By sacrificing our economy, the environment, our standard of living, our liberties, and our national security
Paul Driessen
Presidential candidate Joe Biden has repeatedly promised to end the use of fossil fuels in the US. “There will be no more drilling, even offshore,” he said. “Is not ability for the oil industry to drill. There are no more pipes.”
Not long after arriving at the White House, President Biden finished construction of the Keystone XL pipeline and began working with congressional Democrats, regulators, and ecological activists to impose drilling and rental insurance, delayed permits, pressured financial institutions to refuse funding to fossil fuel companies, and implemented “the social cost of carbonRules, “environmental justice” programs, “profits” taxes, and other policies aim to close or bankrupt projects and companies that use fossil fuels.
His Securities and Exchange Commission says that companies must “risk disclosure“From the alleged“human-caused climate change”- from their own production, refining and production; from suppliers and customers use their products; and from government anti-carbon policies.
Supplies can run dry and prices skyrocket. Not just for gasoline and other fossil fuels that still provide 80% of all of the United States’ energy, but also for fertilizers, agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, paints, plastics, cosmetics, and countless other products. other petroleum products – and for goods and services that require offices, factories, stores and transportation that need affordable, reliable energy. In other words, almost everything.
Keystone alone could bring the United States 700,000 barrels of friendly Canadian oil. This is equal to the amount of gasoline Russia sent to the US before Mr. Biden finally banned imports, after the murder of Vladimir Putin in Ukraine reached even The far-left Democratic Party can not stomach.
President Biden tried to blame Putin for food, fuel and other prices that have skyrocketed before Ukraine invasion. Now he is begging American oil companies to increase production – but only temporarily (to send liquefied petroleum gas to Europe and to protect Democratic Party holders in November), without softening his anti-oil ordinances.
He begged Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela get a raise of them oil production. He used Russia to broker a new nuclear deal with Supreme Leader Ali Khameni, to Iran can sell more oil on the global market. He seems to believe those, that sources do not emit “danger” carbon dioxide.
Above all, the Biden Team has doubled the number of calls to US convert from gasoline cars to electric vehicles, and from coal and natural gas power generation to wind, solar and backup battery power. They claim that this massive and expensive US restructuring could replace “dirty, planet-threatening” fossil fuels with wind power, solar power and “clean, renewable, durable” batteries. steady”. It’s a duplicate scam.
Wind turbines and solar panels on this scale will pollute millions of acres of cropland, landscapes and habitats. They will kill millions of birds, bats and other wild animals. They require large amounts of raw materials (and therefore mining) to create expensive, inefficient, weather-dependent energy devices. They and the 1000 pound battery modules are at least clean, renewable, sustainable energy sources imaginable.
“Clean” technology only replaces CO2 and methane emissions in the US With a large amount real toxic pollution in other countriesout of sight and mind, where climate activists can ignore them.
A Green New Deal would make the US almost completely dependent on China, Russia, and other authoritarian and unstable nations for the metals and minerals needed for GND technology. And for the equipment itself, because a fossil fuel-free America wouldn’t have the reliable energy needed to make wind turbines, solar panels, battery modules, transformers, and transformers. thousands of miles of new transmission lines. The entire energy and economic future of the US GND may depend on the good graces of their autocracy.
China, Russia and their representatives can use green technology as a strategic weapon, banning the export of materials or technology to advance their political goals. They can even embed a trip switch or a hacker backdoor into the equipment they sell us, allowing them to shut down some or all of our electricity grid and economy. The outage could kill millions.
The amount of metals, minerals and other raw materials required for this “green energy transition” is virtually incomprehensible. We will have to mine Planet Earth on an unprecedented scale.
The first phase of President Biden’s offshore wind energy program alone will require 110,000 tons of non-renewable copper – plus millions of tons of cobalt, lithium, nickel, aluminum, iron, manganese, rare earth elements, and platinum. metal, plastic, concrete, etc. suddenly very visible and valuable metal: nickel.
His plan calls for 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030. That’s 2,140 giant 850-foot tall 14 MW turbines. It sounds like a lot of electricity, but it won’t even respond The pinnacle of New York State electricity demand in summer. And they will create zero electricity for half a year.
Based on global average copper ore body, only 110,000 tons of copper would require removing 40,000,000 tons of overload and handling 25,000,000 tons of ore. That’s enough crushed rock to cover a 24-foot-wide highway from Washington, DC to Tampa, Florida ten feet deep! Only for copper.
(Or you could bury the White House, Capitol Hill, all the most climate-focused federal agencies, and all the Greenpeace offices, the Sierra Club, and the DC offices of other eco-pressure groups. under 100 feet of dirt and dust.)
Climate-obsessed legislators, regulators, activists and judges hate and compete for mining anywhere in the US, even to support the Green New Deal they claim is essential to saving America, our planet, and humanity from the “climate cataclysm.” They have limited millions of acres to exploration and exploitation, affecting many world-class prospects.
In the last few years alone, they have prevented three much-needed mines from opening: the Alaska mine Cobblestone quarry (billions of pounds of copper, gold, silver, molybdenum, Robinson and other metals); Minnesota’s My NorthMet (billions of pounds of copper, cobalt, platinum and nickel); and big lithium deposit in Nevada.
That means GND mining and processing will take place in Asia, Africa and Latin America, mostly by or under the auspices of Chinese companies – under environmental, umbrella contamination, workplace safety, and child and slave labor rules, standards and practices were abolished in the Americas 50-100 years ago.
Will the White House, congressional Democrats, EPA, Labor Department, and SEC require companies to disclose all those, that Fossil fuel use, risks, environmental impacts and human rights violations?
They loudly advertise electric vehicles and the total transformation of the US energy system and economy. But they say nothing about obtaining the raw materials and equipment needed to make these dreams come true. They are silent about the destruction of land, air and water pollution, loss of wildlife, human illness and deathand the ecological imperialism that their policies impose, especially on people of color.
They are silent about the ways their “climate protection” rackets will allow China, Russia and other thuggish regimes to pursue their territorial ambitions – and give them unprecedented control over the world. with the energy, jobs, economies of the Western World, Standard of livingforeign policy and national security.
They don’t try to calculate how many wind turbines, solar panels, vehicle modules and backup batteries, transformers and transmission lines are needed in a completely fuel-free electricity country. fossil. How many acres of wildlife habitat will be disrupted or destroyed. How many new mines will have to be opened. How many birds, bats and other animals will be killed. How many trillion tons of ore and overburden waste will have to be blasted and disposed of. Or how many giant landfills will we need for all those old turbines, propellers, panels and batteries. They certainly don’t discuss how much our living standards, individual choices, and basic freedoms will be diminished in their “clean energy” America.
They don’t ask because they don’t want to know – and doesn’t even want us to think about these problems.
Putin’s Ukraine war opened up visions of NATO, disarmament, and Europe’s complete dependence on Russian natural gas. We need equal realism on America’s climate and energy policies – and how far will America’s ruling elite take us down the path of ruinto achieve their Green Utopia.
Paul Driessen is a senior policy adviser to the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of articles and books on energy, climate change, human rights, and environmental issues.
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