RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2022/06/08/joe_bidens_green_energy_dreams_enriching_friends_crushing_the_working_class_836339.html

President Biden has moved on from making excuses for the massive inflation caused by his failed energy policies and perilously weak foreign policy to claiming that it is the price we must all pay for a “transition” to a new world order. This new order will give us slower but, allegedly, more stable economic growth and a complete abolition of all non-”green” energy. This commentary likely appeals to the climate hysterics in his party, but falls on deaf ears for the rest of us. 

As Jude Clemente pointed out last month, Biden’s policies and their catastrophic effects have likely ruined many Americans’ taste for a policy-driven transition away from conventional energy sources. The latest Gallup poll tracking Americans’ top issues of concern puts the economy at #1 (39%). Poor leadership in the government was the top non-economic issue at 20%. According to the poll, only 2% of Americans listed climate change and the environment as their top issue of concern.

As much as EPA Administrator Jennifer Granholm, whose husband runs a consulting firm for “green” energy companies, claims that she wants to make electric cars more affordable for Americans, she must realize that such a claim is nonsense. The EPA cannot make anything cost less. It can take money from poorer people and give it to richer people in the form of subsidies for EVs. It can make normal cars much, much more costly. Climate hysterics in the government know this and simply won’t admit it. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/06/bidens-flagrant-abuse-of-emergency-powers-must-be-stopped/

The president is misusing the Defense Production Act and harming the economy by pretending green energy is essential to our national defense.

In a spate of executive actions on Monday, President Biden invoked his authority under the Defense Production Act (DPA) to declare that a variety of green-energy-related materials were “essential to national defense,” and that as a result, the government would be stepping in to increase their production.

Biden’s actions are an abuse of presidential power, and they have the potential to cause serious harm to the American economy in the long run.

In five separate presidential memoranda, Biden said he was using his authority under Section 303 of the DPA to mandate that the government stimulate the production of materials critical to the green-energy sector, including: electrolyzers, fuel cells, and platinum group metals; solar photovoltaic modules and module components; transformers and electric-power-grid components; electric heat pumps; and insulation.

Per the Congressional Research Service (CRS), Section 303 grants the president much broader authority than the section of the law Biden invoked last month in an effort to address the nationwide baby-formula shortage: It allows the government to make purchase commitments for the resources named, directly subsidize their production, and install and purchase equipment used for their production in either government or privately owned facilities. To unlock those considerable economic powers, the law says that the president has to determine that the resource is “essential to national defense,” that U.S. industry won’t produce enough of the resource in a timely manner, and that the actions taken are “the most cost-effective, expedient, and practical alternative method for meeting the need” for the resource.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-whos-climate-neurosis-world-health-organization-climate-change-mental-health-depression-11654637336?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Measles cases are spiking globally. More than 1,000 monkeypox cases have been reported in 29 countries, and children around the world are developing hepatitis for unknown reasons. And what is the World Health Organization focused on? Climate change, naturally.

The WHO on Friday published a report on the potential mental-health impact of climate change, and better see your psychiatrist before it’s too late. “There are gaps in understanding the impact of climate change on mental health and psychosocial well-being, but current knowledge is sufficient to act!” the 16-page report says. When do knowledge gaps ever stop climate lobbyists from demanding that governments grab more power?

Colorful graphics explain that “witnessing changes and damage to landscape and ecosystems” and “awareness of climate change and extreme weather events and their impacts” could lead to strained social relationships, anxiety, depression, intimate partner violence, helplessness, suicidal behavior and alcohol and substance abuse, among other things.

Yes, the WHO has found a way to link climate change to every social problem under the sun. If rising sea levels, warmer temperatures, wildfires and hurricanes don’t destroy civilization, anxiety about apocalyptic predictions will.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-6-5-more-on-energy-fantasy-versus-reality-in-woke-land

It’s official: the world is committed to rapidly reducing CO2 emissions. Just look at the the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, or President Biden’s April 22, 2021 press release, or California’s SB 100 climate act, or New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, or Germany’s Energiewende, or the UK’s Net Zero pledge, or any of many other such pledges.

And essentially all of woke corporate America is on board with the program. Consider the tidal wave of so-called “ESG” investing, focused on re-organizing corporate activities to reduce carbon emissions. Super-woke banking giant JP Morgan is leading the charge. From a recent JP Morgan press release:

JPMorgan Chase aims to finance and facilitate more than $2.5 trillion over 10 years – beginning this year through the end of 2030 – to advance long-term solutions that address climate change and contribute to sustainable development. . . . This long-term target complements the firm’s Paris-aligned financing strategy and will help accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy by encouraging actions that set a path for achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

And yet, somehow it just doesn’t seem to be happening. Australia’s ABC notices the disconnect in a June 3 piece with the headline “Climate scientists warn of increased climate change events as carbon emissions fail to drop.” Key point:

Emissions across the globe continue to rise despite nations committing to cut them.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/06/03/the-climate-cult-and-their-green-lethargy-future/

When I was in Congress, I once went on a fact-finding trip to Pakistan. At the time, the country was being wracked by a terrorist bombing campaign intended, in large part, to destabilize the government of President Pervez Musharraf. What I found, however, was that President Musharraf was facing another threat to his rule. 

During a brief stay in Islamabad, my hotel room suddenly went dark one evening. It wasn’t terrorism. It was a rolling power blackout. Earlier, I had heard firsthand accounts of the dissatisfaction this caused Pakistanis, including how the rolling blackouts facilitated extremism’s spread and tactics. The blame for the blackout was placed squarely on Musharraf. As I looked out my window across an eerily darkened capital city, given all the challenges facing them, I couldn’t help but pity the Pakistani people for having to endure yet another tribulation: having to live with such a substandard power grid.

Now, the Pakistani people can pity me.  

Per Fox News, the apocalyptic climate cult is bringing their rolling blackouts to Michigan to benight the state whose ingenious, hardworking people and the unparalleled industrial prowess they built and operated had once put the world on wheels and kept the world safe. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/green-energy-chickens-coming-home-roost-bruce-thornton/

This year will graphically demonstrate the malign consequences of the misguided efforts to replace cheap, reliable fossil fuel energy with unreliable, inefficient “renewable” energy like wind and solar. Never in history has a civilization willfully embarked on destroying its material foundations, based solely on a hypothesis rather than scientifically established fact.

The first red flag alerting us to this feckless policy appeared during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Much of Europe––the most aggressive nations in replacing fossil fuels with wind turbines and solar panels––has grown dependent on Russian exports to make up for the energy lost from shutting down nuclear and coal-fired power plants. Since directly helping Ukraine by fighting is politically impossible, sanctions were imposed on Russia’s oil and gas industries.

But sanctions severe enough to concentrate Putin’s mind carried a political cost as well as an economic one. So Europe is still buying Russian energy, postponing tougher sanctions until the end of the year. The result has been the embarrassing and dishonorable spectacle of European countries helping to finance Russia’s brutal war crimes. Indeed some have accepted Putin’s condition that purchases be made in rubles, thus mitigating the damage to Russia’s economy.

Here at home, warnings of electricity blackouts across the country this summer have not slowed down many states’ increased efforts to shutter electrical plants powered by coal, natural gas, and nuclear fission. In New York, Governor Kathy Holchul has announced the state’s commitment to enforcing a requirement that new power plants must achieve “zero on-site greenhouse gas emissions for new construction no later than 2027.” This policy of wishful thinking follows New York’s Climate Act of 2019, which requires that all power generation comes from “green” sources by 2040, including 70% from renewable energy by 2030.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/05/green-rope-a-dope-china-watches-as-america-greens/

If this is what we are being told we must do for the ‘Great Reset,’ it’s time to unset it.

The color green has long been associated with envy, but increasingly it’s becoming a pigment of mass delusion. Amid near-hysterical reporting about the climate, the U.S., and much of the West, is embracing willy-nilly policies likely to weaken our economy and boost China’s ascendancy at the expense of democracy and market economies.

In essence, China is adopting a version of the great Muhammad Ali’s “rope-a-dope” boxing strategy, which had the opponent wear himself out by launching harmless punches as Ali lounged on the ropes. Then, as the rival began to weaken, Ali would seize the moment and pummel him.

Much the same is happening with the emerging climate agenda. Under Paris and other accords, China, as well as India and other developing countries, essentially have been given a pass not to achieve “carbon neutrality” until 2060. The argument is largely (at least formally) that the West is responsible for the heavily hyped climate “apocalypse” because of its longer history of industrial growth, although neither China nor India seems eager to de-industrialize, cut itself off from medical advances, or otherwise halt its progress toward Western levels of prosperity.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-energy-transition-a-leap-into-the-dark/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=first

Not for the first time, it strikes me that the transition away from fossil fuels may be moving rather more quickly than the technology upon which it is supposed to rely.

The Wall Street Journal:

Summer is around the corner, and we suggest you prepare by buying an emergency generator, if you can find one in stock. Last week the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) warned that two-thirds of the U.S. could experience blackouts this summer. Welcome to the “green energy transition.”

We’ve been warning for years that climate policies would make the grid more vulnerable to vacillations in supply and demand. And here we are. Some of the mainstream press are belatedly catching on that blackouts are coming, but they still don’t grasp the real problem: The forced transition to green energy is distorting energy markets and destabilizing the grid.

Progressives blame the grid problems on climate change. There’s no doubt that drought in the western U.S. is a contributing factor. NERC’s report notes that hydropower generators in the western U.S. are running at lower levels, and output from thermal (i.e., nuclear and fossil fuel) generators that use the Missouri River for cooling may be affected this summer.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/29/why-does-boston-buy-natural-gas-from-russia/

Europe is vulnerable and needs our natural gas; prices are absurdly high and going higher. Yet, everyone in the oil and gas industry is afraid to invest any money, even if they have financing available. Who wants to start a 10- to 20-year natural gas project, whether it’s a gas field, pipeline, or LNG (liquified natural gas) terminal, when the current administration is saying it will shut you down in 10 years?

“You’ve got six years, eight years, no more than 10 years or so,” says climate envoy John Kerry. “No one should make it easy for the [natural] gas interests to be building out 30- or 40-year infrastructure.”

In the meantime, India has relaxed its environmental regulations and plans to double its use of coal. China has cut coal import tariffs to zero to ensure energy security and lower costs.

The United States has an abundance of coal and natural gas. Yet, natural gas is actually imported, at great cost, to Boston’s LNG facility from Russia, Canada, and the Caribbean due to the lack of pipeline capacity. In late January natural gas from the Algonquin City Gate Hub (near Boston) sold for over $20 per million BTUs, and more than $23 on the futures market. Natural gas from nearby Pennsylvania cost just $4 in January.

Plenty of cheap natural gas is available in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, a few hundred miles away; and pipelines to supply New England are mostly built, but have been shut down by environmental lawsuits and regulatory hurdles. Because of the regional dearth of natural gas pipelines, and its high price, many in New England are burning oil for heat and electric power plants, and burned more coal in 2021 than in 2020.

One of the many ironies is that carbon dioxide emissions—the bogeyman of radical environmentalists—have decreased where there is sufficient natural gas to replace coal. But any additional gas for New England, as noted, must come from foreign sources.