The Green Mirage: The Hidden Costs Behind The Electric Car Hype

Authored by Mark Keenan via AmericanThinker.com,

In Sweden, a two-kilometer stretch of electrified highway allows electric vehicles to charge while they drive — a prototype for 3,000 kilometers of such roads planned by 2045.

It all sounds sleek, modern, and progressive, like something from a futurist’s dream.

Eddie Grant once sang, “We’re gonna rock down to Electric Avenue.”

But before we charge headlong into this electric future, we should pause to ask: is any of this really helping the environment?

The answer, inconveniently, is no.

Electric vehicles are not the sustainable miracle they’re marketed to be — this article details the hidden environmental toll of battery production, the inefficiency of “green” energy systems, and the deeper agenda behind the global push toward EVs and UN-driven sustainability mandates.

The prevailing narrative of “zero-emission” transportation falls apart with documented evidence, industry data, and science itself.

The green movement’s corporate and political drivers open up broader questions of personal freedom, economic control, and truth in environmental science.

Why Electric Cars Are Fake Environmentalism

The truth is that electric cars represent not genuine environmental progress, but a triumph of corporate marketing — or, depending on your view, outright deception. Buyers are told they’re saving the planet, but the materials required for millions of lithium-ion batteries — lithium, rhodium, cobalt — must be mined and refined in massive industrial operations powered by diesel and coal.

Those mining and processing sites, particularly in rural China and Mongolia, have left behind serious air, water, and soil contamination. These are real environmental problems — not the imaginary CO2 “crisis” that global bureaucrats prefer to talk about.

In a recent article, I describe how 2,000 scientists from over 30 nations have signed a declaration stating there is no “CO2-induced” climate emergency — a document I also signed.

In the book Climate CO₂ Hoax I detail that modern environmentalism has been hijacked by a communist-type agenda of political control aligned with the deceptive U.N. Sustainable Development Goals; and is also designed to compel us all to buy millions of so-called green products, such as EVs.

“Buy an [expensive] electric car to save the planet” is one of the great marketing lies of our time — a devastator, as I call it, a lie so large it bewilders the public.

Furthermore, when a cold snap hits an EV can lose 10%–50% of its driving range; and can take two to three times longer to charge.

Consider this image: a lithium leach field so toxic that a bird landing on it dies within minutes. This is what your “eco-friendly” battery is made of. Yet we are told to congratulate ourselves for saving the environment.

The Carbon Footprint of an EV is Worse Than Diesel

Governments are now pushing to eliminate gasoline and diesel cars by 2035 in favor of EVs.

But once you factor in the energy and pollution costs of mining and manufacturing, the carbon footprint of an EV is worse than that of a diesel vehicle.

Even after production, most EVs run on electricity generated from fossil fuels. Despite decades of subsidies, wind provides less than 5% of global energy and solar just 1%.

According to a European Commission study, the total “well-to-plug” efficiency of electric energy — after accounting for production and distribution losses—is only 37%.

The electric dream, then, is profoundly inefficient.

Marketing, Not Miracles

The first illusion came with the “hybrid.”

These cars are still gasoline-powered; the tiny battery is charged by the engine itself. A hybrid that gets 55 mpg is no cleaner than a conventional car achieving the same mileage. A planet full of hybrids would remain 100% addicted to oil.

Elon Musk’s Tesla marketing has taken this one step further.

Musk writes that Tesla’s mission is to move humanity from a “mine-and-burn hydrocarbon economy” to a “solar electric economy.” He argues that even if EVs use fossil-generated electricity, they emit less CO2 per mile than conventional cars.

But Musk omits five crucial facts:

1. Repurposing the world’s industrial base for “green” energy demands a vast new fossil-fuel expenditure — factories, grids, and distribution systems—all still dependent on diesel, coal, and mining.

2. The energy return on investment (EROEI) for solar and wind is too low to sustain modern civilization without subsidies.

3. Mining for rare earths — lithium, cobalt, rhodium — remains devastating to land, air, and water.

4. The full life cycle of an EV, from mining to manufacturing, shipping, and eventual disposal, consumes enormous energy. Charging from solar barely scratches the surface of this embedded cost.

5. CO₂ itself is not the problem as detailed in the book Climate CO2 Hoax.

As a former technical expert at the U.N. Environment Programme, I have seen firsthand what real pollution looks like.

CO2 is not soot, not poison, and not a pollutant. It is an odorless gas and an essential plant nutrient. The Earth’s biosphere runs on CO2 — without it, crops and forests would die.

Climate shifts, meanwhile, are natural. The Little Ice Age ended around 1800; a modest warming since then is hardly cause for alarm. Periods of warming and cooling have defined our planet for billions of years.

The Physical Cost of a “Zero Emission” Car

The reality of EV production should end the myth. A single Tesla Model Y battery demands massive resources — about 12 tons of lithium ore, 5 tons of cobalt minerals, 3 tons of nickel ore, and 12 tons of copper ore. Roughly 250 tons of soil must be moved to yield small amounts of these metals. Each battery also requires hundreds of pounds of aluminum, steel, plastic, and graphite.

The giant Caterpillar machines used in this mining can burn hundreds of gallons of diesel every 12 hours. Once complete, we get a so-called “zero-emission” car — built with materials largely sourced from China or Africa, often mined by child labor.

Tesla battery packs cost $5,000–$20,000 and last about ten years. It takes roughly seven years for an EV to reach “net-zero” carbon parity with a gasoline car — by which time the battery’s life is nearly over, and the cycle begins again.

The Real Agenda

The green revolution, like so many fashionable causes, is less about saving the planet than consolidating control — over energy, your money, and your freedom. The word “sustainable” has been hijacked by mega-corporate interests and global institutions, such as the U.N., the WEF, and the Davos elite. Behind the U.N. slogans lies a communist-style totalitarian vision of control over the people: “sustainability” as perpetual dependency, “carbon neutrality” as bureaucratic rationing, and “climate emergency” as a tool of economic centralization.

Electric cars are not liberation — they are compliance devices.

It’s time to call the bluff: driving an electric car does not make you a defender of nature. It makes you a customer in the most profitable deception of the modern age.

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Mark Keenan is the author of Climate CO2 Hoax: How Bankers Hijacked the Environment Movement and The War on Men: How the New Gender Politics Is Undermining Western Civilization. A former UN technical expert, he writes on culture, science, and the ideological forces reshaping the West.