Reader Rant: From a Greenie!

Here’s the latest reader rant, along with my reply!

Nathan writes: Read your stuff on Lew Rockwell always. I’m a long time solar guy, life off grid for 25 years and an OEM for battery-based solar units in my profession. I’m with you all the way on this transition to EVs. I think it will come down to pushback at some point, not unlike the VA rally on the gun laws mess last week. Peaceful at first but who knows how it ends.

I’m watching and it looks like our wishes don’t matter. For now. I was in Orlando and almost headed over to VA instead of straight back to home in the Ozarks but time said otherwise. To the diesel thing . . . I borrowed my mom’s TDI Jetta for the down and back run to Orlando and mileage was 50, that at 80mph. Hers is one of the “cheaters.” So to speak. I run a 98 Dodge 2500 myself, 12 valve, pushing 600 horse. 460k on the chassis, 20k on this rebuild. Shooting for a million with it. I live off grid, on solar and don’t use gen backup although I have one in place, and another behind it, but know how to manage systems that they aren’t needed. Purpose built home to be solar so I don’t battle nature’s whims. I’m a shooter, a motorhead, and a libertarian, oh, and also a motorcycle guy.

Kawasaki KLR is as close to the 12 valve as a gas engine can get, 91 FJ1200 Yamaha one owner (me), still looks like new after 72k touring miles, albeit subtle upgrades along the way like radial wheels machined to fit for modern rubber, upgraded brakes, suspension, cams degreed to put the power into the mid range, etc, etc. New to the fleet is a 2019 FJR1300 Yamaha and it is one refined piece of machinery but no way will I give up the old FJ air cooled inline 4. Things are shaping up for a relief valve to pop somewhere. Probably a cascading thing of one sort or another. Should be interesting. Maybe good, maybe bad if we make it to the other end but looks like a rough trail to get there.

Just wanted to say thanks, and that just because I’m in the greenie world I’m very much a realist. In fact, my biz, primary biz anyway, is as an OEM building stand alone solar units for structures floating on fresh water. Like boat docks.lol No ground reference on the AC circuit so the water is not an electrical pathway back to source. Just like a ship running 480, 3 phase, it is an isolated circuit. So my biz is speaking, educating, about electricity and water, it’s inherent dangers, and minimizing or alienating them.

My reply: I’m actually pretty “green” myself! I live out in the Woods, in a rural area, where I can heat using wood I cut on my own land and cool in summer by opening the windows. I drive an almost 20-year-old truck that, over the course of the past almost 20 years, has created lower-in-toto “emissions” than any Tesla over its much shorter useful service life of maybe ten years.

I like the idea of conserving – of living below one’s means. I despise being forced to “help” others live above theirs.

The diesel thing is especially obnoxious to those of us – like you and I – who have had personal experience with them and know how exceptional they were vs. how inferior electric cars are.

And in re the EVs: I am not “anti-EV.” I am anti-stupidity, ant-fatuity. EVs as they are as both – because of the market distortions created by the mandates and subsidies. Take them away and EV development might have proceeded in a not-stupid, not-fatuous direction. The emphasis would have had to have been on making them cost less to own than non-EVs, to make up for their functional limitations.  Otherwise no one would have bought one.

But imagine a “city” – and suburban viable – electric car that cost about $10k. Maybe it could only go 50 miles on a charge – and maybe it wasn’t capable of “ludicrous speed.” But it would be capable of getting a person to work and home, running errands and so on for thousands less than a non-electric economy car.

I would like that very much.

Instead, we are force-fed idiocies such as $30,000 Nissan Leafs that go 150 miles (maybe) and $40,000 Teslas, etc.

And they ask me why I drink!

. . .

Got a question about cars, Libertarian politics – or anything else? Click on the “ask Eric” link and send ’em in!