100 in the first year of ownership.”
One of the least expensive EVs to buy brand-new is a Chevrolet Bolt, coming in at $27,495. Carfax says the cheapest new car with good gas mileage is a Nissan Versa at $17,190, but after that, the cheapest new gas vehicles they recommend come in around $22,000. The gap between the average price of electric and gas vehicles is wider, but that is largely due to trucks where there are much less EV options, and the trend reflects all technological progress where EVs get cheaper over time.
If you assume the $7,500 federal tax credit somehow survives Republican intransigence and oil and gas lobbying, that means only one of these vehicles recommended by Carfax comes in cheaper than the cheapest EV with the tax credit included, and some states have additional tax credits on top of that to reduce the cost even more. There are a lot of moving parts to this issue and in places like Texas that have cheaper gas, the comparisons are not as simple as states with more expensive gas, but the notion that EVs are prohibitively expensive is something that could only come from someone whose critical thinking skills have been drowned by propaganda and lobbying cash from oil and gas companies.
That some longstanding climate allies in blue districts in New York, California and Maine joined Republicans in this vote reveals how effective lobbying is in our nation’s capital, and how there are many Democrats who believe in nothing other than whatever they think will help them hold on to power. The electric vehicle debate is a great example of how technological innovation is a priority for this country up until it runs into entrenched interests, and then many wholeheartedly oppose technological progress in the name of propping up industries that would have less money if we had the competitive economy we like to delude ourselves into believing we do. If the oil and gas companies have their way, as well as these 35 House Democrats and their Republican allies, China’s BYD will lead the world into the 21st century and innovate real EV technological progress while America continues to decline into a rent-seeking kleptocracy.
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