Tuesday, March 25, 2025

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Driving an electric car is fake environmentalism

The exaggerated climate crisis

Electric cars are causing very real environmental problems, writes former science advisor at the UK Gov. Dept. of Energy and Climate Change and former UN Environment Officer Mark Keenan in a guest analysis.

Published 29 February 2024
EV batteries require a staggering amount of natural resources.

In Sweden there exists an electrified road for Electric Vehicles (EVs) to charge while driving, see endnote i. The 2 km stretch of road is the world’s first of its kind, and an expansion of a further 3,000 km of electric road by 2045 is planned. It all sounds rather cool and futuristic, and I am reminded of a song lyric from the 1980s, the singer Eddie Grant sang “we’re gonna rock onto Electric Avenue”.

A road with an electrified lane where vehicles can charge while driving. Photo: Indiatimes.

However, let us consider whether these expensive EVs are actually environmentally friendly or are yet another mega-corporate marketing scam?

This article demonstrates that the latter is the case. The reality is that the misled environmentalists buying these cars are suckers for mega-corporate advertising, ignorantly proud of their so-called low-carbon eco-cars. Apparently, unaware that the manufacture of millions of electric car batteries, requires huge mining operations to acquire and refine large quantities of rare earth metals, such as lithium, rhodium and cobalt; that these metals have to be mined out of the ground using machinery which is powered by carbon-emitting vehicles powered by diesel or petrol; and importantly, that the mining and refining processes can cause significant and extensive pollution to land, air and water systems, for example in rural China and Mongolia, see endnote ii. Unlike the fake manmade climate change agenda, these are real environmental problems.

Below is a picture of a lithium leach field. This is what your EV batteries are made of. It is so neuro-toxic that a bird landing on this stuff dies in minutes. Take a guess what it does to your nervous system? Pat yourself on the back for saving the environment.

A lithium leach field. Photo: Tom Hegen.

Furthermore, the push to end gasoline or diesel transport by 2035 in favor of e-vehicles is based on a lie as the lithium-ion battery-powered vehicles have a total “carbon footprint” when the effects of mining lithium and producing all parts are included, that is worse than diesel autos.

Furthermore, electric cars are still driven by electricity produced from fossil fuels and will most likely continue to be. Despite decades of government subsidies wind power provides less than 5% of the world’s energy, and solar just 1%. The use of electricity to charge vehicles and devices is also an extremely in-efficient use of energy, according to a study by the European Association for Battery Electric Vehicles commissioned by the European Commission (EC):

“The ‘Well-to-Tank’ energy efficiency (from the primary energy source to the electrical plug), taking into account the energy consumed by the production and distribution of the electricity, is estimated at around 37%”.

Deceptive marketing

Let us take a look at the deceptive marketing for electric vehicles. The first misleading marketing trick that millions of environmentalists fell for was the ‘hybrid’. Hybrid cars are actually gasoline powered cars with a little battery assistance and the little battery has to be charged from the gasoline engine. If the EPA-certified mileage is 55 mpg, then it is no different from a non-hybrid that achieves 55 mpg. A world 100% full of ‘hybrid’ drivers is still 100% addicted to oil.

Now consider a cleverly designed marketing pitch for electric cars by Elon Musk, Co-Founder & CEO of Tesla Motors. In an article published on the Tesla Motors website, see endnote iii, he states:

“The overarching purpose of Tesla Motors… is to help expedite the move from a mine-and-burn hydrocarbon economy towards a solar electric economy… I’d like to address two repeated arguments against electric vehicles – battery disposal and power plant emissions… the Tesla Motors Lithium-Ion cells are not classified as hazardous and are landfill safe… the battery pack can be sold to recycling companies (unsubsidized) at the end of its greater than 100,000-mile design life…

A common rebuttal to electric vehicles as a solution to carbon emissions is that they simply transfer the CO2 emissions to the power plant. The obvious counter is that one can develop grid electric power from a variety of means, many of which, like hydro, wind, geothermal, nuclear, solar, etc. involve no CO2 emissions. However, let’s assume for the moment that the electricity is generated from a hydrocarbon source like natural gas… the hands down winner is pure electric:

 

Car Energy source CO2 content Efficiency CO2 emissions
Honda CNG Natural gas 14.4 g/MJ 0.32 km/MJ 45.0 g/km
Honda FCX Natural gas-fuel cell 14.4 g/MJ 0.35 km/MJ 41.1 g/km
Toyota Prius Oil 19.9 g/MJ 0.56 km/MJ 35.8 g/km
Tesla Roadster Natural gas electric 14.4 g/MJ 1.14 km/MJ 12.6 g/km

 

we will be offering a modestly sized and priced solar… This system can be… set up as a carport and will generate about 50 miles per day of electricity. If you travel less than 350 miles per week, you will therefore be “energy positive” with respect to your personal transportation… you will actually be putting more energy back into the system than you consume in transportation!”

However, Elon Musk’s narrative is debunked here as he does not mention the fact that:

  • The move from mine-and-burn hydrocarbon economy towards a solar electric economy in itself requires a vast expenditure of fossil-fuel energy to re-purpose the entire worldwide industrial system, as well as build vast new energy grids for wind and solar energy, etc, simply to reduce CO2 emissions. A new industrial framework which in itself will still be very polluting to land, air, and water in virtually the same ways as the old framework as it creates more and more ‘product’ to be marketed and sold, such as electric cars, which we are now incorrectly told is okay because its ‘green product’;
  • The Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI) for solar and wind energy is too low to be viable, and therefore to repurpose and rebuild the world energy and industrial system to de-carbonise the economy is a waste of vast amounts of fossils fuels (no wonder the sector seeks subsidies);
  • The manufacture of potentially hundreds of millions of new electric cars and electric car batteries involves a continuation of widespread mining and processing of rare earth metals, such as lithium, rhodium and cobalt, which are a limited resource. The mining and processing of rare earth metals has been shown to be polluting to land, air, and water systems, such as rivers.
  • If you charge the car with solar energy, you may be putting slightly more energy back into the system than you consume in ‘driving the car’. However, driving the electric car is only one small part of the entire energy consuming process from mining to manufacture to distribution, not to mention the embedded energy in the manufactured materials of a new worldwide supply-chain industrial infrastructure, including cars, factories, energy grids, windmills, photovoltaics, etc.
  • And, vitally, that CO2 emissions are not the cause of climate change. This is evidenced in my books: Transcending the Climate Change Deception Toward Real Sustainability and CO2 Climate Hoax – How Bankers Hijacked the Real Environment Movement

Climate change – a natural phenomenon

I have experience in the climate and energy sector as a Science Advisor at the U.K. Government’s Department of Energy and Climate Change; and as an Environmental Affairs Officer at the United Nations (UN) in Geneva, Switzerland. At the UN I was responsible for servicing the Pollution Release and Transfer Register Protocol, a Multinational Environmental Agreement, involving the monitoring of thousands of different pollutants to land, air, and water worldwide. Real pollution exists, but the problem is not CO2. CO2 is not actually a pollutant, it is an odorless gas, it is not soot and it is not poisonous. Actually, CO2 has beneficial properties for humankind because it is a fertilizer – without sufficient CO2 plants and crops will not grow. The biology of the earth is driven by CO2. If CO2 is less than 150 ppm, almost all life on Earth will disappear.

The little ice age ended as recently as around 1800, so it is no surprise that we are now experiencing a little warming. However, this warming period will end, and we will move again to a colder phase. That is how the Earth’s climate system has behaved for billions of years.

The Climate Intelligence (CLINTEL) is an independent foundation that operates in the fields of climate change and climate policy. CLINTEL was founded in 2019 by Dutch emeritus professor of geophysics Guus Berkhout. After its launch in 2019, it published the World Climate Declaration (WCD), which has an impressive list of over 1850 signatories worldwide, including Nobel Prize laureates and leading scientists and climate experts.

I am also a signatory of the World Climate Declaration, a declaration that refutes the United Nations narrative on climate change. The reality is the climate changes naturally. Climate change is not manmade due to CO2 emissions, or cow-made due to methane emissions as the UN claim.

Resource-intensive batteries

As an example of why electric cars are fake environmentalism let us consider a Tesla model Y battery in the picture below.

Tesla Model Y battery.

It takes up all of the space under the passenger compartment of the car. To manufacture it seemingly requires about 55 kilograms weight of lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese, and during manufacturing about 200 kilograms  of aluminum, steel and/or plastic and 50 kilograms  of graphite. To obtain these is far from easy – it has been estimated that you need to mine around 35 tons of rock, cobalt minerals, nickel ore, and copper ore; and move over 200 tons of soil just to make one battery!

A Caterpillar 994A vehicle is commonly used for the earthmoving to obtain the essential minerals. It has been estimated to consume between 250 and 775 gallons of diesel in 12 hours, see endnote iv. Finally, you get a “zero emissions” car that is not zero-emissions at all in terms of manufacture; and due to the fact that EVs are still driven by electricity produced from fossil fuels and will most likely continue to be.

The cost of Tesla batteries for the Tesla car models ranges from $5,000 to $20,000. It appears that it takes seven years for an electric car to reach net-zero CO2. The average life expectancy of the batteries is 10 years. Only in the last three years would you begin to reduce your carbon footprint. Then the batteries have to be replaced and you lose all the gains you made in those three years.

Term “sustainable” hijacked decades ago

The reality should be distinguished from the lies we are all being told by the UN, the World Economic Forum and mega-corporate advertising. The word “sustainable” was hijacked decades ago, and it is now deceptively used to advance the agendas of mega-corporate financial interests who want to sell countless millions of electric cars and who couldn’t care less about the environment. Are they concerned about the polluting effects of mining and processing rare earth metals to produce tens of millions of large electric car batteries?

As detailed in my book CO2 Climate Hoax – How Bankers Hijacked the Real Environment Movement the aim of the UN and the WEF is to catapult humanity into the ‘fake-sustainable’ totalitarian arms of UN Agenda 2030 and other clever marketing plans entirely designed by the so-called corporate elites of the WEF Davos group.

 

 

Mark-Gerard Keenan

 


1 Source: https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/05/09/sweden-is-building-the-worlds-first-permanent-electrified-road-for-evs-to-charge-while-dri

2 Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-rare-earth-village-pollution

3 The relevant article written by Elon Musk is available at: https://www.tesla.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-plan-just-between-you-and-me

4 Source: https://www.heavyequipmentforums.com/threads/cat-994-fuel-consumption.94089/

Mark Gerard Keenan, is a former scientist at the UK Government Dept. of Energy and Climate Change, and at the United Nations Environment Division. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is author of the following books available on Amazon:

Transcending the Climate Change Deception Toward Real Sustainability
CO2 Climate Hoax – How Bankers Hijacked the Real Environment Movement
Godless Fake Science
No Worries No Virus
Demonic Economics and the Tricks of the Bankers

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UK climate proposal: Less meat and more expensive flights

The exaggerated climate crisis

Published 5 March 2025
– By Editorial Staff
Air travel and meat eating are very harmful to the climate and need to be significantly reduced, according to the UK government's climate advisory body.

The UK government’s climate change advisory body, the Climate Change Committee, wants the island nation’s population to change their diets and start eating significantly less meat and dairy products.

In addition, flying will have to become much more expensive than it is today – in order to meet climate targets.

Or, under current legislation, the UK government must regularly put forward legally binding measures to reach its net-zero greenhouse gas emissions targets by 2050.

The CCC is tasked with making the proposals, and its latest report calls for UK emissions to be reduced to 87% below 1990 levels – to 535 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent for the period 2038-2042.

This would be an ambitious target, reflecting the importance of the task. But it is deliverable, provided action is taken rapidly”, the report argues.

Explosive electrification expected

According to the CCC, electrification and low-carbon electricity supply should account for the largest share of emission reductions. It wants to expand offshore wind power from today’s 15 GW capacity to 88 GW by 2040, but also double onshore wind power to 32 GW.

It estimates that three quarters of all cars and vans, and almost two thirds of all heavy trucks on the road, will be electric in 15 years – compared to only 2.8% of cars and 1.4% of vans in 2023. This shift will be “propelled by the falling cost of batteries”, it speculates.

It also believes that the electrification of domestic heating will be very rapid and estimates that half of UK homes will be heated by heat pumps by 2040 propelled by the falling cost of batteries compared to around one percent today.

Two fewer meat dishes a week

Better infrastructure should also encourage more people to choose alternatives to driving – while wanting to see “relatively large changes in price” on air travel to ensure citizens stay away from flying.

If airlines pass on the costs to customers, a return ticket from London to Spain could increase by around £150 by 2050, according to the report, which is touted as a positive and necessary measure.

In addition, Britons need to eat less meat. The authors of the report want to see a 25% reduction in meat consumption by 2040 – which means people eating two fewer meat dishes a week.

Meat production in particular is often singled out by those in power as a “climate villain”, and the CCC wants the country’s farmers to be financially compensated by the state for partially opting out of livestock farming to focus more on growing cereals and vegetables.

The government and MPs will now consider the report before voting on what the legally binding carbon budget should look like.

Climate activists’ lawsuit against Swedish state rejected by Supreme Court

The exaggerated climate crisis

Published 20 February 2025
– By Editorial Staff
Aurora promises to “continue to work feverishly to ensure that Sweden takes its legal responsibility” for the climate.

The climate alarmist group Aurora has sued the Swedish state, claiming that their human rights have been violated because the government has not taken sufficient measures to counteract alleged climate change,

The Supreme Court has now decided not to hear the case.

The approximately 300 activists claim that Sweden’s, in their view, inadequate climate action has violated their rights under the European Convention.

They argue that the state is not taking sufficient measures to combat climate change and that the state is not meeting certain stated climate objectives. They seek a declaration that the State is not taking certain specifically enumerated measures. In the alternative, they have requested the Court to order the State to take certain specified measures to reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere”, writes the Supreme Court.

The Court writes that individuals with reference to the ECHR may indeed in some cases have the right to bring a climate action against the state but that in that case they must be able to show that they themselves have been adversely affected. The Supreme Court does not consider that these requirements have been met in the Aurora case.

It is a fundamental principle not to allow an action by individuals to defend public interests and climate change affects everyone. There are therefore very high requirements for individuals to have the right to bring such an action. Individuals are only entitled to judicial review if the State’s failure has caused sufficiently imminent and certain effects on their individual rights”, it says.

“Extremely stressed”

– The Supreme Court has thus concluded that the group members’ lawsuit, as it was formulated in the district court, cannot be tried, clarifies Judge Jonas Malmberg, emphasizing that no position has been taken on how different alternative scenarios would be assessed.

In the tabloid Aftonbladet, Aurora’s spokesperson, Ida Edling, states that she is “extremely stressed” by the Supreme Court’s decision because she believes that we “only have five years to reach the 1.5-degree target”.

– It is also important to say that the Supreme Court has not said anything about the legality of Swedish climate policy. They have only said that the Aurora case cannot be tried in Swedish courts, she continues.

– We need to analyze the decision, but we will continue to work feverishly to ensure that Sweden takes its legal responsibility to protect human rights. We are in a burning crisis. It is important that the whole society takes its responsibility, also legally to ensure that the state takes sufficient climate action, she concludes.

New research on the bovaer supplement amid a wave of criticism

The exaggerated climate crisis

Published 15 January 2025
– By Editorial Staff
The Danish Animal Welfare organization argues that cows risk being excluded from grazing pastures due to bovaer.

Further research will be carried out on the highly controversial feed additive bovaer, researchers at Aarhus University in Denmark have confirmed. The decision is based on the widespread criticism of the methane-reducing additive.

From the beginning of the year, all Danish dairy farms with more than 50 cows must use methane-reducing supplements in their feed. This can be done by adding more fat to the feed or by using the new supplement bovaer for 80 days per year. Swedish Arla has recently faced harsh criticism for its use of bovaer, with many calling for a boycott of the company.

The decision has been welcomed by some dairy farmers, but also faced strong criticism, especially against the bovaer, from, among others, the Danish Dyrenes Beskyttelse.

– We don’t know how it will affect them in the long term. At the same time, cows risk being locked up in stables all year round because the effect of the substance is more uncertain when they go to pasture, the organization states.

“Focus on animal welfare”

Earlier this week, Danish farmers also protested against, among other things, climate taxes, but also the compulsion to use bovaer for their cows.

Due to the widespread criticism, more research is being planned on the impact of bovaer on the health of cows, as well as on the milk and meat of the animals that receive the supplement.

– In the trials we have done so far, the focus has been on the effect on methane, feed intake and milk yield. Therefore, we will focus on animal welfare in the trials we will do in the new year, and we also need new research that provides a better understanding of what happens in the cow’s rumen when we use Bovaer and other effective methane-reduced feed additives, he tells Danish tjekdet.

Danish farmers protest against climate taxes and bovaer

The exaggerated climate crisis

Published 15 January 2025
– By Editorial Staff
– I won't be feeding my cows with bovaer, that's for sure, says farmer Thorbjørn Thomsen

On Monday, Danish farmers protested against new climate taxes and rules that they say make farming in the country more difficult and worse. Among other things, the protests were directed against the criticized feed additive bovaer, which farmers are now forced to use to reduce methane emissions.

Last year, the Danish government agreed on a new climate agreement with the aim of making Denmark “green”. One of the targets is to reduce nitrogen emissions from agriculture by 13,780 tons per year, to be achieved through a carbon tax on farmers.

The No FFF demonstration, which stands for “No Food, No Farmers, No Future”, was organized in several Danish cities on Monday. Farmers drove their tractors to Aalborg, Kolding, Holstebro and Aarhus, among others.

The farmers are demanding the removal of all taxes and regulations that make it difficult to farm and raise animals in Denmark. They also want car and registration fees to be abolished, the green tripartite agreement to be stopped and no more solar parks to be built on agricultural land.

Demand for methane-reducing supplements

A significant part of the protests is directed against the much-criticized feed additive bovaer. Since January 1, all dairy farms in Denmark with more than 50 cows must use methane-reducing supplements in their feed.

I won’t be feeding my cows with bovaer, that’s for sure, farmer Thorbjørn Thomsen told Danish state broadcaster DR.

Arla has recently faced strong criticism after boasting that it feeds British dairy cows the dietary supplement bovaer. Many Britons have called for a boycott of the company’s products and openly declared that they will not support a company that gives its animals what they consider to be experimental and unnatural supplements. In Sweden, too, criticism has been noticeable, and initiatives such as Mejerikollen have been launched to help consumers avoid dairy products containing bovaer.

Not wanting to restrict traffic

In several European countries, demonstrations against taxes and regulations on agriculture have taken place under the slogan No Farmers, No Food. However, the Danish demonstration is not supported by the major official agricultural organizations.

– We don’t want to be part of taking ordinary Danes hostage on this issue. There are some things we are not happy with, but we are not in favor of restricting traffic for that reason, says Torben Farum, vice president of the agricultural organization Agilix in Northern Jutland.

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