Biden’s promises, policies and politics – Are you happy with that?

His war on fossil fuels fuels America’s oil sales to China and America’s complicity in child labor and slavery.

Paul Driessen

Presidential candidate Joe Biden promised to reunify America after the “dark season” under President Trump, and “stop the virus, not the economy”. That didn’t go as planned.

His promise that there would be “no more drilling, no more pipelines, no more fossil fuels” has been far more successful. Within hours of taking office, President Biden ended construction on the Keystone XL pipeline and began imposing regulations on leasing and drilling and licensing delays, pressuring banks not to funding oil companies and taking other steps to translate his promise into policy.

Unfortunately, with a little help from Putin’s brutality in Ukraine, Biden’s war on fossil fuels has led to a host of political problems.

Gasoline and diesel prices more than doubled since November 2020; they have reached $9.50 per gallon in parts of California before a slight decline. Biden’s approval plummeted, as food prices and inflation soar, and farmers, families, commuters and truckers voiced outrage.

But because allowing more drilling will be angry climate growers Obsessed with the doctrine of the climate cataclysm, Biden asks Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Iran to increase of them produce oil, so he can keep America’s resources locked down.

He also released 125,000,000 barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve’s emergency reserves – and on July 26 said he would release another 20,000,000 barrels. The administration claims this will “help reduce energy costs”, “relieve the pain Americans are feeling when pumping,” and counter “Putin’s price hikes.” Probably minimal.

Worse still, Team Biden sent about 5,000,000 barrels of this oil abroad. Worse yet, it sold 950,000 cases to China Petrochemical Corporation. It’s China as well as the Chinese Communist Party – not Taiwan. The Chinese government is buying thousands of acres of land from the United States, most of it near sensitive military facilities.

The optics are not good. And for an administration (and Democrats) focused on “racial justice” and America’s terrible legacy of slavery, public perception and outrage will only get worse, when it comes to reality. The economics of the “green energy transition” becomes clear.

Firstly, this energy is not clean, green, renewable or sustainable. The sheer number of wind turbines, solar panels, vehicles and battery backups challenges the imagination.

President Biden intends to phase out coal and natural gas for electricity generation (by 2035), then gasoline and diesel to power vehicles, natural gas for smelting and manufacturing, and natural gas for heating, cooking and water heating in homes, hospitals, schools and businesses (by 2050).

This would bring America’s annual electricity demand to nearly 7.5 billion megawatt-hours per year by 2050: nearly three times the amount of fossil fuels in America’s electricity generation today. It would require tens of thousands of wind turbines, billions of solar panels, and billions of half-ton battery modules (to back up this expensive one, unreliable, unpredictableenergy depends on weather) spread across the United States. Electricity demand will be lower, if the government forces us to reduce ours Living standards.

Oil and natural gas are also feedstocks for paints, plastics, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers and many other products. How the Biden team intends to replace surname?

President Biden’s proposal for 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind would require 2,500 giant 12-megawatt turbines 800 feet tall. Even if they operate at full capacity 24/7, they will not meet the peak electricity demand in the summer for New Yorkmuch less than the whole of the United States.

But the turbines will require millions of tons of raw materials from hundreds of new mines – for steel, aluminum, copper, nickel, rare earth elements, fiberglass, concrete and other elements, the extraction, processing and refining of which are energy and land intensive and highly polluting.

Billions of solar panels will require vast amounts of polysilicon and other materials, from hundreds of other mines. Billions of battery modules will require large amounts of cobalt, nickel, lithium, rare earths, copper and other metals. More transformers and transmission lines – still more materials, from more mines.

Second, American environmentalists and climate campaigners staunchly oppose these activities anywhere in the United States. The supply chains for most of these materials run through China, which controls most of the mining (in Mongolia, Africa, South America and elsewhere), and processing (in China and Mongolia). ) and manufacture (in China).

China and the Chinese Communist Party achieve this because they have acquired mining assets around the world; have huge coal-fired power plants to generate cheap electricity; little attention to air and water pollution, mining reclamation or workplace safety standards required in Western countries; and the use of cheap child, slave and child labour, most notably in Africa and the Uyghur territories.

About 40,000 children labor with their parents in the cobalt mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo, for a few dollars a day, under threats from caves and often exposed to toxic, muddy air. , dust and water – just to meet today cobalt demand for battery production. Those needs will skyrocket under the US Green New Deal, and more so under the international “energy transition”.

The cobalt ore is processed in China, under conditions of pollution and equally amazingly safe. Air and water pollution and a huge toxic waste dump for wastewater from rare earth processing in Inner Mongolia have caused serious health problems for factory workers and local residents.

China also uses Uighur slave labor to produce solar panels that it sells to the United States. And Mr. Biden wants to pause tariffs on Chinese solar panels, to make it easier and cheaper to import them.

Over the past decade, the United States has dramatically reduced its carbon dioxide (plant-based) emissions, largely by replacing coal-fired power generation with natural gas.

Meanwhile, in 2020 alone, China put 38,000 MW of new coal-fired power plants into operation. It relies on coal for 60% of its electricity generation and is expected to mine 300 million tons more coal in 2022 than in 2021. Beijing is also building, planning or financing more than 300 coal plants. in Turkey, Vietnam, Indonesia, Africa’s countries and elsewhere, to lift their people out of poverty. India also burns millions of tons of coal every year. They have no plans to end the use of fossil fuels for decades to come.

The United States may not use fossil fuels and it will not affect the global greenhouse gas one iota.

But the US can easily go from being a net exporter of oil and gas two years ago, to becoming a almost completely dependent About foreign sources are often unfriendly for the raw materials needed for “renewable” energy, the economy, manufacturing, living standards, communications, transportation – and defense. Energy, food and consumer prices will rise even higher, affecting other poor and minority families.

Furthermore, each increase in “green” energy makes the United States more dependent on China, which, like Russia, increasingly uses its energy, minerals, and economic might as a weapon, to keep for its customer countries suitable, dependent and dependent. Each increase makes us more complicit in slavery, ecocolonialism, environmental degradation and climate injustice.

This land of freedom must change course. As America ponders its past, searching for “a more perfect Union”, reevaluating Separation of rightsand strives to be a world leader in environmental protection and human rights, it must chart a future based on facts and Real justice for everyone.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor to the Committee for an Created Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books, reports and articles on energy, environmental, and gas issues. and human rights.