This commentary is by Craig Rucker president of the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org).
President Biden and congressional Democrats constantly fret about “climate change.” Indeed, they have made it such a high priority they are taking an “whole of government approach” to addressing it. In fulfilling their aims at curbing emissions, the entire Biden Administration has been systematically and intentionally dismantling the powerful, reliable energy system America has built over the past century, and offering in its place little more than vague promises of a “clean, renewable” system will miraculously appear to replace it.
It’s a bold promise. It’s also a foolish one.
The reason why is that there really isn’t a solid example, anywhere in the world, that Green energy has proven itself to be a “success” as a main supplier of energy. Team Biden insists we should follow Europe’s lead on “green energy,” because our friends across the Atlantic have shown the “energy transition” works. To the contrary, actual news from Europe should shake even the most ardent climate activists out of their extreme weather nightmares and green utopia fantasies.
Despite warmer than expected winter weather, banning fracking for gas in Europe and then embargoing Russian gas over Putin’s war in the Ukraine forced EU countries to spend $1.2 trillion importing energy between January 2021 and February 2023. LNG imports in 2022 were 60% and $25 billion higher than in 2021, as Europe outspent China, Japan and South Korea combined on imported fuels.
Russia merely sold its gas elsewhere, using the profits to finance more weaponry and prop up its economy.
EU households have struggled for years to pay their bills, as jobs disappeared and food, gasoline and electricity prices shot upward. Food costs rose 18% on average across the continent in 2022; 32% in Lithuania; 48% in Hungary. Average new cars in Britain cost 43% ($14,400) more than five years ago, beyond the reach of middle class families.
Experts say Germany’s electric rates could hit 40 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2023-2024, and then rise to 50 cents. Britain is not far behind. (By comparison, the average US price is 12.5 cents/kWh, ranging from 8.4 cents in Wyoming to 18.3 in New York, 21.0 in California and 42.4 in Hawaii.)
Even worse, the German government wants to force families to replace gas furnaces with heat pumps that are powered by that pricey electricity, but don’t even keep homes warm. Families that don’t comply would be fined 50,000 euros ($53,600).
The entire UK auto industry could go belly-up, as Net Zero policies make manufacturing (especially electric vehicles) increasingly non-competitive against China. The Middle Kingdom’s low-cost, coal-based electricity, control of essential metals and minerals, minimal environmental standards, and cheap, slave and child labor give it dominance over automobile, battery, wind turbine and solar panel markets. 900,000 German automotive jobs, and tens of thousands in Italy, face extinction.
Not surprisingly, one-tenth of German companies plan to relocate operations to other countries. The huge German chemicals company BASF is shedding 2,600 jobs, because of soaring costs, limited gas supplies, excessive bureaucracy and exorbitant taxes. Green Europe is staring into the abyss.
Meanwhile, China and India are on the ascendance – using coal and natural gas (and a dash of wind and solar for good PR and ESG scores) to electrify homes, factories, schools and businesses. “China goes for cheap coal to beat green West,” while “India cheers the return of King Coal,” says Reuters.
No wonder Europeans are getting restless, and angry. A British town chosen to be the country’s “first Net Zero village” revolted against the heat pumps they were to get, and the bureaucrats backed down. Facing outrage over the looming automobile death knell, Germany, Italy and five other EU nations have formed an alliance to oppose proposed bans on internal-combustion engines.
So maybe “yes,” we should look to Europe for good, practical lessons on Going Green. But perhaps we shouldn’t draw the same conclusions about it as do those in the Biden Administration.
Literally – a return to the dark ages!
The leftist elites in all their infinite stupidity believe they can do it better then the Euros and really don’t care if it works or not as they are padded with money that will carry them thru regardless of what happens. What they should be worried about is the movement to undo leftist governments like the “Farmers Party” in the Netherlands and the anti Marcon movement in France, both of which are the results of Green tarded policies being pushed on them.. Though biden is the spokes head for his handlers you can’t really blame him as he doesn’t have the IQ to put the correct shape objects in the correct slots.
The control the registered voter lists,
the printing of the ballots, including excess ballots,
to whom ballots are sent,
how many ballots are returned as undeliverable
Where, when, by whom and what machines the ballots are counted
The game is rigged from A-to-Z to perpetuate their command/control over Vermonters forever.
GO RE WOKE, GO BIG-TIME BROKE
The wokes are not going to figure out they are stupid, until they are living in the dark, scrounging for food, and walking everywhere.
On the international stage,the United Nations, and World Experience Foum is to blame, as well as their stakeholders, for these policies, as Biden is implementing the United Nations 2030 Agenda.
Sometimes I wonder if Biden’s 81 million voters understand that they voted to go back into a dark age- literally.
I wonder what their younger teenage kids will think of how their parents voted– given that it’s their kids that will pay for this by inheriting a nation that is far less productive and prosperous- while owing a debt that is so high that it’s a national security risk.
All this, by design- and this hellish mess is actually seen as a positive thing by these planners and their voting base of unintelligent zombies.
Good luck to these 81 million voters when their kids begin connecting these dots.
I wonder if these 81 million voters understand that they voted to actually destroy this nation right down to the darn Bud Light beer that working men used to drink- until a week ago. Even this is gone now.
It all may have looked good on paper.. but guess what, our fall is happening and so fast now that those teenagers of theirs will struggle in a few years to find work that will pay mortgages- these voters WILL BE answering to their kids.
I talked recently to a young woman that did come out and vote simply because of what was going on with abortion rights during the Mid-Term election.
When I asked her why she did this she told me that she’s 23 years old, working in a grocery store because it’s near her parents house and she can’t afford a vehicle or to move out.
She refuses to take on the debt of college- explaining to me how she’s seen her friends screwed over that did that.
She said that she knows she’ll never get social security.
She said that she knows she will never be able to afford to have kids and may need to have an abortion at some point.. she felt that passionately about NOT Having kids.
Imagine that.. the Democrat voters today don’t seem to get that if we have no families, we have no future.
I thought I’d cry looking her young face so filled with sadness… voting to have the power to kill the kids she’d never have.
What is going to today is very real.
Our life expectancy has dropped, we’re wondering at this point if the Dollar will even survive.
This sense of despair and hopelessness is what was created here in America by Democrats and their policies to destroy all of what we’ve built.
This has been allowed to happen by the Republicans we elected to stop this- but they’ve chosen not to do that.
The addiction, the deaths of despair, the suicide of young people..young people not working because their paychecks don’t even sustain them- eroding the value of Work- this is what they’ve created.
We will be cold, hungry and enduring death, struggle and despair that we’ve never seen here in our lifetimes..
Our lives are so short on this earth, I have no idea why the Left is obsessed with destruction and sees increasing poverty and hopeless as success..
We can either vote our way out of this, or be prepared to watch a tremendous amount of human suffering all around you.
BIDEN, IN THE BASEMENT, HAD 81 MILLION “BALLOTS” CREDITED TO HIM, BY HOOK AND BY CROOK, BY STOPPING THE COUNTING IN 5 DEMOCRAT STATES, AT THE SAME TIME, ON ELECTION DAY.
All the world knows the election was rigged, by the US, who is telling other COUNTRIES how to run proper elections.
The U.S. became the laughing stock, lost all credulity, then came the Afghanistan pullout, etc
The Vermont Legislature is just as guilty on the state level as the Biden administration is on the national level. And our governor is doing nothing to stop them. The legislature is running amok. They are not driven by logic but by an emotional agenda. Climate Drama Queen Greta Thunberg was just caught deleting an old post from her social media in which she claimed several years ago that the Earth would be dead by the year 2023 because of climate change (global warming?). Our legislators are not driven by logic or facts. They have embraced a Gaia-centered, earth-worshipping, anti Judeo-Christian approach to lawmaking in this area. They have no firm foundation. The Bible says there will come a future time (we are there now) when humans will reject God and worship His creation instead. That is definitely happening in Vermont, the least religious state in the nation. Lawmakers have made a religion out of the Earth because God Himself is nowhere in their picture. They are worshipping the creation but not the Creator. They are paving our road to serfdom where the lights are dim indeed.