We all know by now that the California Air Resources Board has banned the sale of traditional combustion trucks – that run on diesel – by 2036 in the state. California now requires fully electric truck fleets. Recently, CARB unanimously adopted its Advanced Clean Fleets regulation phasing in mandates for medium and heavy-duty truck operators in California to buy 100 percent zero-emission vehicles and remove from their fleets internal combustion engine vehicles at the end of their useful life.

Image: Creative Commons under Unsplash

What we don’t know is that this regulation will come at the expense of the developing countries that are the basis of the supply chain of EV battery materials. California’s actions support the exploitation of cheap, disposable workforces in other countries and environmental degradation in countries outside the California “air bubble.”

According to the most recent data, there were approximately 1.8 million diesel trucks in California in 2021. Of these, around 1.5 million were heavy-duty trucks, while the remaining 300,000 were medium-duty trucks. Most diesel trucks were owned by businesses, with only a small percentage owned by individuals.

California is home to the largest diesel truck market in the United States. These trucks are used for a variety of purposes, including transportation of goods and services, construction, and agriculture. While diesel trucks are an essential part of the state’s economy, they also contribute significantly to air pollution.

In these developing countries, these mining operations exploit child labor and are responsible for the most egregious human rights violations of vulnerable minority populations. These operations are also directly destroying the planet through environmental degradation.

One year later, in 2022, President Biden provided validation of the books’ message when the Biden administration declared on October 4, 2022, that batteries from China might be tainted by child labor, The lithium, cobalt, and rare earth minerals needed to make batteries mostly come from places such as China, Congo, Indonesia, Iran, and other countries that are noted for gross human rights violations and are often mined and produced using forced and child labor.

I’m sure that neither Governor Newsom nor CARB had a chance to view the 2006 movie “Blood Diamond” starring Leonardo DiCaprio, which portrays many of the similar atrocities now occurring in pursuit of the “Blood Minerals,” i.e., those exotic minerals and metals to support the “green” movement within wealthy countries.

Newsom and CARB lack some energy literacy which may be the reasons they avoid conversations about the ugly side of “green” mandates and regulations. They should read the Pulitzer Prize-nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations” and decide for themselves if they wish to financially support the environmental degradation and human atrocities among folks with yellow, brown, and black skin occurring in developing countries so that the wealthy countries can go green.

It is surprising that Newsom and CARB members support subsidies to procure EVs and build more wind and solar plants when those subsidies are providing financial incentives to the developing countries mining for those “green” materials that promote further exploitation of poor people. I personally thought that Newsom and CARB had higher moral and ethical standards that would stop them from exploiting the poor in developing countries.

A battery in an electric car, like an average Tesla, is made of about 750-1,000 pounds of minerals that had to be mined and processed into a battery to merely store electricity.

EVs are environmental rapists. Mining and refining the minerals needed to make EV batteries is also an environmental disaster, inflicting environmental degradation on local landscapes in developing countries with minimal environmental regulations.

The EV battery needs for large diesel trucks with extended mileage ranges may be 3 to 4 times greater than that of a small Tesla EV.

Here is a summary of the minerals needed for a Tesla EV battery and the projected humongous needs of the minerals to support 1.8 million Diesel Truck EVs:

As World War I and II historians, Russia, China, and OPEC know, the country that controls the minerals, crude oil, and natural gas, controls the world! They all know there is no substitute for the dominance of products from fossil fuels in the foreseeable future, even on a longer-term horizon.

China and Russia thank California Governor Newsom and the California Air Resources Board for their continued support of world domination by the countries that control the minerals and fossil fuels!

This piece originally appeared at Heartland.org and has been republished here with permission.