The catchphrase "Save-the-Planet" evolved over the last five decades into a sacred chant of "Stop-The-Climate-from-Changing."

The dire predictions in the 1970s of a coming ice age have since morphed into the frightening peril of global warming. In turn, it was mystically transformed into one of the imminent, existential threat of fossil fuel emissions ending the world as we know it.     

By eliminating the use of oil and natural gas for energy and making modern-day products, the prophets of our age say that, instead, humankind can turn to nature to control the temperature changes of the world.    

We know this because Al Gore, and other notable proponents of carbon credit exchanges and environmental, social and governance (ESG) indexes, told us it was true. Their message is that our species cannot survive unless we achieve net-zero carbon emissions.  

Computer model-generated climate predictions have now become “irrefutable scientific proof.” Anyone with the termerity to say that not one of these computer-generated models have accurately predicted weather events runs the risk of being labeled a “climate denier.”  

For the climate change True Believers, Nietzsche was right: “God” is dead.  Al Gore has taken His place.

A threshold commitment by the Faithful to net-zero emissions requires battery-powered vehicles to replace ones using carbon-based fuels.  

Governments, tax-exempt philanthropies run by globalists, and Wall Street spent billions upon billions of dollars incentivizing or coercing both buyers and auto manufacturers of cars to transition from gasoline and diesel-fueled engines to battery-operated ones.

Critics were, and still are, severely demonized by the major media, and their messages are being censored by high-tech social media companies that dominate the Internet.

Virtually No Public Enthusiasm for EVs

Nonetheless, no matter how much climate change propaganda inundates the public, there is comparatively little consumer enthusiasm for electric vehicles (EVs).   

Even among the most prominent and vocal proponents of electric cars, it is tough to think of one who drives an electric vehicle.

None of President Biden’s administration—no one in his Cabinet, no one in Congress, or, effectively speaking, no one else in government—uses or owns an electric vehicle. The same seems true among the Hollywood glitterati or the self-anointed green environmental experts.

It seems fair to say that the prevalent attitude among the stop-the-climate-change elites is that going green is for thee, but not for me.

Over this past Labor Day holiday weekend in the United States, many families and others went on a holiday road trip. Among the comparatively tiny number of battery-powered cars, very few owners took them on a highway excursion, and an EV is a rare sight on the road.

EV battery charging infrastructure in or around major urban centers is, at best, sparse. Out on the highways in flyover America, it is effectively non-existent.  

Even if the federal government committed to pony-up the billions of dollars to build out the necessary infrastructure today, it would still take a decade or two, at the very least. And the question still unanswered is, just who will pay the billions, or trillions, of dollars to tear out the existing infrastructure of gas stations, pipelines, truck, rail, and marine transportation, and compensate the hundreds of thousands of displaced?

Money Only One Part of the Equation

Everything that goes into building a national electric vehicle system depends on reliable sources of electricity and connections, raw materials, equipment, management and environmental permissions. All of the above are already impacted by significant and volatile price gyrations, delays in supply lines, a surge in transportation costs, escalating regulatory red-tape, and, seemingly, unsurmountable geopolitical financial and trade problems that border on war. 

Then there is the problem of profit. Nobody has figured out how to make a profit from manufacturing electric cars or from operating battery charging stations.  

The cars already produced by the existing automobile industry, with  its well-established reliable support networks, work fine for the mass public in the United States and around the world.

For private capital investors, the risk of total loss from investing in the green dream of electric vehicles is absurdly high and the possiblity of any financial return astoundingly low.

For now and far into the foreseeable future, the modern world runs on oil, which is something upon which investors can depend.

Denis Kleinfeld is known as a strategic tax and wealth protection lawyer, widely published author and creative teacher.