My article from Wednesday’s Financial Post. Plus, a revealing quote from the CEO of the Energy Institute: "Arguably, the transition has not even started.”
Be really careful with the corporate fog announcements of big rare earth finds in Sweden, in Wyoming and so on. These deposits are entirely worthless. You can find higher concentrations of RE in some backyards or the world's beaches. Don't serve up such hype without checking.
You had me at "Chinese monopoly of Rare Earths" ( and 98 other categories of basic materials )
@RobertBryce do a piece on how USA mining is totally cock blocked - and what little mining is happening is touted with utter B.S. claims , like " Now we have our own rare earths ! "
No
You don't
You have Rare Earth Oxides - At Best!
that is like having a pile of rust and saying you have all the iron you need to build a bridge.
Do a report on mining, and all the permits that have been clawed back by our government
( who wants Green stuff, but doesn't want to do a thing for domestic production )
You are, as ever a voice of reason that does not let your preferred outcome dictate what you say about reality. Such honesty unencumbered of your politics is almost unique in the world of energy production and climate policy. I am proud to subscribe to your work and reference it in arguing about energy production and consumption.
Thank you Robert - it's always a pleasure to read your pieces with great interest. Since policies similar to the US have been adopted elsewhere, as a Brit I feel able to make general comments.
Twenty-odd years ago, and for a few years, I worked for a Norwegian telecoms company, and on visits there would hear "This is the way we do things in Norway". The first couple of times it was interesting; then it became a bit tedious, but it is relevant here.
Being told what to buy, and then having access to affordable products restricted by government, isn't "the way we do things round here". Unless I was in a coma, smartphones for example, sold in their billions, weren't mandated, and there is choice of supply. To take up John Bowman's point, I think and hope that if the USA was in China's position, you would be writing angrily of the huge effort and expense put into achieving a pole position in producing EVs for which the take-up is shall we say, reluctant.
That phenomenal intellect Adam Smith had something relevant to say: "It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense, either by sumptuary laws [laws regulating private consumption], or by prohibiting the importation of foreign luxuries".
The worst thing to do would be to admit the superiority of a centrally-planned economy. The real lead the Chinese have over us at present is "can-do" and long-term thinking, so we need to focus on retrieving these, or so it seems to me.
That is an optimistic view of China. It is riddled with state corruption, it's corporate players are entirely exposed to state power and it lies clearly and unequivocally about every facet of its economy. China has built hundreds of thousands of miles of freeways leasing nowhere, built cities that have no residents, forced slave labor to build products for westerners, and taken all manner of other initiatives to enforce a false economy. Their embrace of EVs and photovoltaics while seemingly a great economic policy, has everything to do with pragmatism and little to do with optimizing overarching tradeoffs. China will inherit the effects of its own disastrous war against nature within this century. The vast expansion of mining and refining of metals and minerals has necessitated the destruction of its air and water all because addled western scientists and bureaucrats can't think past their own egos. If the war for net zero is creating economic losers in America's taxpayers, in China the resulting outlandish amounts of pollution will be its Waterloo
Thank you Chris - very eloquently put. As it happens I agree with you. For one thing, based on history and observation, I believe a state-run economy will ultimately prove to be a disaster, particularly under Xi. However, I feel that a key underlying problem the West currently has is a loss of nerve and confidence, not least in a free market economy, a loss of nerve that at the moment, doesn't seem to beset the Chinese, or at least how they present themselves.
I’d like to see a “deficit reduction” package designed for this election cycle based on eliminating green subsidies and mandates although I doubt Trump would approach that level of specificity or the pushback from all the red states and big businesses that have already lined up at the green trough.
"...the U.S. and Canada are driving full speed straight into Beijing’s hands."
And don't accept for a minute that this isn't a money- and power-driven effort by the Left who want to profit by their efforts. Has nothing to do with environmentalism (think mining and refining don't have adverse effects on the water, land and air of this Earth?) instead it's at base the means to shift $$$$ into offshore accounts held by themselves and family members.
The Leftist elites, currently in power here in the US (Democrats) as well as in China (CCP) and Russia (Oligarchy), are together in this.
I'd appreciate your thoughts about this. I'm writing a piece about Giesskannenprinzip (German: watering can principle), basically the idea that you feed all parts of an economic situation equally and some businesses will thrive. My impression — what do you think? — is that the ARRA in 2009 was an attempt to do part of this but it failed because of a) partial lack of focus b) not really Giesskannenprinzip c) possibly not enough money directed at the right bits of US economy.
By contrast China from its 2001-5 five year plan was already focusing on energy, formulated in the 1990s, 2005 Wen Jiabao heads up NELG etc and the gradual watering can principle starts. Proliferation into larger scale plan for supply chain control DRC mines 2008, 2010 etc, rare-earth processing. Is it fair to take the view that PRC had an early thought-out strategy that was missing in the US. (How can markets take long term view when Biden/Trump have two different future economic models for energy? Why should laissez-faire capitalism be always the most efficient?)
Sorry, Robert I'm finally, getting to the point of this. By my own guess/reasoning the IRA cannot succeed for an extra reason being that the Giesskannenprinzip idea is for a limited period and should eventually come to an end. When the plants are fully grown let the strongest survive and the weak go to the wall. My impression is that China has recently been letting the battery firms go the way of all flesh (and perhaps the less successful automotive ones too.).
The US IRA act is at the wrong point of the cycle — we're already 10+ years behind the Chinese the watering can is too late. Instead we should be looking at other chemistries, we're about five years behind China with Na ion technology (despite CATL having working manufacturing plant) where catch-up might be possible. Solid state lithium is where China is clearly going next, its new Solid State Lithium Alliance could blow all markets away.
This has been a long comment but I'd be interested in you were ever to write about this. Also btw I have no xenophobic bias against China vs US! All best Mike
Mike I agree and would add that China's focus on solid-state lithium batteries could indeed allow it to overcome challenges more rapidly due to its unique political and economic structure. However, the ethical implications of this rapid advancement are significant and must be considered in the equation. Balancing technological progress with respect for human rights and environmental sustainability remains a complex but essential goal for all nations. In the short run, they may outperform us many times over. The long game, however, is a different story. Thanks for your input on this
Manufacturing a good that nobody wants is, in my view, not a good business to be in, as European and US car makers are now belatedly discovering. So China is a big winner of what exactly?
Stand by for a huge federal bailout of Ford and other American auto makers in the near future. Their request for the money will include the phrase " you guys made us do it".
People who actually want them should be allowed to have them. They just shouldn't be subsidized, required, enouraged, or otherwise artificially induced. Nor should public monies be spent on charging infrastructure, nor priority parking -- although private institutions are welcome to arrange their parking however they want within local zoning ordinances.
In a free society, folks are welcome to drive and have things, I would never care to own.
It would also be a good idea if vehicle weight were used more realistically in determining highway tax/fees and if some neutral studies would be done about the real fire risks of electric vehicles and insurance rates both for cars and garages adjusted accordingly.
In a free society they wouldn't exist. They are subsidized. The goal is to eliminate private vehicles and roads to say nothing of central computer control. Get serious. We are no where near a free society. We are moving toward lockstep regimentation.
I agree with you about their goals. I'm not sure whether they would exist or not without the subsidies. Certainly, the market would be smaller. That's basic economic truth.
But if they wouldn't exist otherwise, then there's no reason to ban them. If you can get a ban passed, then you could eliminate the subsidies instead and rewind the other absurdities that are driving the agenda. I never see a reason to ban law abiding folks from owning anything they want.
No. We must DEMONIZE the totalitarian DEMLEFT, climate change fanatics & World Economic Forum. Instead they propose we be lead by Elon Musk, Mr. Tesla.
Any good that has to be subsidised and its competitors banned, is not what consumers want, nor will they buy. Markets can be ignored and distorted by government but are an irresistible force and will make a correction, often sudden and brutal - which is why we have so many ‘boom and bust’ cycles.
Normally true, but the ruling class / conspiracy based ultimately on Central Banking's ability to create money out of nothing has achieved amazing centralization of power. Humanity let it happen in spite of many warnings not to give Elites such power. They don't want their reforms to work. They want their reforms to lead to centralized world tyranny.
Our world is full of people who put their trust in the hands of their preferred political actors/thought leaders while giving cognition a miss entirely. We have replaced hard decisions making with niceness and surface level thinking. In effect, the west (especially liberals) deserve the government it has.
What’s hydrogen fuels role in all of this?
https://cedarowl.substack.com/p/is-hydrogen-fuel-worth-it
Be really careful with the corporate fog announcements of big rare earth finds in Sweden, in Wyoming and so on. These deposits are entirely worthless. You can find higher concentrations of RE in some backyards or the world's beaches. Don't serve up such hype without checking.
You had me at "Chinese monopoly of Rare Earths" ( and 98 other categories of basic materials )
@RobertBryce do a piece on how USA mining is totally cock blocked - and what little mining is happening is touted with utter B.S. claims , like " Now we have our own rare earths ! "
No
You don't
You have Rare Earth Oxides - At Best!
that is like having a pile of rust and saying you have all the iron you need to build a bridge.
Do a report on mining, and all the permits that have been clawed back by our government
( who wants Green stuff, but doesn't want to do a thing for domestic production )
You are, as ever a voice of reason that does not let your preferred outcome dictate what you say about reality. Such honesty unencumbered of your politics is almost unique in the world of energy production and climate policy. I am proud to subscribe to your work and reference it in arguing about energy production and consumption.
Attributed to Lenin: "The capitalists will sell us the rope we hang them with."
It is shocking how wasteful the EV push is to these rare-earth metals.
Thank you Robert - it's always a pleasure to read your pieces with great interest. Since policies similar to the US have been adopted elsewhere, as a Brit I feel able to make general comments.
Twenty-odd years ago, and for a few years, I worked for a Norwegian telecoms company, and on visits there would hear "This is the way we do things in Norway". The first couple of times it was interesting; then it became a bit tedious, but it is relevant here.
Being told what to buy, and then having access to affordable products restricted by government, isn't "the way we do things round here". Unless I was in a coma, smartphones for example, sold in their billions, weren't mandated, and there is choice of supply. To take up John Bowman's point, I think and hope that if the USA was in China's position, you would be writing angrily of the huge effort and expense put into achieving a pole position in producing EVs for which the take-up is shall we say, reluctant.
That phenomenal intellect Adam Smith had something relevant to say: "It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense, either by sumptuary laws [laws regulating private consumption], or by prohibiting the importation of foreign luxuries".
The worst thing to do would be to admit the superiority of a centrally-planned economy. The real lead the Chinese have over us at present is "can-do" and long-term thinking, so we need to focus on retrieving these, or so it seems to me.
That is an optimistic view of China. It is riddled with state corruption, it's corporate players are entirely exposed to state power and it lies clearly and unequivocally about every facet of its economy. China has built hundreds of thousands of miles of freeways leasing nowhere, built cities that have no residents, forced slave labor to build products for westerners, and taken all manner of other initiatives to enforce a false economy. Their embrace of EVs and photovoltaics while seemingly a great economic policy, has everything to do with pragmatism and little to do with optimizing overarching tradeoffs. China will inherit the effects of its own disastrous war against nature within this century. The vast expansion of mining and refining of metals and minerals has necessitated the destruction of its air and water all because addled western scientists and bureaucrats can't think past their own egos. If the war for net zero is creating economic losers in America's taxpayers, in China the resulting outlandish amounts of pollution will be its Waterloo
Thank you Chris - very eloquently put. As it happens I agree with you. For one thing, based on history and observation, I believe a state-run economy will ultimately prove to be a disaster, particularly under Xi. However, I feel that a key underlying problem the West currently has is a loss of nerve and confidence, not least in a free market economy, a loss of nerve that at the moment, doesn't seem to beset the Chinese, or at least how they present themselves.
I’d like to see a “deficit reduction” package designed for this election cycle based on eliminating green subsidies and mandates although I doubt Trump would approach that level of specificity or the pushback from all the red states and big businesses that have already lined up at the green trough.
AlixPartners Predicts Chinese Automakers Will Have 33% Market Share By 2030 https://cleantechnica.com/2024/06/27/alixpartners-predicts-chinese-automakers-will-have-33-market-share-by-2030/
"...the U.S. and Canada are driving full speed straight into Beijing’s hands."
And don't accept for a minute that this isn't a money- and power-driven effort by the Left who want to profit by their efforts. Has nothing to do with environmentalism (think mining and refining don't have adverse effects on the water, land and air of this Earth?) instead it's at base the means to shift $$$$ into offshore accounts held by themselves and family members.
The Leftist elites, currently in power here in the US (Democrats) as well as in China (CCP) and Russia (Oligarchy), are together in this.
Robert, excellent. Thanks again.
I'd appreciate your thoughts about this. I'm writing a piece about Giesskannenprinzip (German: watering can principle), basically the idea that you feed all parts of an economic situation equally and some businesses will thrive. My impression — what do you think? — is that the ARRA in 2009 was an attempt to do part of this but it failed because of a) partial lack of focus b) not really Giesskannenprinzip c) possibly not enough money directed at the right bits of US economy.
By contrast China from its 2001-5 five year plan was already focusing on energy, formulated in the 1990s, 2005 Wen Jiabao heads up NELG etc and the gradual watering can principle starts. Proliferation into larger scale plan for supply chain control DRC mines 2008, 2010 etc, rare-earth processing. Is it fair to take the view that PRC had an early thought-out strategy that was missing in the US. (How can markets take long term view when Biden/Trump have two different future economic models for energy? Why should laissez-faire capitalism be always the most efficient?)
Sorry, Robert I'm finally, getting to the point of this. By my own guess/reasoning the IRA cannot succeed for an extra reason being that the Giesskannenprinzip idea is for a limited period and should eventually come to an end. When the plants are fully grown let the strongest survive and the weak go to the wall. My impression is that China has recently been letting the battery firms go the way of all flesh (and perhaps the less successful automotive ones too.).
The US IRA act is at the wrong point of the cycle — we're already 10+ years behind the Chinese the watering can is too late. Instead we should be looking at other chemistries, we're about five years behind China with Na ion technology (despite CATL having working manufacturing plant) where catch-up might be possible. Solid state lithium is where China is clearly going next, its new Solid State Lithium Alliance could blow all markets away.
This has been a long comment but I'd be interested in you were ever to write about this. Also btw I have no xenophobic bias against China vs US! All best Mike
Mike I agree and would add that China's focus on solid-state lithium batteries could indeed allow it to overcome challenges more rapidly due to its unique political and economic structure. However, the ethical implications of this rapid advancement are significant and must be considered in the equation. Balancing technological progress with respect for human rights and environmental sustainability remains a complex but essential goal for all nations. In the short run, they may outperform us many times over. The long game, however, is a different story. Thanks for your input on this
Manufacturing a good that nobody wants is, in my view, not a good business to be in, as European and US car makers are now belatedly discovering. So China is a big winner of what exactly?
Stand by for a huge federal bailout of Ford and other American auto makers in the near future. Their request for the money will include the phrase " you guys made us do it".
Electric vehicles should be outlawed.
No.
People who actually want them should be allowed to have them. They just shouldn't be subsidized, required, enouraged, or otherwise artificially induced. Nor should public monies be spent on charging infrastructure, nor priority parking -- although private institutions are welcome to arrange their parking however they want within local zoning ordinances.
In a free society, folks are welcome to drive and have things, I would never care to own.
It would also be a good idea if vehicle weight were used more realistically in determining highway tax/fees and if some neutral studies would be done about the real fire risks of electric vehicles and insurance rates both for cars and garages adjusted accordingly.
Amen
In a free society they wouldn't exist. They are subsidized. The goal is to eliminate private vehicles and roads to say nothing of central computer control. Get serious. We are no where near a free society. We are moving toward lockstep regimentation.
I agree with you about their goals. I'm not sure whether they would exist or not without the subsidies. Certainly, the market would be smaller. That's basic economic truth.
But if they wouldn't exist otherwise, then there's no reason to ban them. If you can get a ban passed, then you could eliminate the subsidies instead and rewind the other absurdities that are driving the agenda. I never see a reason to ban law abiding folks from owning anything they want.
No. We must DEMONIZE the totalitarian DEMLEFT, climate change fanatics & World Economic Forum. Instead they propose we be lead by Elon Musk, Mr. Tesla.
Musk is not part of the WEF hegemony.
I hope you are right. But I'm not so sure.
Without subsidies, they wouldn't exist for long. Only those rich enough to subsidize their ethical grandstanding.
Education. Spit in the face of the ruling class / conspiracy.
Any good that has to be subsidised and its competitors banned, is not what consumers want, nor will they buy. Markets can be ignored and distorted by government but are an irresistible force and will make a correction, often sudden and brutal - which is why we have so many ‘boom and bust’ cycles.
Normally true, but the ruling class / conspiracy based ultimately on Central Banking's ability to create money out of nothing has achieved amazing centralization of power. Humanity let it happen in spite of many warnings not to give Elites such power. They don't want their reforms to work. They want their reforms to lead to centralized world tyranny.
Our world is full of people who put their trust in the hands of their preferred political actors/thought leaders while giving cognition a miss entirely. We have replaced hard decisions making with niceness and surface level thinking. In effect, the west (especially liberals) deserve the government it has.
Yeah, but it is imposed on all of us.