Horowitz: Why is Governor Brian Kemp promoting the net-zero electric car agenda?

Every Republican in Washington voted against the Green New Deal subsidies and regulations on behalf of ineffective and unsafe energy. However, the GOP governors are groveling to bring the projects to their states rather than sabotaging the agenda – all for short-term subsidies. As Joe Biden rightfully chided these governors in his 2023 SOTU address: “To my Republican friends who voted against it but still ask to fund projects in their districts, don’t worry. I promised to be the president for all Americans. We’ll fund your projects. And I’ll see you at the ground-breaking.” And indeed, that is what is occurring throughout red America.

Earlier this month, Brian Kemp’s administration celebrated the EV manufacturing plans for South Korean-based Woory Industrial Company setting up shop in Dublin, Georgia. His Department of Economic Development promised to equip the company with "comprehensive, customized training services.” As they laud the “job creation” built on nothing but government regulation, subsidies, and monopolization of the public square with false information about gas-powered cars and global warming, Georgia is paying for the rope to hang its citizens and leave them without affordable and reliable cars.

On June 6 at the ground-breaking of this EV project, Gov. Brian Kemp promised this latest project would help Georgia "on the path to becoming the E-mobility capital of the nation."

"This emerging industry continues to bring historic levels of new jobs and investment to communities all over the state, thanks to our highly skilled workforce and reliable infrastructure network," Kemp said in a Tuesday announcement.

When asked by Center Square regarding concerns about these “investments” helping grow China’s wealth due to the Chinese monopoly over the mining, refining, and manufacturing of the rare earth elements that go into EVs, a Kemp spokesman promised that Kemp "is taking a market-based approach to E-mobility investments in Georgia."

But here is the big lie. There is nothing market-based about EVs. Without massive federal regulations making gas-powered cars run into impervious headwinds and without the tailwinds of favors and subsidies for EVs, this entire project would never get off the ground. Kemp is touting the free market even as the Federal Highway Administration, pursuant to the Inflation Reduction Act’s Green New Deal provisions, is shoveling $130 million to the Georgia Department of Transportation to create electric charging infrastructure.

The very same legislation they are celebrating that grants subsidies to create an impossible amount of charging infrastructure has also facilitated the transition of our electric grid to unreliable solar and wind energy and expensive battery backup power. GOP governors genuflecting to the EV industry might contend that they oppose the other Biden administration energy policies. However, those contentions ring hollow because absent the ability to repeal them, any effort to give aid and comfort to the EV industry will not be rooted in the free market and will contribute to the “transition” of our society to energy-less hell.

All these GOP governors are doing is lining the pockets of China with our printed money that is bankrupting our country with debt, inflation, high mortgage rates, and insolvency. China controls 58% of the lithium processing and refinement for EVs, 65% of the cobalt, and 87% of rare earth elements.

At the same time, the Biden administration is ensuring that we can’t even produce the materials needed for EVs domestically. He revoked permits for mining projects in the largest copper and nickel find in the world in northeastern Minnesota. This is not rooted in environmental ideology, but in a controlled demolition of our economy. If you really wanted to replace oil and gas with EVs, why would you shut down the mining needed to produce batteries and weaken the grid with garbage energy precisely at the time you are crashing it with electric vehicles and appliances?

As the Institute for Energy Research observes, in the irony of all ironies, “The United States is 4 times more dependent upon China’s minerals and their processing than it was on the Middle East at the peak of its oil dependency.” So, no politician acting in good faith could possibly believe that EVs are the solution to energy independence. They are the path to energy destitution and individual dependence on the government for all needs because EVs will become the only vehicles, too scarce and unaffordable for all but the elites.

So rather than helping facilitate the EV agenda to poverty and scarcity to make a few bucks and artificially created jobs in the short run, GOP governors and congressmen should focus on the long-term solvency by sabotaging the green energy agenda. They should refuse to cooperate with any wind, solar, EV, or carbon capture project – the same way red states declined to cooperate with Medicaid expansion following the passage of Obamacare.

Back in Washington, Republicans must defund the Green New Deal inside the budget bills. Specifically, there needs to be a knock-down, drag-out fight over the EPA’s proposed “vehicle tailpipe rule” that will phase out all workable cars later this decade. Officials are subsidizing the process of producing a product that is now unsustainably expensive. There has been an 86% rise in the cost of the minerals that go into manufacturing EVs just since January 2020. Lithium alone is around 200% more expensive than it was pre-COVID.