Jennifer Granholm is a danger to America.
Sure, that has been clear for a while. As Secretary of Energy, she has been leading the fight to destroy our economic vitality through the push to electrify everything while simultaneously inhibiting the supply of electricity. She has been working to get natural gas out of the energy mix. She has…oh well, she has been a menace to America for a long time. The parade of horribles is too long to go through.
But this may be the most stupid and most dangerous policy proposal of all.
Biden Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm says she supports requiring the U.S. military to adopt an ALL-electric vehicle fleet by 2030 pic.twitter.com/pw4F3jmrpo
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 26, 2023
This is in no uncertain terms an insane proposal. As in batsh!t crazy, are you suicidal?
Now a lot of people are wondering what exactly she means. Clearly, she can’t be proposing that all our weapons systems be run on electricity or anything crazy like that, can she?
With this level of stupid I can’t rule it out, but let’s assume that she is not. The idea is utterly preposterous. Literally impossible. The US can’t even make artillery shells at the rate they are being consumed by Ukraine, so the idea that we can replace all the equipment that uses fossil fuels with electric propulsion is absurd. There isn’t any infrastructure to do so. There isn’t even enough infrastructure in the US to replace our current inventory with exactly the same equipment with no upgrades. We couldn’t do it.
The administration’s efforts are already being carried out by the Department of Defense, according to the agency’s online scorecard. The scorecard revealed the agency has “at least 640 staff that work on environmental justice, either in a full- or part-time capacity.”
Additionally, Biden announced in February a new set of standards that were said by the White House to be “aimed at creating a convenient, reliable and Made-in-America electric vehicle (EV) charging network so that the great American road trip can be electrified.”
While delivering Earth Day remarks from Seward Park in Seattle, Washington, Biden said last April his administration is working to make “every vehicle” in the United States military “climate-friendly.”
“One of the things I found out as President of the United States, I get to spend a lot of that money,” Biden said at the time. “We’re going to start the process where every vehicle in the United States military, every vehicle, is going to be climate-friendly — every vehicle — I mean it.”
Despite Biden’s claim that he wants to electrify everything, let’s leave out of the equation actual weapons systems and just assume “fleet” means trucks and other motorized vehicles for personnel. Or even, let’s say, replace the 55,000 or so Humvees alone. Forget the transport trucks or anything used on the battlefield itself regularly.
It’s still impossible unless you want to replace them with Teslas. This would be nice for the troops as they must be wildly more comfortable on asphalt roads, although you would need a ruggedized version and some EV chargers in the deserts or wherever. So no Teslas.
The DoD has a replacement for the Humvee, called the JLTV, which is sort of a MRAP light.
The replacement process for the Humvee began in 2005–18 years ago, and it is now in production. The MRAP was used in Iraq as an interim and partial solution. They are now churning out JLTVs at full-rate production, and they will replace Humvees sometime before hell freezes over.
The development process of that vehicle was about 15 years. Now imagine duplicating that process with an entirely new drive train that has to be military-grade and electric. And work in all conditions, quickly charged by God know what God knows where…you get the idea.
And then imagine trying to use that in a war zone. Not possible. There would be JLTV replacements scattered around the war zone without power and with troops scattered around them who were sacrificed to the climate gods. The US would be without any viable ground-based military power and become impotent.
Now let’s reduce the scale of the “all-electric fleet” to something more modest still. After all, the goalpost for what a fleet is can be defined more or less how they want. It’s all BS anyway, so choose your Unicorn fart-powered goal.
🧵 1. Our enemies don’t care about carbon emissions. https://t.co/27ysv3gY4O
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) April 26, 2023
3. Our enemies aren’t impressed by ESG scores.
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) April 26, 2023
5. Focusing the U.S. military on things that don’t make us safer will make us less safe.
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) April 26, 2023
Maybe we are just talking about the golf carts or short-haul transports? They can do that, but so what?
The Air Force, for instance, has an “all-electric” fleet they are testing. If you reduce the fleet to simply personal transportation vehicles you can get somewhere near the possible, if stupid, achievable goal. This “fleet” consists of 42–yes 42–electric vehicles on a single AF base. This is what they are talking about?
I doubt it.
The rollout of the 42-vehicle fleet marks a milestone in the DOD’s demonstration of emerging technology and the vehicles will serve as a resource to the electrical grid when they’re not being driven.
“Everything we do to fly, fight and win requires energy, whether it’s aviation fuel for our aircraft or power to run the bases that support them,” said Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James. “This vehicle-to-grid pilot is a great example of how Airmen are driving the Air Force forward and finding new and innovative ways to make every dollar count.”
The PEV fleet includes both electric and hybrid vehicles ranging from sedans to trucks and a 12-passenger van. The vehicles have the capability to direct power both to and from the electrical grid when they’re not being driven, known as vehicle-to-grid technology. Unique charging stations have been installed on Los Angeles AFB to support the vehicles’ V2G capability.
Whoop de doo! This is a stunt and an expensive and stupid one at that. These vehicles “support the grid” in the way that tossing a match into a roaring boiler supports heating a building or in the way a gnat hitting your windshield slows your car’s momentum. Technically true but utterly irrelevant.
And look at what they had to do. Spend zillions on special chargers and limit the flexibility of what the vehicles can accomplish in the real world.
As I said, a stunt for a press release.
So either Granholm means they are going to do a meaningless stunt or is going to gut our military.
The latter is actually their goal. We all know that. It is what Biden said last year: every vehicle is climate-friendly.
“We’re going to start the process where every vehicle in the United States military, every vehicle, is going to be climate-friendly — every vehicle — I mean it.”
The Biden Administration’s commitment to national suicide is unbounded. It is like they are playing an environmentalist’s dream of Sim City, where reality is an inconvenience you can program out of the game.
Lest you think this is unimportant because it is so unrealistic, remember that in 2024 Joe Biden could easily get reelected and pursue these policies until 2029–after all, the budget for 2029 would be set during the last year of the Biden Administration. That is one year from 2030.
Think of the damage that could be wrought. It is incalculable.
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