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[SPECIAL JANUARY PROMOTION: Spend $50+ In The FPM Store And Receive A Free Copy Of “Final Battle” By David Horowitz.]
Biden’s Inflation Increase Act intends to spend $7.5 billion taxpayer money to build charging stations for electric car owners. Two years later, no EV chargers were built. And that’s good.
The modern sheen of the electric car is running into the medieval state of American cities.
Seattle began installing dozens of EV chargers only for thieves to show up and raid at least eight of the charging cables for copper requiring thousands of dollars worth of repairs.
In response, the city is planning to put the chargers high up on poles that can only be lowered by an app. This will cost even more money and in an environment in which brazen copper thieves toppled an FM radio tower in Oklahoma, isn’t likely to deter the criminals.
EV owners who suffered from copper theft while leaving their cars to be charged in public places were told by the Seattle Police Department to “stay with the vehicle if you can while it’s being charged,” Considering that it can take an electric car hours to charge, that’s gonna be a wait.
In Oakhurst, CA , every cable was cut on a Tesla ‘supercharger’ station almost as soon as it had been set up. At a nonprofit in Van Nuys, 38 cables were stolen. Since the thieves rarely see any real punishment in cities where property crime has effectively been legalized, it’s getting worse.
The problem has become commonplace enough that Biden’s Department of Energy rolled out a special guide to stopping charging cable theft by warning that “the theft of EV charging cables can lead to a decrease in the use of EVs, which can have a negative impact on the environment.” Proposals from the DOE include charging your electric car at home.
Not that only charging electric cars at home is enough because thieves have taken to going after charging cables right in driveways as the EVs are being charged overnight.
Charging cables for the already overpriced electric cars can cost over $1,000.
Thieves on bicycles ride from suburban house to house, seizing cables and riding away with them. It’s estimated that an experienced crook can make off with one cable in 13 seconds.
And so electric car owners are warned to make sure that they lock their car in the garage. Then they’re told to lock their cables with padlocks and make sure their insurance covers their cables.
The incredible convenience of electric cars is now such that owners can only charge them while locked in their garages, with a padlock on the cable and the cable under the car’s wheel.
But it’s not just Teslas. Copper thieves are coming for every piece of ‘green’ infrastructure.
In Fresno, CA, $100,000 in copper wire was stolen from a solar farm, but wind farms, because they’re often far away from people, are an even more attractive target for copper thieves. And wind turbines have massive amounts of copper in them, making them even more desirable.
Copper thieves cut into a turbine, haul out cables and then drive away causing as much as millions of dollars in damage. Such thefts have been reported from Arizona to Minnesota to Iowa to Massachusetts, Internationally in the UK, there was a 48% increase in solar and cable ‘green’ copper theft, and 5,000 major solar thefts across Europe.
But where is all that copper going? The answer is appropriately green. It’s being recycled.
After the copper is stolen, it’s taken to recycling centers, many of which boast of their “sustainability” and contributions to the planet. There the copper is resold, often to China, which spurred the original copper boom, and transformed into more green energy equipment that the copper thieves will steal and then recycle to continue the cycle of environmental crime.
Green energy gear, from EV charging cables to solar panels and wind turbines, require a lot of copper. This demand for copper raises the price of copper and drives copper thefts.
Recycling soda and beer cans depended on homeless people digging through the trash and hauling giant garbage bags full of cans to be exchanged for 5 cents each. Copper theft is a more advanced version of the same game. The perpetrators are often addicts stealing copper and turning it over to organized criminals or selling it to recyclers and buying fentanyl.
Videos have documented trucks picking up ‘harvested’ copper and providing fentanyl.
That’s the kind of dysfunctional misery that the green revolution rests on and always has. The recycling junkie thieves aren’t just looking through the trash for Coke cans, they’re tearing up copper wire, but that’s a difference in scale, not in substance. Recycling was always theft.
Biden’s Department of Energy claims that looting electric cars is a threat to the planet. “EVs are an essential part of the transition to a more sustainable future, and any obstacles to their adoption must be addressed,” it warns. But it doesn’t call for cracking down on crime.
And it’s the electric cars and other green tech that’s driving the copper theft wave.
Electric cars use four times as much copper as real cars. One Tesla needs a mile of copper just to hook up the battery packs. Solar panels need 5.5 tons of copper for each megawatt. A wind farm can use as much as 7,000 tons of copper. There’s nothing ‘green’ about any of this.
Green energy demands a lot of mining and then outsources that to Communist China. And China helps the cartels manufacture fentanyl which they trade to junkies for copper.
From the Chinese Communist perspective, it’s a beautiful virtuous cycle.
The zombies they create steal our copper, send it to them and they resell it to us. The more we go ‘green’, the more copper we need, and the more China makes money by selling us ‘green’. And the more Americans it can turn into fentanyl zombies to steal it back to China.
Green crime does pay: at least for thieves, Communists and environmentalists.
its not just in the USA this is happening. 14 years ago a hostel we spent a night in on the outskirts of Johannesburg S Africa had no land-line phones because thieves had dug up the line every time it was replaced.
On the other hand the car is easy to locate once it is on fire. Now there’s a good reason to store/charge an EV in a garage, Fire insurance is mandatory, at least.
All thieves like this should when arrested should be getting 30 years in Prison never mind the time when thieves were Hanged
Actually I like the Islamic solution of cutting off thieves’ hands.
Maybe we can compromise on a finger? LOL
@TomJarman1979
It used to be standard protocol to shoot/kill horse thieves. Since the “iron horse” hs replaced the flesh and bones horses as our means of transportation, it would seem a logical extension to bring back the death penalty for stealing the copper that is critical to the “life” of the “electric horse”.
Of course one intelligent solution is to simply refuse to own one of those JoltMobiles.
“ Charging cables for the already overpriced electric cars can cost over $1,000.”
That’s because they are subsidised by around $1000. If the subsidy was $500 they would cost $500.
When I studied environmental science back in the 80’s the lecturer told us that there was more copper in NYC than was available in the ground
Remarkable where all that copper comes from.
Canada no longer has a copper penny in circulation … The copper was worth more than the penny.
In Canada, penny candy is a nickle. actually it’s more like a quarter.
Neither do we. Ours is zinc with copper plating
SF Bay Port guarded parking lot for cars offloaded from Asia: thieves climbed hundreds of feet up the light poles just to steal the light fixtures on top.
I look like we may be saved from the eco insanity by petty thieves. Whodda thunk it.
God bless them for they are not woke.
NOTE: There will never be enough electricity produced to keep the stupid EVs charged and so they cannot have an EV … where to park it? Where to steal it.
The green movement is going nowhere and it’s not even green,
Corroded copper is green in color…how ironic.
Corroded copper and many copper minerals are green in color…how ironic.
I’ve had several utility company trainings regarding copper theft. Mostly stealing grounding cables.
Grounding is safety for their utility employees.. And you. Your home is grounded,
Many of these theives become crispy critters while performing their trade.
Darwin effect. IDC.
In my Wisconsin city. These “recyclers” removing copper from a home, caused a natural gas leak. That leak, to describe it technically, “blew-up” an entire city block. Every building had to be razed, Including some much farther away.
Yet the real problem is the person buying the copper. They KNOW it is stolen. Therefore they pay the surviving theives about 20 cents on the dollar for the “scrap” they collected.
Let’s Go Brandon! Save the USA. Save Earth!
The professional recycling yards are NOT the problem. They take great care to minimise their receipt of stolen metals. I know a few of them.
Most large copper transmission lines have, for the past twenty years and ore, nad a serial number “rolled” into the surface f f the cable every foot or so. Whenever something suspicious turns up *almost daily….) they, as part of their intake and assessment procedures, will run that number against a database an didentify the actual present owner of that cable. If its not the guy trying to sell it, they immediately call LE to come pick up their chump. Thus check is run as the scrapper is walking from the scalehouse with his chit for the metal and into the pay area, which always has a waiting line. Of course, then it rests with the integrity of locla LE whether to make the arrest then prosecute. In woke areas like Seattle/Tacoma this does not often happen. WHich makes LE in those places accessories to the crime.. for which NO ONE will ever be prosecuted.
Last time I checked spot prices ckean Cu was paying rught at $7800 per tonne…. nt chumo change by any standard. In contrast aluminium sheet/plate was about 82 cents the pound, or $1600/T and structural steel was about $250/T
I know whenever I am breaking up a car for scrap, I ALWAYS scrape out all the copper I can find.
My father owned a scrap metal business. A lot of their accounts were industrial entities, but whenever a rough looking individual came in to sell him scrap copper, he asked for proof where the guy got it. No proof, no sale. The “recycling centers” have to make sure that they are not dealing in stolen goods.
The honest ones do. But the dishonest ones make a lot of money reselling to Chinese companies.
So that’s why the Chinese bought the local scrap metal company. Thanks Lightbringer!
This reminds me of a failed plan in Delhi to reduce the rat population. The government offered a bounty on captured rats. Enterprising Indians then created rat farms, the produce of which was sold to the government. The population of wild city rats failed to diminish. So the government rescinded the rat bounty program, and the rat farmers, in an abundance of love for all life (including rats), simply let them all go free. Result: the population of wild rats has dramatically increased.
A common form of eco-friendly crime nowadays: a (usually black) teenager armed with a battery-powered “SAWZALL” tool, can remove the expensive catalytic converters from under your parked car in less than 10 minutes.
Proving that the Hindus have reference for Rats their all sun lose in New Deli and those idiots from PETA thinks that should have Rights