I went to a movie premier for “revenge of the electric car”.

I went because I love cars, I love technology, and I went with a friend who is a fellow car-guy.  The movie producer was there for a question session afterward.  The movie was actually pretty good.

But the question and answer session afterward was just nutty.

I sat and listened as they celebrated the fact that the pipeline for Canadian oil was shut down, and then carped about why the Republicans were so against electric cars.

Honestly, I do not know a single Republican who is “against” electric cars.  I know plenty who think we should not be subsidizing windmills and electric cars, but I hardly reguard that as being “against” electric cars.  I have to ask why this is all a zero sum game to the enviro-nuts.  I have no problem with them building and buying electric cars, even though I think the technology is not quite there yet.  So why is it so important to them that they destroy the oil industry?

Part of the movie centers around the GM car EV1.  The movie carps on and on about how a back room deal destroyed that technology.  The implication is that this technique is objectionable and wrong.  And yet…  The same technique used on a pipeline is celebrated as a great victory.

The results of their victory–the shutdown of the pipeline–are that the oil must be instead trucked across the frontier.  How does that count as a victory for the environment?  Answer:  it is no victory for the environment, but they believe that if they keep putting up as many roadblocks as possible in the parts of the economy that they most object to, then they feel they are doing good.  Just listening to them talk makes me ill.  My father-in-law calls this the “age of the intimidator”, and so it is.