Climate Change: Day Dream Believin’
During a virtual 40-nation Climate Change Summit last week, Mr. Biden pledged to reduce America’s “greenhouse gas emissions” by 50% (from our 2005 level) by 2030, and set us on a “path to net-zero emissions by no later than 2050.”
This is, of course, the crux of the ambiguous “New Green Deal” which is currently housed not so secretly within the administration’s so-called $2.25-trillion “Infrastructure” package, another over-priced, politically-directed, U.S. Treasury- raiding, future American generations deep-sea fiscal burial vault. Achievable if we destroy the oil and gas industry (and with it, millions of jobs), that has succeeded in making the U.S. energy-independent, and along with that, force electric vehicles on a public not excited about having to plug into charging stations (when available) for who knows how long for a full re-charge, required repeatedly on long car or truck trips.
This all looks dandy to liberals on paper, but the reality for the rest of common-sense America is, frankly, scary sounding, especially with the intended loss of so many millions of jobs with only a vague hypothetical, political-talk “promise” of replacing them with “good paying” ones. All fine, but with the hard-core reality that the U.S. will be dependent of oil, natural gas, and nuclear power generation (perhaps even some residual coal) for years to come, well beyond the 2030, and likely even the 2050 lib-pandering predictions.
The philosophical-political plan among nations is to arrest human-caused (of course, it’s all our fault!) negative climate change around the world. While it’s swell for the U.S. to talk about doing so here, at huge cost to energy industry employment cost alone, and forcing re-dependence on other nations for fuel in the interim, disrupting the U.S. economy for supposed climate control will only impact our country. The rest of the world would have to make similar sacrifices, and wholesale conversions to “renewable” energy sources, in order to solve this perceived serious climate problem for the entire world. And regardless of virtual political promises from certain other key nations, that’s simply not going to happen. Here’s why.
Too many other nations are currently far too dependent on COAL power, and will continue to be, to make any significant difference. If we are not careful, and we likely will not be under the current administration, we could end up destroying our energy industry, while other nations, regardless of flatulent reduction “pledges,” simply continue on with coal and even increase its use!
Here is a current (January 2021) sampling of nations still dependent on coal-fired power plants….
Currently in Operation Under Construction Pre-Construction
China 1,082 92 135
United States 252 0 0
India 281 30 27
Russia 85 1 4
Japan 87 10 2
Indonesia 77 24 51
Turkey 32 3 25
Vietnam 25 7 16
WORLD TOTAL 2,449 201 345
As you can quickly see, there is still a ton (sorry) of dependence on coal for power plants around the world, including plans to increase those numbers, some by quite a bit. Bear in mind that these figures, though very current, were taken from the website, endcoal.org., which would seem to be a political one, but if anything, likely to represent the worst-case coal scenario. And in terms of realistically doing anything significant to decrease coal-produced climate impacts, in 2020, China is reported to have produced 53% of the world’s coal-fired power. Clearly, the planet cannot be “saved” if coal is the issue, and if China cannot be encouraged to cut its use back beyond significantly! And China has made repeated “pledges” to reduce its dependence, but to date, to no significant impact at home or globally. It is reported that China was the only G20 nation to significantly Increase its use of coal plants last year (2020). In fact, China’s “coal mining output rose last year (2020) to its highest level since 2015.”
With regard to India, it’s reported that coal will “remain that nation’s largest single source of electricity on into 2040”! Said a spokesperson for the World Coal Association: “Coal (in India) will continue to play a vital role in supporting intermittent renewable energy sources to underpin infrastructure development and industrialization.” Two items of interest in that quote. First, “supporting intermittent renewable energy sources” speaks the truth about the lack of total reliability with renewable wind and solar, indicating the need here, and everywhere, for back-up resources. In the nations cited, that’s likely to be coal. Here, in the U.S., more likely to be dependable, less damaging, oil, natural gas, and nuclear. Secondly, the truthful realization that nations like China, India, and Russia, among others, are still concentrating fully on their own economic expansion and development, including industrialization, and not on potentially harming their economies with cutbacks in coal, oil and natural gas use, as the United States government is proposing to do with our energy industries in just the few years ahead, in order to help “save the planet” which it clearly will not!
The problem., of course, is that converting our coal-fired plants to oil/gas/nuclear would be only a temporary fix, unsatisfactory to the ‘climatestas,’ pending the move to whatever additional “renewables’ are further developed in the years ahead. There is simply no acceptable reason why America should sacrifice large chunks of its economy, and treasury, to win a gold sticker from the teacher, while the remainder of the world continues to expand their economies and continue to depend on coal, oil, and gas as their proven, economic, DEPENDABLE sources for their electric power needs. Maybe, just maybe, the climate’s variations and issues are not all caused by the actions of man! Just a little shot of Progressive political heresy….
Somehow, going against the current strong political headwind, we have got to slow and/or stop this D.C.-based effort to cripple oil and gas exploration, production, distribution, and use in America. The 2030 and 2050 goals are for practical purposes undoable, and frankly unnecessary, given the rest of the world’s continued dependence on coal. Not to mention weakening our industrial base and, weakening our security further in the eyes of the world. Will the U.S. military, for instance, ultimately have to go up against world adversaries powered by unreliable renewables?? We simply cannot afford, literally, to move so rapidly to predominantly embrace wind, solar, and whatever else is lurking in labs somewhere. With the recent major power-outage issue in Texas in mind, we must maintain our ability to have reliable oil, gas, and nuclear, as electricity power back-up, and back-up at the very least, to cover for the known unreliability of wind and solar. May our conservative, common sense-oriented elected officials please step up, and do so forcefully and effectively, to participate more actively in this national economic and security endangering issue and fight.
(Biden emissions plan pledge via foxbusiness.com, Caitlin McFall, 4-22-21; Coal-fired power plants stats via endcoal.org, January 2021; China world coal percentage/increased use stats via breitbart.com, John Hayward, 3-29-21; Rise in China coal mining output quote via nasdag.com, Muyu Xu (Reuters), 1-17-21; World Coal Association quotes regarding coal use in India via energyworld.com, Staff, 2-12-21).