REAL CLEAR PUBLIC AFFAIRS--11/28/2023---PRINTED OFF 11/28/23
Energy Realism this past Thanksgiving week discussed the environmental and monetary drain of “going green.” Make no mistake: Biden’s progressive energy-climate plans benefit China.
Brent Bennett and Andrea Hitt got us started by exposing the highly expensive electric car fantasy that greens continue to push. The Biden administration is pushing for widespread electrification in less than 20 years through government subsidies and coercive regulations as part of its aggressive climate agenda. The truth is that President Joe Biden’s goals are an illusion at the expense of the American people. And perhaps the bigger question for greens, they must answer how unilateral American energy-climate policy can in, actuality, “fight climate change. ”In fact, climate change by definition is a global issue. So, how do our actions alone offer any benefits or have any impact? This is especially pertinent here since Vijay Jayaraj looks at the case of China, where the “coal boom is here to stay.” Despite climate pledges from the Chinese Communist Party, during the first half of 2023, China approved 52 gigawatts (GW) of new coal power, which was more than all the approvals issued in 2021. These new approvals are in addition to the 136 GW of coal capacity already under construction. Together, these new plants represent more than 67% of all new approvals in the world. Indeed, on climate, you don’t matter nearly as much as greens want you to think.
And even if we were somehow to “just go green,” Danny Ervin documents how China even controls the global supply chains for the natural resources so essential to the “energy transition” that greens want to force upon us. But Danny does offer up some hope. While concerns about U.S. mineral reliance on China are clearly justified, the U.S. should view critical minerals as a challenge that can be largely solved by making improvements to the mine permitting process, ensuring that companies don't face interminable delays when opening new mines. This naturally then brings us to the Essential Reading from our BrainTrust member Mark P. Mills. The policy shift to significantly more wind and solar power and a large electric car fleet will require a huge amount of minerals and other materials that will have an environmental toll and increase U.S. import dependency. Remember: energy facts matter, and we hope that you had a great Turkey Day!
Summary:
The most important event in economic history: the harnessing of heat to do work. First coal, then oil, and later natural gas – hydrocarbon energy powered the Industrial Revolution and transformed humanity’s existence for the better. Growth rates in the one and a half millennia before the Industrial Revolution averaged approximately zero. Since then, per capita incomes in a typical free-market economy have risen by amounts ranging from several hundred to several thousand percent.
Yet today, businesses and consumers face demands for the forcible phasing out of fossil fuel energy over the next three decades to stop global temperatures rising by a half a degree Centigrade. This is not just incompatible with capitalism. It is incompatible with modern living. Some six in every seven humans today still live in undeveloped countries. Non-Western nations aspiring to Western standards of living now account for around three-fourths of global CO2 emissions. For this reason alone, whatever the US and other western nations do, net zero by mid-century is simply not going to happen.
Energy policy should be based on facts and reason, from the fundamental physics of energy production and storage to the relation between energy and economic growth. This page is meant to serve as a clearinghouse for research, news, and multimedia that can inform debate over the major energy policy questions of today. Together, these curated materials lay the foundation for the policies that will ensure reliable and affordable energy for businesses and consumers and help the economy bounce back once the COVID-19 pandemic has passed, as well as chart a course for genuine environmental stewardship.
An intelligent commentary.
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