Virtue Signalling

Like wearing a blue mask, and waving a blue and yellow flag, owning an “electric” automobile seems evolutionary, but it is just virtue signaling. Medical masks have been amply shown to have no effect on transmission of viral disease in public. Displaying the Ukraine flag in America is obedient applause for perpetual war for profit on behalf of drug dealers, arms merchants, slave traders and fascist militias. Likewise, proudly driving an “electric” auto has little effect on levels of greenhouse gases, particularly inasmuch as most electricity is generated by combustion of fossil fuels. Nuclear power generation adds the manifold hazards of ionizing radiation release, and rad-waste disposal. 

Whatever the primary power producer, “electric” cars, like myriad modern, disposable gizmos, require rare earth minerals in their manufacture. The environmental footprint of extraction, and exploitative nature of industry are destructive to natural ecosystems and oppressive to native people. Lithium, cobalt, manganese, palladium, copper, gold are mined most profitably in third world countries where there is no environmental enforcement, health protection, or human rights for impoverished workers and residents, including children. That is comfort for consumers of high-tech products in the first world, hugging themselves as heroes in the frontline of environmentalism, and humanitarianism, for saving themselves pennies per mile at the pump. 

Yolanda Ruth-Leslie