GUESTS AND TOPICS

JEFF CROUERE

Jeff Crouere is the host of, “Ringside Politics,” which airs weekdays on WGSO 990-AM in New Orleans. He is a political columnist, the author of America’s Last Chance and provides regular commentaries on the Jeff Crouere YouTube channel and on www.JeffCrouere.net.

TOPIC: GOP Grassroots demand bold action.

ADAM A MILLSAP

Adam A. Millsap is a Senior Fellow for economic opportunity issues at Stand Together. Adam writes about state and local policy, urban development, population trends, and labor markets. His writings have appeared in national outlets such as USA Today, US News and World Report, Real Clear Policy, and The Hill, as well as regional outlets such as the Detroit Free Press, Las Vegas Sun, Cincinnati Enquirer, and Orange County Register, among others. Adam is the author of Dayton: The Rise, Decline, and Transition of an Industrial City.

TOPIC: Europe Needs Natural Gas And America Could Help

©Conservative Commandoes Radio. All rights reserved.

Watch: Morano on TV explains how climate agenda is pushing ‘the end of private car ownership’ & end of meat-eating:

Tipping Point with Kara McKinney on One America News – OAN – Broadcast April 26, 2022

Morano: “The whole climate agenda stripped bare is literally a self-immolation of your national security and your economic security.”

Morano on Buttigieg floating ‘monthly transportation payment’ that ‘covers everything’ to replace monthly car payments: “What Buttigieg is actually up to with this monthly transportation payment that covers everything instead of a car payment — to replace your car payment — it is part of the plan…you’re going to be funding the end of not just the internal combustion engine but the end of private car ownership, which literally, group after group and the climate agenda is saying has to come to an end. Private car ownership has been called 20th-century outdated thinking.

Morano on: Northern Ireland faces loss of 1 million sheep and cattle to meet climate targets: “What Ireland is doing is literally by getting rid of their livestock is what the World Economic Forum, the Davos crowd, what Bill Gates are seeking…They want us to stop eating meat. They want us to eat insects, weeds, and fake meat burgers. This is actually the goal of Bill Gates, who is now going to have huge sway as America’s largest farm owner to do this.

Morano: They want to cripple national economies. What is Europe now except energy crippled in the face of Vladimir Putin’s aggression? They’re almost helpless because they shut down their own energy and now we have them shutting down their own food supply. This is bonkers Kara. A to Z bonkers! I don’t know how else to use another word to describe what’s happening globally now because of the climate agenda.”

Selected Highlights:

Morano on Buttigieg floating ‘monthly transportation payment’ that ‘covers everything’ to replace monthly car payments: “What Buttigieg is actually up to with this monthly transportation payment that covers everything instead of a car payment — to replace your car payment — it is part of the plan. And I can show you the Irish Times. I can show you multiple reports, the UK government reports, academic reports, the UK transport Secretary, all calling essentially for the end of private car ownership… you’re going to be funding the end of not just the internal combustion engine but the end of private car ownership, which literally, group after group and the climate agenda is saying has to come to an end. Private car ownership has been called 20th-century outdated thinking.

Morano on: Northern Ireland faces loss of 1 million sheep and cattle to meet climate targets: “What Ireland is doing is literally by getting rid of their livestock is what the World Economic Forum, the Davos crowd, what Bill Gates are seeking. Bill Gates, according to NBC News, is now America’s biggest farm owner, China buying up U.S. farmland is probably a close second. They’re now trying to get a land monopoly by buying American farmland. What is the goal of the climate agenda? They want us to stop eating meat. They want us to eat insects, weeds, and fake meat burgers. This is actually the goal of Bill Gates, who is now going to have huge sway as America’s largest farm owner to do this.

So what’s happening is you’re seeing in Ireland, the actual blueprint, they want us to shut down domestic energy, agriculture and then we can rely on essentially 30 ingredients of processed fake food vegetable oil-based ‘meat’, which by the way, the World Economic Forum has said you can get a 3d printer and print several pounds of ‘fake meat a minute with these new printers. So this is very funny, but it’s a very serious agenda.

They want to cripple national economies. What is Europe now except energy crippled in the face of Vladimir Putin’s aggression? They’re almost helpless because they shut down their own energy and now we have them shutting down their own food supply. This is bonkers Kara. A to Z bonkers! I don’t know how else to use another word to describe what’s happening globally now because of the climate agenda.”

Rough Transcript:

Kara McKinney, host of Tipping Point on OAN asks about man who set himself on fire in front of the Supreme Court: see: Climate Activist Sets Himself On Fire

Marc Morano:  Well, this is actually it’s a much bigger part of the agenda. This is not just Pete Buttigieg virtue signaling. The whole climate agenda stripped bare is literally a self-immolation of your national security and your economic security. And that’s what we’re seeing firsthand.

The World Bank just came out today and said we are enduring the greatest shock to energy since the 1970s. And this is very much in large part due to Pete Buttigieg and this climate agenda. Now what he’s doing here is very telling. At Climate Depot, I have the whole background of what Buttigieg is actually up to with this monthly transportation payment that covers everything instead of a car payment — to replace your car payment — it is part of the plan.

And I can show you the Irish Times. I can show you multiple reports, the UK government reports, academic reports, the UK transport Secretary, all calling essentially for the end of private car ownership.

See below: 

Irish Times: Future of people driving around country in private cars is ‘fantasy built on cheap oil’

Climate lockdown: ‘It’s Time To Ban The Sale Of Pickup Trucks’ – ‘Shift away from relying on private vehicles entirely’

Business Insider mag: ‘Electric vehicles won’t save us — we need to get rid of cars completely’

May 2021: Climate lockdowns!? New International Energy Agency’s ‘Net-Zero’ report urges A shift away from private car use’

Climate Lockdowns: British Medical Journal Study Calls For ‘Substantially fewer journeys by car

Gates, Soros funded Professor: Prepare for the Coming ‘Climate Lockdowns’ – ‘Govts would limit private-vehicle use’–

Flashback: Dem presidential candidate Andrew Yang: Climate Change May Require Elimination of Car Ownership – Suggests ‘constant roving fleet of electric cars’– “We might not own our own cars.”

So what Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg is brainstorming here, with his Star Trek references and everything else, he’s coming up with a plan that people are going to pay into this system and if you’re a good steward, you ride your bike a lot, you take the public transit, wear your mask and do all the things right, you’re going to get benefits — you’re going to get lower payments, you might even get dividends. (See: Buttigieg floats ‘monthly transportation payment’ that ‘covers everything’ to replace monthly car payments)

The whole gist of this is you’re going to be funding solar, wind, electric cars, you’re gonna be funding the end of not just the internal combustion engine but the end of private car ownership, which literally, group after group and the climate agenda is saying has to come to an end. Private car ownership has been called 20th-century outdated thinking.

Owning a car is outdated ’20th-century thinking’ & we must move to ‘shared mobility’ to cut carbon emissions, UK transport minister says

Kara McKinney: And also looking at the Supreme Court situation where that man, sadly tragically set himself on fire. Those injuries ended up being fatal and it breaks my heart and I just can’t wrap my head around the idea that people still work themselves up into that sort of a frenzy, even when we’ve seen It’s been decades now this point of doomsday predictions that have never come true. And also at the same time, the world’s biggest climate hysterics. They’re the ones who are all living on the oceans. They all own beachfront properties. They all have multimillion-dollar mansions on the very same property that they say will be underwater in a couple of years. And so I can’t take any of those people seriously and yet sadly, we still see people getting really worked up about it. Why do you think we still see such almost a religious seal about this?

Marc Morano: Well, a couple of things. First of all, you’re absolutely right. It’s a very bad image for people like President Obama and John Kerry and Al Gore to have seaside homes, multiple homes, doing everything they preach against and they’re obviously not worried about sea-level rise.

But this is very sad. The man who committed suicide in front of the Supreme Court was a climate activist and on his Facebook page, he had referred people to this online climate course he had taken with none other than Climategate professor and former UN scientist, Michael Mann. This is one of the media’s favorite go-to scientists. This was who influenced the man who killed himself.

See: Report: Climate Activist Sets Himself On Fire After Taking Michael Mann Climate Course &

Climate activist who set himself on fire at Supreme Court ‘edited a link to an online course’ taught by Climategate prof. Michael Mann

It doesn’t end there because what they’ve done is — in The Hill newspaper — a professor from the University of Nebraska in Omaha is saying get ready to see more climate terrorism responding to the man who killed himself. ‘The increasing infuriation of climate activists is warranted.’

Professor in The Hill: ‘Get ready to see more climate terrorism’ – ‘The increasing infuriation of climate activists is warranted’

So what they’ve done is they’ve literally got people convinced that the government isn’t doing enough and that we’re all going to die in some climate, emergency, or catastrophe, and that they need to do everything possible. As you mentioned, the Buddhist monks in Vietnam who self-immolated in protest. Climate activists want to draw attention, and now they’re willing to do this too.

Remember the whole climate movement — they couldn’t convince adults —  Gallup polling showed no real change in concern among adults since the late 1980s. But they went after kids because kids are a lot more gullible, and easy to scare and that’s why kids now are having psychological problems. The mainstream media loves to highlight all the teenagers and preteens with psychological problems because of their fear of climate change.

Kara McKinney: And now making matters worse, speaking of eco-terrorism, I mean, look who we have now heading up the Bureau of Land Management, a woman who herself was involved with eco-terrorism back in the 1990s. But also Northern Ireland, it seems they have to get rid of animals hundreds of 1000s perhaps make them disappear as if this was or China disappearing scientists and COVID.

It kind of reminds me of the Green New Deal with AOC. The first original copy we got of it was the same thing they need to get rid of cows because of their flatulence. This doesn’t sound very green to me. See: Northern Ireland faces loss of 1 million sheep and cattle to meet climate targets – ‘Farming sector to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050’)

Marc Morano:  This is where you mentioned self-immolating their economy. The original Green New Deal actually used the words ‘farting cows’ in the original green New Deal release that they sent out and then they quickly like pulled it and tried to change it.

But here’s the thing, what Ireland is doing is literally by getting rid of their livestock is what the World Economic Forum, the Davos crowd, what Bill Gates are seeking. Bill Gates, according to NBC News, is now America’s biggest farm owner, China buying up U.S. farmland is probably a close second. They’re now trying to get a land monopoly by buying American farmland. What is the goal of the climate agenda? They want us to stop eating meat. They want us to eat insects, weeds, and fake meat burgers. This is actually the goal of Bill Gates, who is now going to have huge sway as America’s largest farm owner to do this.

So what’s happening is you’re seeing in Ireland, the actual blueprint, they want us to shut down domestic energy, agriculture and then we can rely on essentially 30 ingredients of processed fake food vegetable oil-based ‘meat’, which by the way, the World Economic Forum has said you can get a 3d printer and print several pounds of ‘fake meat a minute with these new printers. So this is very funny, but it’s a very serious Marcagenda.

They want to cripple national economies. What is Europe now except energy crippled in the face of Vladimir Putin’s aggression? They’re almost helpless because they shut down their own energy and now we have them shutting down their own food supply. This is bonkers Kara. A to Z bonkers! I don’t know how else to use another word to describe what’s happening globally now because of the climate agenda.

Kara McKinney: I’m right there with you. Buttigieg, we’re talking about flying cars in the future. And I’m thinking No, it’s just gonna be living in the pod eating the bugs as you were saying it’s gonna mess the future.

Marc Morano: We don’t have a Jetson’s future. We have a Flintstone future within candles in the foot-powered cars. That’s where we’re headed.

Kara McKinney: Exactly. That’s exactly where we hare headed with all this green craziness. Marc, thanks so much for joining us tonight.

©Marc Morano, Climate Depot. All rights reserved.

In a Gatestone Institute column titled “A Mostly Wind- and Solar-Powered U.S. Economy Is a Dangerous Fantasy” Francis Menton wrote:

When President Biden and other advocates of wind and solar generation speak, they appear to believe that the challenge posed is just a matter of currently having too much fossil fuel generation and not enough wind and solar; and therefore, accomplishing the transition to “net zero” will be a simple matter of building sufficient wind and solar facilities and having those facilities replace the current ones that use the fossil fuels.

They are completely wrong about that.

The proposed transition to “net zero” via wind and solar power is not only not easy, but is a total fantasy. It likely cannot occur at all without dramatically undermining our economy, lifestyle and security, and it certainly cannot occur at anything remotely approaching reasonable cost. At some point, the ongoing forced transition… will crash and burn.

[I]t doesn’t matter whether you build a million wind turbines and solar panels, or a billion, or a trillion. On a calm night, they will still produce nothing, and will require full back-up from some other source.

If you propose a predominantly wind/solar electricity system, where fossil fuel back-up is banned, you must, repeat must, address the question of energy storage. Without fossil fuel back-up, and with nuclear and hydro constrained, storage is the only remaining option. How much will be needed? How much will it cost? How long will the energy need to remain in storage before it is used?

There should be highly-detailed engineering studies of how the transition can be accomplished…. But the opposite is the case. At the current time, the government is paying little to no significant attention to the energy storage problem. There is no detailed engineering plan of how to accomplish the transition. There are no detailed government-supported studies of how much storage will be needed, or of what technology can accomplish the job, or of cost.

It gets worse:…. Ken Gregory calculated the cost of such a system as well over $100 trillion, before even getting to the question of whether battery technology exists that can store such amounts of energy for months on end and then discharge the energy over additional months. And even at that enormous cost, that calculation only applied to current levels of electricity consumption…. For purposes of comparison, the entire U.S. GDP is currently around $22 trillion per year.

In other words: we have a hundred-trillion-or-so dollar effort that under presidential directive must be fully up and running by 2035, with everybody’s light and heat and everything else dependent on success, and not only don’t we have any feasibility study or demonstration project, but we haven’t started the basic research yet, and the building where the basic research is to be conducted won’t be ready until 2025.

Meanwhile the country heads down a government-directed and coerced path of massively building wind turbines and solar panels, while forcing the closure of fully-functioning power plants burning coal, oil and natural gas. It is only a question of time before somewhere the system ceases to work…. [I]t is easy to see how the consequences could be dire. Will millions be left without heat in the dead of winter, in which case many will likely die? Will a fully-electrified transportation system get knocked out, stranding millions without ability to get to work? Will our military capabilities get disabled and enable some sort of attack?

No sane, let alone competent, government would ever be headed down this path.

Net-Zero is a Dangerous Myth

The Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) echoed Mr. Menton in an article titled “Net-Zero and ESG are Worsening the Energy Crisis – and Weakening the West” by Rupert Darwall who wrote:

The day after President Biden announced that the United States would ban imports of Russian oil and gas, a group of eleven powerful European investment funds that includes Amundi, Europe’s largest asset manager, outlined plans to force Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second largest bank, to cut its lending to oil and gas companies. The juxtaposition of these two events dramatizes the fundamental disunity of the West. At the same time as the Biden administration is sanctioning Russian oil and gas producers, Western investors are sanctioning Western ones. Under the banner of ESG (environmental, social and governance) investing, the West’s capital is being deployed to create an artificial shortage of oil and gas produced by its companies and reward non-Western oil and gas producers such as Russia and Iran with higher prices. In doing so, the West is undermining its own security interests.

Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, energy markets were already extremely tight. In the past, high oil and gas prices stimulated a supply-side response leading to increased output and to prices falling back. This relationship has broken down. According to analysts at JP Morgan, capital spending by S&P Global 1200 energy companies peaked in 2015 at just over $400 billion and shrank to around $120 billion last year – less than half its previous trough of $250 billion in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, even though global demand is now around 15% higher than it was then.

[ … ]

Over the past decade and throughout the pandemic, investors could earn higher returns elsewhere, such as in tech – but with soaring prices, that assumption doesn’t hold any longer. In remarks to oil executives at the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston last week, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm pointed the finger at Wall Street. “Your investors are demanding climate action,” she told an audience filled with executives of energy firms. To ESG investors, climate action means deliberately starving oil and gas producers of capital for non-financial reasons, leading to under-investment and rising prices.

[ … ]

The IEA’s net zero scenario for 2050 relies heavily on “ever-cheaper” wind and solar. Nuclear barely gets a look in, and the IEA magically solves the intermittency problem of wind and solar by not mentioning the word “intermittency” once in the report’s 224 pages. By ignoring the inherent limitations of weather-dependent electricity generation, the IEA gave its imprimatur to a green fantasy of near 100% renewable electricity generation, with fossil fuels playing an insignificant role in keeping the electrical grid stable and the lights on. This fiction was necessary to justify the report’s most quoted passage. “Beyond projects already committed as of 2021, there are no new oil and gas fields approved for development,” it said of its net zero pathway, meaning that “the focus for oil and gas producers switches entirely to output – emissions reductions – from the operation of existing assets.”

The Bottom Line

This is a real “Let Them Eat Cake” moment for Transportation Department top dog Pete Buttigieg, as most Americans can’t afford electric cars and the infrastructure isn’t there for them in all parts of the country, but Buttigieg here reveals the Biden agenda.

Buttigieg says you don’t have to worry about gas prices if you buy an electric vehicle…someone should remind him how out of touch he sounds pic.twitter.com/tiJVkl7wB3

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) March 7, 2022

He doesn’t care about skyrocketing gas prices because he wants to drive internal combustion engines out of existence anyway.

It’s part of the Green New Deal plan. The suffering he will cause by doing so is of little moment to Biden and Buttigieg; they won’t experience it. Neither will EPA top dog Michael Regan, who makes the plan clear.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan: “We’re pressing the accelerator to reach a zero-emissions future sooner than most people thought.” pic.twitter.com/YFiSn10JgV

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) March 8, 2022

In a column titled “Wind and Solar Power are the Welfare Dependents of the Energy World” CFACT reported:

[T]he wind and solar power industries each receive such enormous taxpayer subsidies that all other energy industries combined do not receive as much taxpayer pork as either wind or solar power alone. According to the U.S. Energy Information administration, the net subsidies for coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power combined amount to only 1/9th of the amount of federal renewable energy subsidies (see Table 3: https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/pdf/subsidy.pdf).

Zero-emissions is a dangerous myth and is unattainable as is going all solar and wind for our energy needs.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

“SCIENCE: Knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method.” – Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

“CONSENSUS: General agreement; the judgment arrived at by most of those concerned.” – Meriam-Webster Dictionary.

Twitter has take off the gloves for Earth Day by banning ads that are scientifically true and instead will only promote “consensus” as approved by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to inform their decisions.

On April 24th, 2022 American Wire’s Melissa Fine reported:

In a move to coincide with Earth Day, Twitter has announced it will no longer accept advertisements on its platform that “contradict the scientific consensus on climate change.”

In what the company calls a “climate-forward approach to ads,” Twitter stated in a blog posted Friday, “People around the world use Twitter to connect with others passionate about protecting our planet.”

“Last year, we introduced a dedicated Topic to help people find personalized conversations about climate change. … To better serve these conversations, misleading advertisements on Twitter that contradict the scientific consensus on climate change are prohibited, in line with our inappropriate content policy,” the blog reads.

Read the full article.

Climate Change Consensus Myths

Mark J. Perry, a scholar and professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan, listed in an article titled “18 Spectacularly Wrong Predictions Made Around the Time of the First Earth Day In 1970” the following “climate change consensus” myths:

Here are 18 examples of the spectacularly wrong predictions made around 1970 when the “green holy day” (aka Earth Day) started:

1. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
2. “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal environment.
3. The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”
4. “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 issue of Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
5. “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” wrote Paul Ehrlich in a 1969 essay titled “Eco-Catastrophe! “By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”
6. Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.”
7. “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” declared Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness.
8. Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
9. In January 1970, Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
10. Ecologist Kenneth Watt told Time that, “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”
11. Barry Commoner predicted that decaying organic pollutants would use up all of the oxygen in America’s rivers, causing freshwater fish to suffocate.
12. Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in 1970 that “air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles.
13. Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.” Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946…now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out. (Note: According to the most recent CDC report, life expectancy in the US is 78.8 years).
14. Ecologist Kenneth Watt declared, “By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’”
15. Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated the humanity would totally run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone before 1990.
16. Sen. Gaylord Nelson wrote in Look that, “Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”
17. In 1975, Paul Ehrlich predicted that “since more than nine-tenths of the original tropical rainforests will be removed in most areas within the next 30 years or so, it is expected that half of the organisms in these areas will vanish with it.”
18. Kenneth Watt warned about a pending Ice Age in a speech. “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”

The above 18 statements represented the best examples of the “consensus” on climate change in the 1970s.

So, has the world ended as Harvard biologist George Wald predicted? Of course not.

The Bottom Line

The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) offered 8 common sense proposals to alleviate climate change:

1. End “Emit More Elsewhere” Policies: The ecologists’ slogan “Think Globally, Act Locally” is entirely appropriate to the issue of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2). Emissions anywhere impact the climate everywhere. Policies that, instead of reducing emissions, simply move them to other countries accomplish nothing. Domestic regulations, taxes, and tariffs aimed at reducing global warming may have the unintended effect of increasing the cost of domestic production to the point that companies offshore their operations. Similarly, increasing energy costs here will shift energy-intensive industry from the United States to places like Mexico, China, and India. At best, such policies merely move emissions elsewhere, at worst they increase them. Shifting the production of goods and resources away from countries with efficient economies to less efficient nations does more harm than good. Making a widget with 10 BTUs of energy in the United States is better for the planet than making the same widget in China with 40 BTUs. Producing a barrel of oil here is better for the planet than producing it in Russia, Venezuela, or Iran – countries that have proved unwilling or unable to protect the environment.

2. Admit Fossil Fuels Are Needed—for Now: The federal government’s Energy Information Agency (EIA) projects that the nation’s energy needs will continue to grow for at least the next thirty years, and that “[p]etroleum and natural gas [will] remain the most-consumed sources of energy in the United States through 2050.” One reason is that gas turbines are the only practical backups for the wind turbines and solar panels that the government has determined will replace traditional power plants. Because the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow, backup is necessary. Currently, battery storage can power a city for no more than a few hours. That leaves pumped storage plants and natural gas fired turbines as the only reserve power sources that can come online quickly enough to stabilize the grid when wind and solar fail. However, pumped storage plants, which pump water up into reservoirs during times of low energy demand and then release the water through turbines during times of peak demand, are limited by geography and by environmentalists opposed to constructing new reservoirs. Mandating wind and solar, then, means mandating natural gas. Without reliable backup, homeowners and companies will relocate or install their own generators. Burning gasoline, diesel, and natural gas at hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses across the nation will do nothing to reduce CO2 emissions. Given that natural gas plants are essential—having been made so by government dictates—the infrastructure needed to supply them is also essential. That includes production, refining, and transportation. The EIA’s report also predicts that “the transportation sector will consume the majority of [petroleum and other liquid] fuels, particularly motor gasoline and diesel” through 2050. Electric vehicles (EVs) currently make up less than 5% of the global auto market and about 4% of the American market. While they may someday replace gasoline and diesel-powered cars in significant numbers, that day is not yet here.

3. End “Produce Elsewhere” Policies: The Biden Administration is intent on shutting down natural gas and oil production in the United States while, at the same time, asking other countries such as Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Iran to increase their production. But burning Iranian or Venezuelan natural gas instead of American gas does not reduce emissions. The Administration is accusing domestic oil companies of greedily raising the price of gasoline (at a time of general inflation, when all prices are rising) while expressing surprise that those same greedy corporations don’t take advantage of higher prices and produce more petroleum. But why would an oil company invest millions of dollars to expand operations when Biden is promising to shut down production once he’s solved his immediate political problems caused by rising prices? Why, after Democrats have proposed taxing away oil company profits, would anyone invest in firms that are targeted for extinction?

4. End Pipeline Restrictions: When President Biden killed the Keystone Pipeline on his first day in office, City Journal noted: The symbolic victory of the pipeline’s cancellation will not have any measurable effect on the decarbonization of the U.S. economy. Keystone’s untimely demise will not change the rate of our national consumption of fossil fuels; instead, American consumers will simply be forced to buy more oil from countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Venezuela. More of our gas will be imported by plane or ship rather than from a net-zero emission pipeline—and we’ll pay more for it at the pump, too. Pipelines are the safest and most efficient way in which to transport natural gas, petroleum, and petroleum liquid products. Forcing oil and gas to be moved by ship, rail, or truck instead makes little sense economically or ecologically. Under Governor Andrew Cuomo, the state of New York banned fracking for natural gas and obstructed the construction of new natural gas pipelines. As a result, the state has had to generate more electricity with fuel oil, which produces more CO2 and pollution than does natural gas, and the state has also had to import natural gas from Russia and Trinidad and Tobago. “In 2016,” according to the Wall Street Journal, “Officials in Massachusetts and New Hampshire blocked financing for the $3 billion Access Northeast Pipeline, which would have reliably provided fuel to three New England states.” Consequently, a tanker sailed into Boston Harbor in 2018 carrying Russian LNG (liquified natural gas).

5. Repeal the Jones Act: The Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (the “Jones Act”) forbids transporting goods between American ports on ships that aren’t American built, owned, registered, and crewed. The Act’s carbon footprint is enormous because it prevents us from taking advantage of the veritable conveyor belt of foreign-flagged ships that circle the nation and frequent American ports. A Japanese ship, for example, dropping off goods in, say, Seattle, can’t pick up goods from there and deliver them to San Francisco or Los Angeles. Because there are currently fewer than one hundred cargo ships that are compliant with the Jones Act, many American products must be sent by rail, truck, or air even though they could be far more efficiently —and with far fewer CO2 emissions—transported by sea. The Act also increases Americans’ cost of buying domestic goods by raising the cost of transporting them. As a result, Americans are led to import more foreign products than they otherwise would, producing more CO2 in the process. Moreover, there are currently no Jones Act-compliant LNG transport ships. As a result, Puerto Rico buys natural gas from Russia rather than from Texas or Louisiana. Similarly, prohibitions on new pipelines have forced states like Massachusetts and New York to ship in natural gas rather than buying it from Pennsylvania. And, because of the Jones Act, they must purchase their gas, not from the U.S., but from countries like Russia, France, Algeria, and Norway.

6. Allow LNG Transport by Rail: After pipelines and ships, the safest, most efficient, and least polluting way by which to transport petroleum products is rail. Working to kill any option save keeping gas in the ground, however, the Biden Administration suspended authorization for transporting LNG by rail tank cars.

7. Stop Blocking Loans to Oil Industry: In September 2021, President Biden nominated Saule Omarova to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). Omarova supported a “National Investment Authority” (NIA) that, in her words, would be responsible for “devising, financing, and executing a long-term national strategy of economic development and reconstruction.” Banks, under control of the NIA, would direct capital investments toward politically approved technologies and investments and away from industries, such as petroleum, that are out of favor. In January 2022, not dissuaded by his earlier failure, Biden nominated Sarah Bloom Raskin, an advocate of climate-related banking regulation, to the Federal Reserve Board. The current strategy for addressing climate change—using wind and solar—requires natural gas-fueled turbines for backup. Yet the current administration is doing everything in its power to short circuit the strategy by blocking domestic production and transport of natural gas and starving the industry of capital. We are quickly leaving ourselves with the only option of importing natural gas from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Russia, and Iran—countries that don’t necessarily wish us well. Putin is threating Europe with gas cutoffs to force them to acquiesce to his takeover of Ukraine. Do we really want to subject ourselves to the same sort of extortion?

8. End Ethanol Mandates: Clear-cutting forests in the United States and rain forests in the Amazon to grow biofuel crops isn’t green. This commonsense notion is backed by research in 2007-2008, 2014, and now in 2022. In February of this year, the National Academy of Sciences published a study that found that corn-based ethanol is “likely at least 24% more carbon intensive than gasoline due to emissions resulting from land use changes to grow corn, along with processing and combustion.”

And thus ends the lesson on government climate change policy, myths, consensus and science.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

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