Those who push for more action, and more money, to cut greenhouse gas emissions sound a lot like Dr. Smith in the 1960s TV series “Lost in Space”: “We’re doomed, I mean!” damned!”
Last week, President Joe Biden asserted that climate change “is literally, not figuratively, a clear and present danger.” The Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, stated that we have only eight years to save the planet or the world will commit “collective suicide”.
The world is experiencing aclimate emergency” Y “climate catastrophe.” Every heat wave, storm, flood, drought, and blizzard is no longer weather, but irrefutable evidence of our imminent demise.
Those overcome by hysteria cannot think or act rationally. Yet politicians and lawmakers, including Biden, intend to light more flames, like serial arsonists.
The reason is simple: money.
Many politicians are surely aware that the draconian policies they seek (banning fossil fuel production, forced electrification of homes and businesses, mandatory adoption of electric vehicles, and total reliance on wind and solar power) will not work, let alone save the planet. .
The last BP Statistical Review of World Energy shows that since 2000, global COtwo emissions have increased by more than 10 billion metric tons, more than the combined emissions of North America and the European Union. China and India, which together account for nearly 40% of these emissions, are building dozens of coal-fired power plants each year. In total, about 200 new coal plants are under construction in Asiawhich will emit more than 1,000 million tons of COtwo every year.
And the expansion of coal is not limited to Asia. African nations want to vastly increase energy production. South Africa is completing the 4,800-megawatt Kusile coal plant, in addition to completing the same-size Medupi plant last year, to reduce blackouts that have plagued the nation for years.
With global natural gas prices rising rapidly, other African countries are likely to turn to coal to meet their growing energy needs. No matter how draconian energy policies the United States and Europe adopt, developing nations will continue to build the energy resources they need.
So why pursue policies that will impoverish millions and have virtually no impact on the climate? Because, loaded as they are with subsidies for green energy, they offer virtually unlimited opportunities for personal enrichment for those who sell them.
Although it is one of the most expensive By generating known resources, Biden issued an executive order to promote offshore wind development in the Gulf of Mexico and along the southeast coast. But offshore wind developers are almost entirely European companies, which will collect not only production tax credits, but also Team Biden’s new 30% investment tax credit. (Billions more in subsidies for electric vehicles and charging infrastructure are also being offered on top of existing subsidies.)
Officials have even enacted laws to quell local opposition to large wind and solar power projects in rural counties, benefiting developers at the expense of their citizens. New York 2020 Accelerated Growth of Renewable Energy and Community Benefit Actfor example, it effectively guts the state autonomy provisions. Wind and solar power developers have filed litigation against small rural communities, many of which lack the resources to fight back.
And governments will spend billions of dollars to combat “environmental racism,” like that of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. plan to target “racist” roads. Biden budget proposes billions more for the Environmental Protection Agency to spend on compliance and scope for victims of “environmental crimes””, little of which will provide significant benefits, except for the well connected.
It is not surprising Bjorn Lomborg calls the end of the world fills the “climate industrial complex”.
This week, meanwhile, second-quarter gross domestic product data is likely to show that the United States is in a recession. The latest figures for consumer confidence, which have declined in the last two months, will also be released. The Federal Reserve just raised interest rates again. Expensive and physically unfeasible large-scale green energy policies will only accelerate economic decline. Perhaps Dr. Smith was right after all.
Jonathan Lesser is the president of Continental Economics and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.