We can’t replace petroleum-fueled motor vehicles with ones powered by electricity, according to a new report, because mining enough lithium to power the batteries for those electric vehicles will destroy the world. Or part of it, anyway. The only solution, says the report, is for countries like the United States to replace private vehicles with public transit.

The only way to prevent this, according to a group called the Climate and Community Project, is to ban cars.

Why is it that, no matter what the problem, leftists think the only solution is to ban cars and spend more money on mass transit? According to a sociologist I once knew named John Finley Scott — who is better known for having created one of the first mountain bikes than his sociological research — most auto opponents are people who didn’t learn to drive until their late 20s or later, by which time they knew they were mortal and found driving to be terrifying. They can’t imagine anyone actually liking cars or driving, so they see nothing wrong with ridding the earth of such an evil invention. Continue reading →

When I heard that the World Economic Forum proposed to ban car ownership, I dismissed it as left-wing nonsense that would never get far with elected officials. But earlier this week the Scottish government announced it planned to ban car ownership as a part of its campaign to reduce per-capita driving by 20 percent by 2030.

Of course, they say such actions are needed to reduce climate change, but the truth is that a lot of people have hated automobiles for decades and are just using climate change as an excuse to carry out their vendetta against personal mobility. They also claim to care about income inequality, but the automobile did more to reduce income inequality in the 20th century than just about anything else. Continue reading →