Green Is The Color Of My True Love’s Power Outages
As Mr. Biden apparently phones and visits overseas oil producing nations in search of more fuel for America, which is absolute politically-forced nonsense, since we have multiple generations-worth within our own ground and coastal seas, administration team members like wealthy U.S. Energy “Czar” John Kerry ever-supports his boss by declaring that: “We absolutely don’t need to drill for more oil.” More recently, amidst the administration’s self-serving echo chamber, energy advisor Amos Hochstein spoke about “accelerating the transition to green energy. I think we have been clear that we want to see the U.S. industry increase oil production. It is about making a choice between what is the short-term and the medium-term, so that we can make sure we have enough oil and gas to support us through the transition.”
It’s starting to sound like the old Lou Costello “Who’s On First.” So, we need to “increase oil production,” but not increase “drilling for more oil.” How does that magically happen? The implication is that the energy corporations have plenty of oil sitting around in vats, but they just haven’t bothered to “produce” gasoline from it. And for heaven’s and Biden’s sake, don’t go looking for more oil. That could only slow the necessary “transition” to unreliable, insufficient, problematic wind and solar, our current administration’s mandated deliverance from totally reliable, totally sufficient, problem-free, ample-supplies-for-generations, and dependable fossil fuels!
As you well know, this really isn’t about oil prospecting and production. It’s about the never-openly-revealed, dominant, radical socialistic central government power and control movement over American lives, using the smoke-screen of slamming fossil fuels and touting unreliable but acceptable-to-them renewables (vs. unacceptable nuclear, the most legitimate of the renewables) to cover for the now-global Green Movement and its seemingly fictious climate control mandate. Oil and natural gas are much preferred and perfectly acceptable to America’s citizens, but not to the control-seeking domestic globalists, who right now are running (and ruining) the American nation.
And the problems associated with this “planet-saving” climate crusade aren’t exclusive to America. Other sections of the world who’ve swallowed the climate kool-aid are beginning to face the inevitable consequences of over-“transition” before legitimate alternatives to reliable fossil fuels were actually available (if ever). Wrote Rich Lowry: “The greens are rapidly making up ground on the socialists as the modern world’s foremost economic and social saboteurs (and of course the two now work hand in hand).” Sri Lanka (a small island nation in the Indian Ocean) went all in with the “Environment, Social and Governance (ESG)” theory, when it banned chemical fertilizers in the spring of 2021, destroying “its economy in the process,” wrote Lowry. In a recent Federalist on-line article, the writer stated that: “In Sri Lanka, the costs of food and fuel have gotten so high that the island country has nearly collapsed. The president has fled, the prime minister has promised to resign, the socialist nation is in a state of emergency, and fed-up citizens have taken over much of the capital.”
There is similar turmoil in the Netherlands, one of Europe’s largest producers and exporters of agricultural products. The writer about the Sri Lanka situation went on to discuss the impact of over-Green policies on the Dutch: “In the Netherlands, farmers protesting government plans to regulate their livelihoods out of existence and seize their farms, have fought back by blocking main thoroughfares with their tractors and keeping supermarket shelves relatively bare. Already, similar protests have popped up in Italy, Poland, and Germany.” The Dutch government recently imposed regulations that may actually result in life-long farmers there literally being shut down. Thus, the significant concerns and protests. Dutch commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek has also spoken about the very concerning situation in her nation: “It’s always ordinary citizens who have to give up their rights. That’s what people need to start seeing. That’s the real agenda that our governments have, and of course, the food supply – the farmers – what better way to control people than by controlling their food. This way, the state is able to have full control over your lives, if they dictate what you can’t eat and what you can eat, and when you can eat.” This is mighty frightening stuff.
And then there’s Germany, another nation that bought into the ‘save the planet’ fiction several years ago and is now dealing both with those consequences and the Russian invasion of Ukraine (cutting off pipelined fuel?). Rich Lowry’s comments on that situation: “In its wisdom, Germany decided to shut down the source of energy that is clean, reliable, and doesn’t require dependence on an authoritarian state hostile to the West (Russia) – namely nuclear power. It fell prey to the environmental left’s superstitious hostility to nuclear. It is turning again to coal to try to fill the gap this winter, underlining its disastrous mistake in prematurely eschewing such proven sources of energy in the first place.”
Britain, too, has renewables issues, at least temporarily, given the extremely hot weather that baked the nation for a couple of days this week. As the temps hit over 100-degrees, solar panels there actually stopped working! First time we’ve heard this about the exceptional wonders of solar. A government spokesperson in Britain said: “Here in the U.K., we’re used to treating a hot spell as a chance to go and play in the sun. This is not that sort of weather. Our lifestyles and our infrastructure are not adapted to what is coming (i.e., excess high heat).” And speaking of damage from exceptionally high heat, you may find this next British impact hard to believe. “The Royal Air Force halted flights Monday after one of the forces’ longest runways melted (!), as temperatures reached 104-degrees Fahrenheit.”
Now, then, here at home. A record heat wave has hit several of our states, west and east, and in particular renewables-heavy Texas. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the grid manager for most of the state, requested last week that residents “conserve energy.” Reason: the wind wasn’t blowing!! That conservation “request” was confirmed by a long-time friend of mine who lives near Houston. While coal and natural gas were once the dominate fuels for electric generation in Texas, over these last two years, “renewables have topped both, with wind leading the way.” Wind and solar there have taken the lead, thanks to billions of federal, state, and local subsidies over the last 15-years. Follow the money.
And “renewables are still far more expensive and less efficient in practice than fossil fuels and nuclear energy.” Example, during the heat wave, the “wind” portion operated at only 8% of installed capacity. The Texas grid was “on the verge of blackouts.” And, here you go, Tesla joined with ERCOT, asking its electric vehicle owners “not to charge their vehicles during peak periods (i.e., mid-afternoon on into the early evening). You’ll remember that during February of 2021, severe winter storms stopped the renewables cold (forgive me). Wind blades froze & snow covered the solar panels, resulting, reportedly, in hundreds of deaths as millions were left without power. During the summer, “the hottest days have by far the highest consumer demand, but typically Texas will then have little wind to produce wind power.” In fact, “hot days (there) tend to be windless.”
“Wind and solar accounted for 14.5% of net power generation across sectors in the U.S. in February.” And to this, we should hasten to “transition” ? Giving up accustomed reliability from fossil fuels to embrace comparatively minimal output from unreliable renewables that can cause local/regional/state-wide brown-and-black-outs during both the high heat of summer and the deep freeze of winter. Wrote Spencer Brown: “The warning in Texas comes as more than 50% of the continental Unites States is under threat of rolling blackouts this summer due to a power grid that’s struggling to survive the Biden administration’s energy policy.”
Said House Republican Whip, Representative Steve Scalise: “President Biden continues to limit American energy production, while begging foreign countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia to produce oil for us.” Our own federally protected/restricted oil sources: “More than 70% of oil production on federally governed sites comes from offshore sources, yet 94% of offshore acreage remains off-limits to development” (American Petroleum Institute). And the administration continues to limit production on government land/off-shore, while continuing to cease all efforts for additional government land/coast exploration/drilling/permitting. Yet exerting pressure to produce more oil ??
Meanwhile, China which watches “our self-harming foolishness with delight and perhaps a little astonishment” has “in recent years built more coal-fired power stations than the rest of the world combined, (and now) sits back and watches as the self-doubting, self-hating West cedes its prosperity and global leadership.” Wrote Neil Patel: “By canceling pipelines, and by limiting federal oil and gas leasing, the Left has reduced American energy production and left America vulnerable to the rest of the world.” And this from Powerlineblog.com. commentator John Hinderaker: “Green energy holds [political sway, which has made a relative handful of people (largely non-Americans and lobbyists) immensely wealthy, while impoverishing utility rate payers and taxpayers – that is to say, the rest of us. This insanity will continue until voters wise up, or more likely, I am afraid, until the laws of physics, along with land use and raw materials constraints, make it blindingly obvious that the ‘green dream” is just that. A nightmare. By that time, an astonishing amount of wealth will have been destroyed.”
Not only wealth destroyed, but enormous amounts of America’s agricultural and development land will be lost. Reportedly, just to meet our nation’s projected present day electricity consumption needs would require 12% of our land for wind generation alone. Which means, here it comes: “Merely meeting America’s current electricity needs with wind energy would require a territory more than two times the size of California”! And that’s not including solar which, commercially, is another huge land user. Then there are the transmission lines needed to bring that electricity from the generally more rural sites to the heavily populated areas. So, here’s another frighteningly expensive reality: “Renewables conversion means adding enough high-voltage transmission lines (that would) circle the earth about 10 times”! No one ever talks about the reality of the land use, or the enormous costs required (construction & transmission), to bring this wind & solar renewables fantasy into Progressive nirvana.
To conclude, and not on a high or positive note. Wrote the editors of the Wall Street Journal: “Failed climate policies are becoming an excuse for more government control of energy production. Historian Arnold Toynbee argued that civilizations die from suicide, not murder. The West’s climate self-destruction may prove him right.” Our opportunity to change the course of power generation, from faulty renewables (other than nuclear) back to a full continuation of dependence on reliable fossil fuels (oil & natural gas) comes at the nation’s election sites this November. Regardless of the hit song lyrics, national “suicide” is not “painless,” as we’re currently experiencing, one misguided and destructive economic and cultural D.C. shot after another.
(Kerry quote via foxnews.com, Taylor Penley, 6-15-22; Hochstein quote via breitbart.com, Trent Baker, 7-19-22; Lowry quote via jewishworldreview.com, Rich Lowry, 7-20-22; Sri Lanka quote via thefederalist.com, J.B. Shurk, 7-18-22; Netherlands situation quote via thefederalist.com, J.B. Shurk, 7-18-22; Netherlands situation continued via breitbart.com, Robert Kraychik, 7-19-22; Germany’s fuel situation quote via jewishworldreview.com, Rich Lowry, 7-20-22; Britain’s high heat issues quotes via dailycaller.com, Sarah Weaver, 7-20-22; Texas ERCOT conserve energy requests via dailysignal.com, Bill Peacock, 7-18-22; Tesla conservation quote via dailywire.com, Charlotte Pence Bond, 7-20-22; Texas wind power issues quotes via dailycaller.com, Jack McEvoy, 7-12-22; Wind & solar percentage quote via dailycaller.com, Thomas Catenacci, 5-10-22; Fifty-percent of the U.S. quote via townhall.com, Spencer Brown, 7-15-22; Scalise quote and oil production sources via nypost.com, Humberto Fontova, 7-15-22; China quote via washingtonexaminer.com, Hugo Gurdon, 7-13-22; Patel quote via townhall.com, Neil Patel, 7-15-22; Hinderaker quote via powerlineblog.com, John Hinderaker, 4-24-21; WSJ climate quotes via The Wall Street Journal, Editors, 7-18-22; Land needed & transmission line costs quotes via powerlineblog.com, John Hinderaker, 4-24-21).