China’s long shadow looms across the global scene, extending far beyond its military presence stationed close by the Taiwan Strait. Barely 100 miles separate Taiwan from the Chinese mainland. It is a little island inhabited by an industrious population, home to computer chip makers and a U.S. ally that is still being governed as the Republic of China by the democratically elected successors to the Chinese Nationalists.

Image: Creative Commons under Unsplash

The Nationalists relocated to Taiwan after being pushed off mainland Asia by Mao-lead Communists forces following World War 2. Taiwan was formerly governed under the late Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek. It has been the land formally claimed by the absentee Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders in Beijing ever since.   

CCP Chairman Xi Jinping sees the 100 miles of the Taiwan Strait as a frustrating obstacle blocking his desire to dominate the global auto industry, through a planned campaign of marketing Chinese-made electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries. He still covets the superior chip-making prowess of Taiwan. 

China’s decision to move full-scale into the manufacturing and distribution of electric vehicles (EVs) and their components may also explain why it is commissioning several new massive coal-fired power plants annually to meet the anticipated increased demand for electrical power in China while ignoring implications for carbon dioxide emissions and putative climate change that shape our own energy policies here in America.  

Meanwhile, U.S. policymakers, serving in what often appears as a feckless administration, continue mired down in the business of promoting highly subsidized and unprofitable forms of energy—primarily wind and solar—in a naïve belief that these renewables will be able to shoulder the major burden of generating electricity here in the United States. Tragically, our proven and reliable domestic coal-fired and nuclear-powered plants are rapidly retiring from service.  

These are sure-fire, self-defeating policies that increase a dependence on natural gas for backup and supplemental generation to meet load demand over the already overtaxed electrical grids, particularly at times when the sun does not shine and the wind doesn’t blow. Yet, even our abundant natural gas is being numbered among the forms of fossil fuels that are destined for extinction, according to the Biden administration’s energy-endangering wish list.  

Economic complications flow predictably from a shortfall of reliable electrical power. An untenably increasing demand will be drawn from the national grid by a fleet of EVs expected to number well into the millions in just a few more years. American society will be introduced to a bleak scenario of recurring, California-style blackouts. This will become the rule, and happen well ahead of Biden’s pending deadline of a forced shift to all-electric highway vehicles by 2035  

An economy heavily reliant on renewable energy is fraught with complications, still unappreciated and mostly ignored by our government leaders and technocrats beholden to the shrill voices coming from a misinformed “woke culture.” Only in fairy tales can a silk purse be made from a sow’s ear.  

Nor can we expect our domestic industries to produce enough critical materials to build the EVs and maintain the renewables-powered generating systems to meet the added demand created by an electricity-thirsty EV fleet.  

In contrast, China has amassed for itself near-monopolies of many strategic metals, either within its own borders or through binding contracts with countries in Africa, Asia, and South America that possess the essential mineral reserves.  

Yes, many of the long list of needed materials exist in North America, but environmental regulations to protect U.S. lands and waters prevent their ready economic development. By default, US manufacturers of EVs must depend in large measure on Chinese-controlled supplies of lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, and an assortment of rare-earth metals to assemble the components needed to construct the batteries, motors, and electronic controls that are essential parts of a high-tech EV.   

The celebrated visits of the elder Biden and son to China a few years ago raise questions about why Chinese leaders would be interested in entertaining them as guests were it not for the prospect of gaining easy access to decision-makers in a future U.S. administration. 

But witless advocates for the radical transformation from the era of internal combustion engines to the electric battery/motor combination serving as the prime mover in the transportation sector will have themselves to answer to for the environmental devastation being visited on Third World countries. There, critical materials are being mined and processed without regard for the consequences. It is estimated that the lithium production required for a single battery pack installed in a Tesla S consumes more than half a million gallons of fresh water. Mining and refining the other metals also come at an environmental cost, in the absence of strict controls required in the United States and other advanced countries. 

Polluted water left behind in holding ponds or allowed to escape into streams may contaminate nearby drinking water and irrigation supplies.  Recall the Gold-King mine disaster a few years ago in southwest Colorado, when a bulldozer operated by an EPA contractor breached a berm holding back cyanide-contaminated water that flooded into the Animas River, killing fish and fouling the drinking water supply for the Navaho reservation downstream. 

Cobalt, extensively mined from small open-pit workings in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is produced by back-breaking labor using poverty-stricken children who toil at what here in the United States would be regarded as slave labor, and they are paid very low wages.   

“Out of sight, out of mind” is an apt way of saying what applies to those who champion the rapid conversion to electric vehicles that cannot be produced today or tomorrow without skirting environmental and labor laws intended to protect vulnerable lands and people.  

In the end, a majority of the EVs, most of which will be unaffordable for a majority of U.S. consumers, may need to be imported from China rather than being manufactured domestically here n the United States. 

It seems Chairman Xi may be on the verge of playing President Biden into check-mate without the Chinese military having to fire a single shot across the Taiwan Strait.  

William D. Balgord, Ph.D. (geochemistry) heads Environmental & Resources Technology, Inc. in Middleton, WI. He is a contributing writer for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.