by Susan Crabtree
Washington Free Beacon
The fight over a California state bill to create a $3 billion state subsidy program for electric vehicles, a potential boon for Tesla, is intensifying with the Senate set to take up the measure Monday.
Conservatives this week criticized environmentalist activist Tom Steyer for backing the bill, which would increase the state’s existing subsidy program for so-called “green cars,” after Steyer said on Twitter that “not one penny” in tax cuts should go to “those who don’t need it.”…
Even subsidies for the new more moderately priced Tesla model 3 take taxpayer dollars from the less fortunate and give them to higher earners, said Tom Tanton, director of science and technology assessment at the Energy and Environment Legal Institute, a free-market advocacy group.
Tanton also pointed to an often overlooked human cost of electric vehicle manufacturing—that the cobalt required to build their batteries is mined largely in Africa under extremely poor worker conditions.
“There are tremendous human rights and child abuses in mining, especially in Africa,” Tanton said.
Tanton and Vidak also point out that California has the highest poverty rate of any state when factoring in cost-of-living even though its job and economic growth has outpaced much of the nation.
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