God help us all if all the truckers finally realize just how much power they have over this faltering NiNO (Nation in Name Only), and decide to start exercising it.
Honestly, I kind of look forward to it, in a way.
HIGHWAY TO HELL
Trucks run America. Heavy trucks move the stuff we buy and sell along the largest highway network in the world. They clean our streets, control our disasters, fight our fires, and rush to our rescue during emergencies.In the medium-heavy (Class V-VIII) truck world, trucks fall into two categories: “On Highway,” the trucks you see pulling trailers across the country, and “Vocational”, the dump trucks, cement mixers, ambulances, fuel trucks and a dozen other variations that keep every town in this country operating. Most these are powered by diesel. Diesel engines are ideal for commercial purposes, being more reliable, more durable, and with better fuel economy than gasoline. Over 99% of all trucks working in America today have diesel engines. Without these, nothing moves. Not food, not goods, not our industry, and certainly not our economy.
California, as usual, is leading the “Green” charge. This month, the California Air Resources Board voted 14-0 to pass a law that will ban the sale of diesel trucks in California by 2036. The board warned citizens that “the time for putting public health second to the economy is over.” The new law also stipulates that all trucks operating in the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach (home of 50% of US foreign trade) must be zero emission by 2030.
“Putting public health second to the economy”—oh, how I love that line. Tell me, genius, how healthy you think we’re gonna be when the food stops coming in, medical supplies and prescription meds become unavailable at any price, and nobody can buy any of it anyway because they lost their jobs when the economy goes kerblooey? Stupid shitlib doesn’t seem to realize that the two are inextricably linked; when the one goes pear shaped, the other will be drastically impacted, and not for the better either. Every. Single. Time.
As the bumper sticker says: if you have it, a truck brought it. It’s as true now as it ever was, representing a hard, implacable reality in which residents of California will soon be getting an up close and personal schooling when your moronic PC folly kicks in fully and long-haul truckers begin to refuse to go to the Golden State, no matter how much they’re offered to do so.
America is a behemoth. The United States faces logistical challenges greater than that of any nation in history. The distance from Los Angeles to Washington DC is roughly the same distance as Madrid to Moscow. Despite some local attempts to regionalize food production, feeding Americans is still a national effort. The ability to transport food, medicine, and spare parts across the vast American continent can only be achieved by trucks. Highway trucks move 75% of the nation’s freight from city to city, and from region to region. Everything you buy, everything you eat, and every medicine you take has at least one truck involved in the transportation chain.
Truck manufacturers don’t have the technology to replace diesel engines with equally capable zero-emission engines, nor the production capacity to replace the soon to be illegal diesel engines. The United States also does not have the electrical infrastructure to support that many Lithium Ion Battery vehicles. For decades we have depended on these engines to sustain us, and they have not failed.
Which is probably what shitlibs hate the most about them: they simply work, far better than any other technology humanity has ever come up. There’s a reason, after all, that the world abandoned windmills, electric vehicles, and solar power a century or more ago: those outdated, primitive technologies are incapable of powering a First World economy.
Instead of making what works better, we are about to attempt to replace all of them with vehicles that are four times the cost, but only capable of doing a quarter of the work…at best. Large fleets are already slowing, and in some sectors companies are cancelling existing “green” orders in favor of procuring diesel engines while they still can. CEO’s are doing the math, and recognizing that virtue signaling is not worth bankruptcy. But the damage may already be done.
When we think of military vehicles, we imagine tanks and jets, but logistics is what wins wars. For every tank, there are a half dozen support vehicles. Fuel tankers, runway sweepers, water trucks, and wreckers are all bought commercially off the shelf from civilian truck manufacturers. Every vehicle the military buys needs to be capable of running JP8 fuel: a high sulfur fuel, which simplifies military supply requirements and enables military vehicles to run on even the dirtiest local fuel sources. Government mandated changes to emissions have created a technology gap between the civilian and military markets. Sensors in modern trucks can no longer survive with high amounts of sulfur in JP8, and so manufacturers have begun to stop making trucks capable of running on a JP8 engine.
Progressives don’t want solutions that avoid a collapse.
Annnnnd BINGO, we have ourselves a correct answer, folks!
The ongoing logistical nightmares caused by the government’s response to COVID-19 is just a prelude to the horrors of this potential future. Factories that can’t get enough components, hospitals that can’t get repair parts on time for life-saving equipment, crops dying in the field while the people starve…That’s where we’re heading.
Yep—because that’s where the idiot Left is pushing us, whether we will or no. When you get down to the nutcutting of almost every problem, impasse, or issue, no matter what it might involve on the surface, that’s what it always comes down to. What we have here is not a diesel problem, an economic problem, nor even a climatic one; we have a Leftist problem, plain and simple. Until we’ve dealt with that fundamental issue, unequivocally and forcefully, all the others and more will continue to plague us.
(Via WRSA)
Absolutely everything about the last crisis was planned, the virus was the excuse. The goal is ideology, not practical continuation of the human race, or prosperity or . . . anything of that nature.
It’s NEVER about what they say it’s about
It’s ALWAYS about them getting More Power and Control.
Their desire.for More Power and Control is never satiated.
I support California eliminating diesel trucks. I support California eliminating cars. I support California eliminating gas stoves.
I support eliminating California.
BAMN!
In the big picture, it’s not just trucks. It’s tractors, ships, trains – all have diesel. And you can lump in airplanes to that as well – all those with jet or turboprop engines. Jet fuel being similar to diesel.
You know what kills me? In all those northern cities, when it’s cold there’s a particular smell – oil fired boilers heating the buildings. They never, ever do anything about that other than subsidize heating oil.
A perfect encapsulation of Leftist Idiocy.
The economy is paramount to a proper, efficient, functioning healthcare system for the public.
Otherwise we just become Africa.
NOTHING comes ahead of the economy. Do they even know what the economy is? It’s the efficient allocation of scarce resources. Free Market Capitalism is far and away the best system so far devised to do that. Without it, allocations of scarce resources becomes less and less efficient the more you move towards Directed, Centrally Planned systems. What’s one of the first things to suffer when inefficiencies start hobbling the economy? The public’s basic needs, like food and medicine and shelter and clothing, become the target of Power seekers who capture the scarcity for necessities for their own aggrandizement.
Hence why Marxists of all stripes, throughout History and always and everywhere, end up with piles of dead bodies because they cannot deliver necessities. Those who point that out, or have the temerity to try to end it, get starved to death, or simply shot.
Nothing comes ahead of proper allocation of scarce resources.