Update 2: 7/10/09 From Investors Daily reporting on a GAO report finds “… reliance on electric cars will do little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and may merely shift our dependence on foreign sources from one set of dictators to another.” (Hat tip to Hot Air)

Update: Scientists say “think twice about ‘green’” noting, just as I did, that electricity is not magic and comes from somewhere that isn’t so green.

As part of Ford’s recovery plan the company says it will step up production on an entirely electric vehicle. Right now the electric car is all the rage with rich liberals ordering their Tesla’s and environmentalists who cannot wait to end our reliance on the internal combustion engine. The problem with the electric car? It needs electricity and last I checked that didn’t just flow from nowhere.

A plug in car makes sense if electricity is produced by fairy dust and moon beams; it isn’t. You see, the little white outlet in my house doesn’t provide my family with electricity through magic. That energy is produced by nuclear power plants, hydroelectric plants, coal plants along with production from gas & oil. 49.6% of the nation’s electricity comes from coal according to the EPA. 19.3% comes from nuclear and 6.45% from hydroelectric. I am lucky enough to live near Niagara Falls where 26.4% of the energy in my area is produced; not everyone in this nation is so fortunate.

As you know, liberal environmentalists hate nuclear energy and aren’t thrilled with coal. Joe Biden had tuff words about coal that sprung out of his wily mouth just before the election. Many of these environmentalists like to talk about the future, a utopia where wind and solar provide electricity. Currently those technologies account for 2.1% of our national energy mixture. What they won’t tell you is that environmentalists cannot even agree on whether solar or wind or hydro or any of them will actually do more harm than good to the environment.

Here in rural Western, NY there are plans to build wind farms. Can you guess who is fighting their construction? You guessed it, environmentalists and farmers. Together in this area they are fighting the development of the technology because they believe it causes vibrations in the ground. No really, vibrations in the ground along with other tin foil hat conspiracy theories about corporations killing off wildlife.

I actually had a discussion where one of these enviro’s told me they would lose the bat population if windmills were constructed. At first I thought he was selling me on the idea, who wants more bats? Oddly he had the opposing opinion arguing for more bats believing that all of the ecosystem around him would disintegrate if evil wind mills were constructed. He even told me that if ice were tossed from a mill it could travel an enormous distance and end up cutting all of his children in half. He wasn’t the only one, these kind of thoughts are prevalent in the area and spurred by groups around the nation who organize together on the Internet and share resources.

Similar concerns come up whenever there is discussion of building more hydroelectric plants. Worried about migration and local ecosystems, environmentalists flood the public with their propaganda and target local board members to stop new production when dams are proposed.

At least we have solar, right? Not so as some environmentalists are even fighting the construction of solar farms. You just cannot make these people happy.

All these fights lead to costly environmental studies and PR campaigns to try and convince the public these projects are safe. Developers and local boards cave into the never ending demands of radical environmentalists leading to the slow adoption of these new technologies.

If we can get past environmentalists we are still left with lots of questions. Who will pay for this new infrastructure? How much energy and polluting materials will go into actually producing it? Where will the many miles needed to house panels and wind farms come from? See where I am going? In theory most of us agree we need to augment our national energy infrastructure but the age old NIMBY rule applies often resulting in very strange bedfellows. For instance radical left wing Senator Ted Kennedy who is first to tell the nation we need to develop green energy has been fighting plans to build a wind farm off of Cape Cod. Why? Because he fears it would ruin the view. Hows that for green living?

Liberal environmentalists are against more nuclear plants, more oil, more coal, have issues with gas, they even have problems with wind, hydro & solar. Where is the energy going to come from to power these plugin automobiles?

Imagine if you can how our already frail and spent electric grid would take to thousands if not millions of electric cars suddenly sucking down energy? As demand rises, undoubtedly so would price. This would result in the cost rising not only to charge your car but power your home and business. Remember a few years ago when rolling blackouts hit California? Remember the 2003 Northeast blackout? Our struggling power grid buckled under the demands from the addition of laptops, desktops, servers, cell phones and other consumer appliances all of which were taxing the system. Everything works fine until the day comes when it gets too warm outside or too cold. When the wind blows a little too hard or god forbid a terrorist attack strikes.

So to this degrading energy infrastructure we are going to add cars? What will that do to our ailing grid and what unintended consequences will result? Is an electric car really the answer? I cannot imagine it is but it appears more likely than not that the automakers will get bailout money. With that money will come demands from Democrats that the automakers become more “green” and push for electric car technology to move to the marketplace with few if any questioning just what this will do to our lives.

As always the few radical elements of the Democratic Party see an opportunity to push an ideological agenda; one that they seek to force onto us all with little thought for the consequences or concern for whether our nation is truly clamoring for it.