Prepare for energy shortages, cost hikes and rationing
By Larry Bell
Fully expect your future carbon footprints to be traced to a crime scene subject to “climate and energy justice” violations in the high tribunal of sustainability.
The prospective charges?
Such sins will include ownership and operation of an internal combustion vehicle, tampering with regulated upper or lower thermostat setting limits, and/or excessive electricity consumption based upon your maximum household square foot per occupancy allowances.
Why believe me?
Quite simply, because America’s recently controlling political party has already initiated a fast-track train wreck agenda to shut down and replace 80% of abundant and reliable hydrocarbon energy by growing the 5% currently provided by anemic, intermittent wind and solar electricity.
On top of this, the plan will vastly increase electricity demand and costs by phasing out most petroleum-fueled vehicles in favor of heavily taxpayer- and consumer-subsidized plug-in models.
When inevitable power shortages occur, rationing is most certain to follow.
And you can bet your last incandescent lightbulb that they’re very serious.
On his first day in the Oval Office, President Biden capped off the Keystone XL pipeline at the Canadian border along with about 11,000 jobs and 830,000 barrels of oil per day it would have delivered, which must now be transported by more expensive rail and trucks.
As part of his $2 trillion “Equitable Clean Energy Future” agenda, President Biden has pledged to recommit America to the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement: eliminating carbon emissions from electricity by 2035, and shifting from oil, natural gas and coal to achieve “net-zero carbon” emissions by 2050.
In short, the Biden agenda will terminate an energy resource that has stimulated over $200 billion of investment in new factories, generated millions of jobs, produced vital federal and state revenues, reduced the trade deficit by several hundred billion dollars, and expanded America’s policy flexibility and influence regarding foreign adversaries and allies alike.
This will occur as China and India, which have represented 80% of the emission increases and are not bound to the pact, are dramatically ramping up coal and oil development.
Meanwhile, other executive actions will cut back U.S. oil and gas production which have recently made our country energy independent by cancelling new oil and gas leases on public lands and waters.
Joe Biden will front-load his Cabinet appointments with radical climate activists empowered to wield vast regulatory influence over every major sector of American economic and social life.
Former Secretary of State John Kerry, who co-chaired the Biden-[Bernie]Sanders “Unity Task Force on Combatting the Climate Crisis and Pursuing Environmental Justice,” will be appointed to a newly created Cabinet position as international diplomacy “climate envoy.”
Former South Bend, Indiana mayor and Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg has been nominated to be Biden’s transportation secretary. Buttigieg’s primary campaign site said by 2035 he would “require zero emissions for all new vehicles.”
Not explained is how to recharge all those added plug-ins at night when the sun is hidden, and the wind isn’t blowing.
Former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Joe Biden’s selection for Energy secretary, will be charged with responsibility to make good on his election promise to help build 550,000 electric vehicle charging stations as part of his plan to “fight climate change” which has been occurring since the time our planet first had an atmosphere.
A January 27 executive order officially creates a White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy to be headed by “climate czar” Gina McCarthy who formerly led the Obama-Biden administration’s EPA. The order also creates a White House Environmental Justice Interagency Council and a White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council.
So, what exactly, comprises “environmental justice?”
One sweeping presidential directive calls for stronger action to protect public health and the environment and hold polluters accountable, including those who “disproportionately harm communities of color and low-income communities.”
And who can really argue with that? No one wants air, land or water “pollution,” which actually has nothing to do with responsible clean use of hydrocarbon fuels or production of atmospheric CO2 (natural plant food).
Less than 24 hours after his inauguration, Biden also welcomed Northeastern law and racial justice professor Shalanda Baker into his administration as deputy director for “energy justice” within the Department of Energy.
According to the nonprofit Initiative for Energy Justice, energy justice, much like environmental justice, refers to “the goal of achieving equity in both the social and economic participation in the energy system, while also remediating social, economic, and health burdens on those disproportionately harmed by the energy system.”
Again, who would possibly wish to deny energy justice to anyone, most particularly for disproportionately disadvantaged low-income populations of all races? Seems to me that the greatest justice will be served by lowering energy costs and raising abundance for everyone … the direct opposite of what the Biden agenda portends.
A harbinger of coming events occurred when power blackouts rolled across California cities and towns during a 2020 heat wave due to removal of nuclear and fossil fueled plants from the grid.
California already leads the nation with the least reliable power system and greatest number of annual outages … 4,297 were recorded between 2008 and 2017. And conditions will only become far worse as the state now requires that all new homes be nearly entirely electric. More than 30 cities, including San Francisco, have already enacted bans on new gas appliance hookups. California plans to eventually outlaw gasoline and diesel cars.
There is no reason for anyone in energy-rich America to be deprived of affordable energy in order to “save the planet” from a an imperceptible 0.06o Celsius increase in warming based upon U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) hypothetical computer models that are directly observed to run two to three times too hot.
Nor are either solar or wind power environmentally “cleaner” than hydrocarbons when the mining and toxic rare earth materials that go into making them are accounted for.
Artificial energy shortages premised upon environmental and energy justice will lead only to justifications for rationing to redistribute energy poverty more equitably.
Author –Larry Bell
CFACT Advisor Larry Bell heads the graduate program in space architecture at the University of Houston. He founded and directs the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture. He is also the author of “Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax.”
From cfact.org