The fire on Saturday afternoon occurred at a storehouse in the southern town of Viviez, in Aveyron, where 900 tons of lithium batteries were waiting to be recycled. The Telegraph has the story.
Authorities ordered residents to stay indoors and keep their windows closed as thick smoke billowed over the town. No injuries or deaths were reported and the cause of the fire has yet to be established.
Lithium batteries, found in electric scooters and vacuum cleaners, are known to spontaneously combust if they overheat or become damaged. Their dangers have raised concerns in countries where e-bikes have been promoted as a climate-friendly mode of transportation.
Questions raised
Jean-Louis Denoit, the mayor of Viviez, called Saturday’s fire “shocking” and told French news channel BFMTV: “Behind all this, there is indeed reason to ask questions about the function of electric vehicles and lithium batteries.”
It took 70 firefighters to put the fire under control, after which air quality tests were conducted and the lockdown order lifted.
France has moved to promote cycling since the pandemic, with e-bikes becoming hugely popular in cities like Paris. However irresponsible behaviour and a rising number of accidents has led to criticism around their use, and how to store their batteries safely.
Aside from the usual commitments to reduce emissions (which continue to rise globally) and redistribute income (primarily from middle-to-lower earners to corrupt governments and well-heeled members of the climate cartel), attendees at the just-concluded COP28 conference in Dubai took a break from grazing at the many sumptuous receptions to call for farmers the world over to change their ways and practice “climate-friendly” agriculture.
Cattle, sheep, and other farm animals now stand accused of endangering the planet by producing methane. Methane is routinely cited as a “potent” greenhouse gas, one which must be ruthlessly suppressed. Humans are being told, in no uncertain terms, that they must reduce, and eventually eliminate, their consumption of meat. Substitutes include lab meat and, everyone’s favorite, insects.
“A U.N. report last year held that about 7 gigatons of CO2 reductions – about as much emissions from global natural-gas combustion – would have to come from people eating meat,” Allysia Finley noted in her “Life Science” column in the Wall Street Journal (Dec. 4). “Livestock production accounts for about 11% to 17% of global greenhouse-gas emissions and about 32% of the world’s methane, which is 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide. Pound for pound of protein, beef production generates nearly 18 times as much greenhouse gas — and pork, four times as much – as tofu. Blame cow burps and manure.”
Livestock have joined SUVs, 18-wheelers, gas stoves, and gas furnaces on the ever-growing list of climate culprits. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) noticed that COP28 was “targeting farmers” and he is not moved by claims by environmentalists and climate officials who say change must come to the farm if the “climate crisis” is to be averted.
“I’m one farmer that’s not ready to do that,” he told E&E News (Dec. 6). Grassley, 88, is a hog farmer, and Iowa id the nation’s leader in hog production and in corn, grown mainly for livestock feed, as well as for ethanol. The Hawkeye State ranks in the top 10 for cattle, according to the Department of Agriculture.
Grassley rightly worries that government agencies will force companies to report their climate-related emissions throughout their supply chains, down to the farm level. This is exactly the approach taken by the Biden Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which is working on a rule to require reporting on such “Scope 3” emissions from some publicly traded companies. Farms and ranches, of course, are not publicly traded companies, but they could be caught up in the regulatory web the Biden administration wants to throw over as many entities as it can.
Reduce the Supply and Increase the Cost
The Journal’s Finley sees what game is being played.
“The climate lobby knows that restricting people’s consumption of meat and dairy products would be unpopular, if not unconstitutional,” she points out. “Instead, they urge that governments use regulation, taxes, and subsidies to reduce the supply and increase the cost of meat, as they are doing with fossil fuels.”
While elites will continue to dine well under the regime being put in place, she notes, “The world’s poor will have to continue subsisting on nonnutritious gruel, just as they will have to do without cars, air conditioning, and refrigerators to achieve the global left’s net-zero nirvana.”
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is putting his money where the COP28 pledges are. He’s buying up tens of thousands of acres of prime U.S. farmland, not to plant crops to feed the world’s 8 billion people, but to use the land for projects that will reduce CO2 levels in the air. This will reduce agricultural productivity, but that is a problem for the poor, not the rich.
By replacing its fleet of diesel-powered buses with sleek (and taxpayer-subsidized) electric buses, the transit system run by Jackson and Teton County, Wyoming, was set to transition to a green, “climate-friendly” future.
Instead, all eight electric buses purchased by Southern Teton Area Rapid Transit (START) have broken down, and when any of the vehicles will be up and running again is anyone’s guess. Help is not going to be on its way anytime soon because California-based Proterra, the company that manufactured the defective buses, has declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Once a darling of the Biden administration’s vaunted “energy transition,” the company cannot say when – if ever – spare parts will come to the rescue.
“We’re evaluating our options to see how we can work through that and make sure they can be on the road,” START Director Bruce Abel told Cowboy State Daily (Sept. 26). Local officials are bracing for a long wait, with Jackson Councilman Jimbo Rooks saying the company’s bankruptcy was “a real punch in the gut.”
START still has 23 diesel buses in its fleet, which are working fine. But the electric buses were plagued with problems as soon as they went into service. Winters in Wyoming can be cold, and EV batteries do not perform to standard in freezing temperatures, a fact perspective EV buyers should consider before they shell out real money for these vehicles. Specifically, EV batteries’ efficiency declines markedly in cold weather, curtailing EVs’ already limited range. What’s more, the batteries needed to power electric buses and trucks are so heavy that they tear up roads and bridges at an alarming rate, adding to the infrastructure problems associated with EVs.
Biden and Granholm: Fans of Proterra
Proterra CEO Gareth Joyce could provide little more than a boilerplate when trying to explain his company’s misfortunes, saying in a press release that the company faced “various market and macroeconomic headwinds that have impacted our ability to efficiently scale all our opportunities simultaneously.” He didn’t say why the buses he supplied to his customer in Wyoming broke down.
This wasn’t the way things were supposed to work out. The company got its mitts on some of the $5.5 billion in federal handouts for low- and no-emission bus manufacturers contained in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, along with the cash it got from investors eager to plow money into green projects. As noted by the Cowboy State Daily, President Joe Biden participated in a virtual tour of the company in 2021.
“The fact is, you’re making me look good,” Biden said before touting his plan to provide 50,000 charging stations nationwide.
Biden isn’t the only member of his administration to be a fan of Proterra. Jennifer Granholm invested in the company and sold her stake AFTER she became Biden’s energy secretary for a net capital gain of $1.6 million. She got out before the roof fell in.
On the Road with the Energy Secretary
Granholm’s eagerness to plug EVs led her on an ill-fated, four-day road trip from Charlotte to Memphis in June that included a testy exchange with local law enforcement officers in North Carolina. An Energy Department staffer, prudently driving a gasoline-power car, blocked a family in an EV from recharging to allow Granholm to recharge her vehicle first.
On September 25, the House Oversight Committee launched an investigation into Granholm’s EV excursion.
“This taxpayer-funded publicity stunt illustrates yet again how out of touch the Biden administration is with the consequences of policies it has unleashed on everyday Americans,” Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-KY, and fellow committee member Pat Fallon, R-TX, wrote in a letter to Granholm.
The committee demanded information by Oct. 10 about the purpose, costs, and planning of the trip, which covered 770 miles. Comer and Fallon also requested a staff-level briefing by Oct. 3, TheWashington Times reported (Sept. 27).
Don’t look for a prompt response from Granholm and her minions.
Bonner R. Cohen, Ph. D., is a senior policy analyst with CFACT, where he focuses on natural resources, energy, property rights, and geopolitical developments.
Articles by Dr. Cohen have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Investor’s Busines Daily, The New York Post, The Washington Examiner, The Washington Times, The Hill, The Epoch Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Miami Herald, and dozens of other newspapers around the country.
He has been interviewed on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, NBC News, NPR, BBC, BBC Worldwide Television, N24 (German-language news network), and scores of radio stations in the U.S. and Canada.
He has testified before the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, and the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee.
Dr. Cohen has addressed conferences in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Bangladesh.
He has a B.A. from the University of Georgia and a Ph. D. – summa cum laude – from the University of Munich.
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Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
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