When politicians go green, vowing zero carbon, the public should see red.
We all want to protect the environment. But lefty pols are making reckless promises to “transition” entirely to renewables — wind and solar — within a few years. Never mind that Joe Public will get clobbered with huge electric bills, blackouts, unaffordable car prices and layoffs in many industries. Getting to green nirvana on the Left’s timetable will be hell for ordinary people.
Some 10 million New Yorkers who rely on Con Edison for their electricity were warned last week that their electric bills are going up 9% next month and could double by 2025. A $70 bill will surge to over $140. Ouch. That could keep you from turning on your air conditioner or clothes dryer.
You can thank the state’s Democrats, including former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Gov. Kathy Hochul, who are pledging to make Con Ed 100% carbon-free and nuclear-free as well. The ruinously expensive transition has to be paid for by Con Ed’s consumers. That’s where much of the $11 billion in rate hike money is going.
Worse, expect more rate increases and blackouts ahead because, in New York, wind and solar will fail to produce enough power to meet the public’s needs, according to energy expert Daniel Turner of nonprofit Power the Future. When supply falls short of demand, prices rise.
Energy titan Harold Hamm explains in his eye-opening must-read book “Game Changer,” “I’m not against renewables. I am against dismantling the current system for another system that doesn’t exist yet.” Hamm, founder and chairman of petroleum company Continental Resources, explains that “net zero” has become one of the Left’s favorite mantras. But “it has zero chance of working.”
The costly mistake New York is making is being repeated in other states. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, a government-certified standard-setting group, cautions that around the country fossil fuels are being removed from electric grids too fast to meet electrical needs.
The Electric Power Research Institute, an industry group, reports that technology does not yet exist to produce an adequate, dependable supply of electricity without carbon.
Biden’s climate ambassador John Kerry is being pilloried by the Left for admitting that “50% of the reductions we have to make to get to net-zero … are going to come from technologies that we don’t yet have.”
Politicians cavalierly push for net-zero, ignoring these facts.
The Pew Research Center finds that two-thirds of Americans want a mix of energy sources, while fewer than one-third think “getting the U.S. to net zero carbon emissions as quickly as possible” is important.
Like New York Dems, President Joe Biden is ignoring the commonsense majority. He vows to end fossil fuel production and use. Last week, Biden’s Department of Transportation floated radically increased fuel mileage standards, doubling them in less than a decade. DOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg boasted new standards “means more money in Americans’ pockets” and more energy security for the entire nation. Wrong on both counts.
These extreme mileage standards will force automakers to switch to manufacturing primarily electric vehicles, depriving customers of choice and forcing cash-strapped buyers to settle for a clunker instead of a new car.
Electric vehicles cost about $53,000.
Biden’s romance with electric vehicles is a gift to China. It controls 85% of the metals needed to make EV batteries, according to Hamm.
China is also flooding Europe with cheap EVs, and they could capture 20% of the European EV market within the next few years. Hamm predicts the U.S. is next. No wonder the United Auto Workers are stalling endorsing Biden.
Citing heat waves and wildfires, New York Times alarmists warn against supporting a Republican for president in 2024. The Times claims Republican contenders reject “the scientific consensus” that the United States “must transition rapidly to renewable energy in order to limit the most catastrophic impacts.”
Sorry. There is no scientific consensus on moving to net zero. Industry experts show it would cause severe, self-inflicted hardships.
Next time you vote, size up each candidate’s energy IQ. Avoid the ideologues who don’t give a damn whether you can pay your electric bill, afford a new car or even keep your job. The environment can be protected without destroying America’s standard of living.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey. To find out more about Betsy McCaughey and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website.
COPYRIGHT 2023 CREATORS.COM
“Climate change” is a political football in the same way that the Covid 19 hysteria was. The so called “scientific consensus” is really just the censorship of opposing views. It is the predominant mantra of the left, and given their track record, we can be pretty certain that the hyped up fearful rhetoric (which they feed to our kids on a regular basis) is phoney baloney!
Sorry, but God is in control of the climate. The Bible says He controls everything in several places. It also says, 2000 years ago, that a day would come when man would shake his fist at God over scorching heat. Sun flares, ocean currents, stratosphere and many other thing control weather, made by God, not man. He also raises leaders and deposes them. Seek Him, and confess His Son, Christ Jesus as Savior, and be saved.
So-called climate change is a financial scam being perpetrated on the people of the world by a very small group of individuals who simply seek absolute power over everyone. There is no scientific basis for the hysteria being constantly stoked to promote this scam in order to try and engender compliance from the masses and create the world’s greatest transfer of wealth from the combined people of the world to this small group of multi-billionaires and government officials on the take. There, I just summarized what the last 130 years of climate scams, under various names like global warming and global cooling to mention a few, have been all about. You’re welcome.
If you were to actually remove all CO2 from the atmosphere, as many on the left keep promoting as their goal, you would destroy all life on the planet rather quickly. As you would kill off virtually all plant life, which in turn produces oxygen that all animal life, us included, requires to live. So essentially mass extinction of all life on a planet-wide scale.
Yes, people should definitely ask political candidates who advocate for this planet-wide suicide pact some very hard questions before simply voting for them, because they look good or the speech they gave sounded nice. Any candidate who can’t articulate an intelligent rationale on this subject, as well as several others, shouldn’t be viewed as being worthy to vote for. We have enough useless idiots serving in government already. We certainly don’t need to add more. Just a suggestion.
Europe just announced that it made a Terrible Mistake in Green Policies for Global Warming Lie.
It is BREAKING them and ZERO ENERGY.
We fear nuclear power when we should be embracing it. Yes, it can be dangerous, but so can batteries. How many years have our submarines been using nuclear power? How often have we heard about problems with the submarines?
Everyone needs to understand a simple fact: the Left doesn’t give a rat’s behind about the environment. “Going green” is all about control and nothing else. This “greening” nonsense is the justification for the government to get involved in every aspect of our lives 24/7/365 and control everything we do, every day, all day long. And those behind it, like Al Gore, stand to make untold fortunes from the misery they create for “the peasants,” which is what all of us are as far as the self-anointed elites are concerned. It is analogous to the “gun control” situation, where the constant cry is about saving us (especially “the children”) from crime and criminals. No, it’s not. The Left doesn’t care about crime, criminals, or public safety (take a good look at what is going on in our cities right now). They just want to disarm the public so “the people” cannot represent a threat to the government once the Left creates the dictatorship they have been working toward for more than a century. Armed citizens are a great danger to dictatorships – just check the history books.
As soon as ole Joe and his cronies stop flying 100 mile to their homes every weekend or flying around the world to shake hands while they can do it via a zoom call I am not buying into this green new deal. On paper it works perfectly. But you can’t turn off one power source and turn on the next one. When the next one is not capable of delivering all the power that is needed.
Also if China adheres to carbon standards but they don’t and ole Joe doesn’t do anything about that. It’s kind of hard to tell your boss what to do, ain’t it Joe.
All the money we are spending on this so called climate change is nothing more than take cars away from us. Every holiday there is a problem with flying. Pilots have quit over the vaccin mandate. Planes can’t be serviced because workers have quit. And the FAA has old equipment and no controllers. But our transportation czar has no idea how to fix that. I think he has been told don’t do nothing. All a plan to control us. We shouldn’t be driving or flying. Bikes and our own two legs will be the transportation for us Americans.
Who can afford a 53,000 dollar car and pay a high electric bill too boot. Or sit through black outs. Plus what are people to do in cold climates with an electric car.
Ole Joe is too busy counting his money oh and curing cancer.
Since all animal life burps and farts they will need to be eliminated as well. Let’s start with the greenies, honestly, I would think they would be lining up to volunteer to die for the good of the environment…
Those who push flimflam DONT drive EVs
It should really be called: “The Jackass Joe Biden’s Flim Flam” because nobody LIES like Joe does. He is destroying the reputation of America worldwide like never before!
To meet our(USA++) electric power needs, more effort should be placed into bringing mothballed nuclear power plants back online while the small micro reactor plants are being build and brought into general service (for small or isolated locations and for general service).
I believe all of this. How stupid can our government become?
None of these political “climate advocates” are driving EVs with lawn mower engines! Did you see the six-car entourage escorting the Methhead-in-Chief to the courthouse a while bac How about they all WALK there or ride bicycles? Of course, the crook-in-chief would fall off HIS bicycle! How about Lurch Kerry get a solar-powered airplane?
“Climate Change”, a.k.a. “Global Warming”, a.k.a. “The Ozone Hole”, a.k.a. “The Coming Ice Age”, a.k.a. “Global Cooling” is a left wing communist chameleon hoax that changes its moniker with the weather pattern du jour. What it all has in common are the left’s “solutions” which will bankrupt nations, and create the type of chaos they perpetually predict will happen if they don’t get their way. In the words of Nancy Reagan “Just Say NO!” Don’t drink the Kool Aid!
The only way electric vehicles make any sense is for people who buy them them to tow around a trailer with a generator on it so they can recharge their vehicle to get home when it runs out of battery electricity.
The writings here are words of wisdom… Nothing the socialists and Biden know anything about..!!
For those who couldn’t find — grow.foodrevolution.com — try grow.foodrevolution.org — Not promoting it, just investigating it to see if it’s legit or smoke and mirrors by the climate doomsayers. Personally I agree with gin. God will determine when the earth is destroyed and how.
I would like to see AMAC do a poll to see what the majority of us feel is the biggest FRAUD being perpetrated on the American people.
1) Wind Generators – one of the most inefficient ways known to man to generate electricity & Subsidized by our tax money.
2) Solar Panels – Ditto – also subsidized by our tax money. AND think about this — Our wonderful government is paying folks to fly over us spraying aluminum oxide and who knows what else to create clouds and block the sun so it won’t overheat the planet ??? So the solar panels they are telling you to use will get sun maybe one or two days a week?
3) Electric Cars & Trucks — being subsidized by our tax money to the tune of BILLIONS of $$$$ — Burning down ships at sea, and I hear many more stories about electric cars burning down killing the occupants than internal combustion vehicles when you compare number of each on the road. When you think your getting money from the government for buying that electric car (REBATE) or what ever appliance it might be — .gov is just giving you a little bit of your tax money back they already took from you.
4) The Covid “Plandemic” brought to you by Mr. Anthony Fauci and Comrades who sent our tax money to China to perfect the covid virus which was meant to cut the worldwide population down to a manageable number for the elite. For extra measure they developed the “Clot Shot” better known as the covid “vaccine”. Sure been a lot of healthy people dying suddenly, don’t you think.
Our Republic is and has been slowly turned into a democracy run by the few, the proud, the elites who know better than we do what is best for us. you can thank the World Economic Forum, Council on Foreign Relations, Bilderbergers, the Round Table and ??? for that turn of events.
Feel free to add items for the poll. I just thought this is getting way too long so will stop here.
Mean while the most populous countries like china and India are building fossil fuel power plants at an accelerated rate. The earth has been warming for 20,000 years and the liberals are taking advantage of a crisis to wrest more power and control over the populace.
I am against dismantling the current system for another system that doesn’t exist yet.”
You can’t say it any clearer than that.
Then he should just stop breathing and it will help with the CO2 problem. Most politicians are full of hot air and spoil the air.
Maybe NY figures that if enough folks leave the state they will have enough green power for those who remain. NAH, couldn’t be…….
BOY HOWDY, I’d like to have $70 electric bills!!! Mine varies according to season and the lowest I’ve seen during the past year was about $130 when Spring and Fall give me a break from having to air condition or heat this place. Summer hits the hardest and the bill I just got for July is North of $270. August is going to be even higher.
We have “geniuses” who think they are going to change the climate of our plantet. Earth has 197 million square miles of surface area, and an atmosphere that reaches up about 6 thousand miles above the surface. Come on man, it’s nothing but a money making scam.
I lived in Arizona for about 7 years back in the 90’s. At that time there were always energy concerns for California and Arizona, among other Western states. Not enough energy for AC in the summer or heat in the winter. They would tell you not to use AC or Heat and have rolling blackouts or brownouts. Now they say don’t charge your EV and don’t use so much AC. They don’t have answers or viable solutions to the new problems they create.
I guess, for the majority of those in our Government, a working brain cell is not required for the position. Not for those who vote them into Office either.
every living thing needs co2 all the plants, trees they need co2 to live then they produce what we need to live it is a never ending cycle that is how God created the earth and mankind this green deal is nothing but a scam to have control of people.
Climate change: a bigger hoax than acid rain was in the 70’s and 80’s, when they also screeched that global cooling would cause us all to freeze to death. And so many useful idiots buy this BS from the American Marxists every time. It’s end game is a degrowth movement and total control over your life. Nothing more, nothing less.
Sorry, but “consensus” isn’t science. What we get from climate alarmists is “scientism,” which is a means for “scientists” to scare everybody into giving up their freedoms for safety, and for politicians to gain power over the people. If we give up our freedoms for safety, we will get neither one. True science is to postulate a theory and then try every way possible to prove it’s incorrect or false according to facts, evidence, and objective truth. If the theory passes all tests, then go on to the trial phase and so on. This way all subjective truth and opinions are scrubbed out of the equation.
It’s just a matter of following the money. Who will benefit most from the Democrats’ push for green energy? The Bidens? The Pelosi’s? Chuck Schumer? Just follow the money, see who gets the grants for green energy.
“See the U.S.A. In a Chinese E-V To-day!” And don’t forget 10% for the Big Guy…
Hey folks, do yourself a favor. Google the percentage that the earth’s atmosphere contains CO2.
Dumbocruds just don’t get it. Earth is a carbon-based planet. Net-zero is a myth. Go to net-zero and you destroy the planet faster than a million wildfires could do! We NEED carbon dioxide. Our green plants need it. More CO² means more green plants, which in turn means more oxygen. Carbon dioxide is a trace gas. Oxygen, on the other hand, is NOT.
What are yall Yankees b*tchin for? I live in God’s country, in a 2000 sq.ft. ranch home, and my electric bill averages $180.00 a month. 12 inches fiberglass in the attic, 4 inches in the walls, plus brick. I think that is a reasonable rate.
Climate change happens all the time. Has been happening for eons. It’s called the “Weather”. Things go in cycles. The only “Climate Warming” happening is in the brain of Al Gore and his fellow environmental hoaxer whack jobs. He is a billionaire because of it. It’s a hoax for power and control. CO2 is in the life cycle of O2 (Oxygen Cycle). Plants, food crops, (Flora), need CO2 to breath and they exhale the O2 man and animals need to breathe and then we exhale CO2. It’s a cycle. Go to the NASA website and check out the pictures of what CO2 has done to our planet Earth. It has made it green and beautiful. Flora life has increased or grown exponentially. This has made it possible for this planet to feed the increase in population on this planet for the increase in crop growth.
By 2035 Electric vehicles will be seen as the Nehru suit of the 2020s. By then we will better understand the environmental threats from both wind and solar power, as well as the relative importance of the various causes of climate change.
The left’s desire to do away with all petroleum based fuels (fossil fuels is a misnomer they push to try and make us think we will run out of petroleum) is part of their effort to take us back to 13th century Europe, where the nobility (that’s the lefties) rode, and the peassants (that’s us) walked.
The lefty leaders clearly do not believe their hype about climate change, If the ocean is going to rise significantly why does Barack Obama have two multi-million mansions on the beach, at Martha’s Vineyard and Hawaii? Why has Joe not ordered electric helicopters and an electric Air Force one?
Again, its because the rules are for the peasants, not the self-proclaimed nobility.
The latest canard from the Left is that this year is shaping up to be the hottest ever . . . that’s quite a statement!
I have a hard time believing that it’s been hotter than the Dust Bowl days of the 1930’s, but even so, how many NWS weather stations were in existence in the desert Southwest in the days before air conditioning and the dense urban centers that followed? Very few, and none anywhere in the US before 1892. Now there are hundreds, with many newer stations in the hottest parts of the country, and in urban areas to boot.
Worse, a field survey by a private group of PhD meteorologists found that a huge percentage of NWS weather stations are improperly located near heat sources such as parking lots, airport tarmacs, heat exchanger exhaust systems, and the like. The group found that more than 90% of the stations they surveyed violated the “100-feet from heat sources” rule which would inevitably bias temperature upward! One station that was documented and photographed was located on a paved parking lot at the University of Arizona at Tucson! With the uproar, that location became a notorious example of biased data collection and was apparently removed.
surfacestations.org (follow links from website)
foxnews.com/science/u-s-climate-data-compromised-by-sensors-proximity-to-heat-sources-critics-say
However, to this very day an official NWS weather station is located on an asphalt parking lot located in a remote area of Tucson’s south airport! And the USA is not alone. Australia’s weather stations, for example, were found to be more than 2/3 non-compliant!
Thermodynamically speaking, cold is the absence of heat. With even the best weather station siting, and regardless of whether the thermometer is reading 10 below zero or 110 above, it’s more likely than not that the station is reading high due to a heat source nearby . . . even something as seemingly innocuous as slight deterioration of the reflective coating on the weather station itself, radiation from the south side of a nearby power pole, or a temporary bare patch of dark earth, all set up a warm micro-clime in the area which has absolutely nothing to do with true atmospheric temperatures . . . which is what greenhouse gases are all about!
And heat sensing satellite reconnaissance is worse. Measurement of greenhouse warming is all about the entrapment of heat in the atmosphere, not the solar heating of ground objects per se. Whether the air is hot or cold, a dark surface will absorb heat from the sun. And while it’s true that a heated object will radiate heat back into the atmosphere and space, the amount of heat actually trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases should be quantifiable by measured air temperatures. Yet while satellite imagery consistently shows very warm heat islands in urban areas, air temperature measurements over the same areas (though still higher than air temperatures in nearby rural areas), indicate that urban heat is substantially radiated back into space with much less impact on air temperatures than suggested by imagery. Thus using satellite imagery to quantify air temperature is far less accurate than properly located and operated weather stations.
science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abb9569
But try to explain any of this to a climate change devotee . . . eyes glaze over!
(1) Today, CO2 emissions from China are more than twice that from the United States.
(2) Since 1990, Chinese CO2 emissions have quintupled.
(3) CO2 emissions from the United States peaked in 2000, and today are less then they were in 1990.
(4) As the world’s largest economy, the USA is on a course of de-industrialization and ruin.
(5) As the world’s second largest economy, China is on a course to rule the world.
macrotrends.net
Replacing the present electric grids worldwide with only renewable energy with no significant impact on mankind is not feasible.
Anyone that proposes or promotes this is either grossly ignorant or a huckster of the first order–see: Al Gore & John Kerry, the UN IPCC or the myriad of environmental activist organizations as prime examples.
The economic repercussions would be catastrophic and would restructure the entire world both politically, economically and morally. The moral issue is the most pervasive since it will be a direct path to world dominance through totalitarian rule by the likes of Communists, the WEF, the Democratic Party of the USA and their ilk.
It’s all part of the “Make America Last” policies.
The US accounts for 12% of the world’s pollution, going net zero would have little impact globally. Mean while the biggest polluters of the world, China and India are polluting more every year. They will kick our ass with cheap energy as they take over the Number 1 and number 2 spots in world dominance.
Net Zero is A fantasy for these freaks. They will see it’s impossible unless everybody escapes this country. They too will run out of electricity snd their enjoyable appliances. My electric in the past three years has gone up 8% and now they are asking for 12 .3 %. Three to fours ago they added a meter usage fee that was supposed to finance their solar investment!!! Didn’t work and it won’t work .So our rates are rising and we are getting screwed.
Great summary. The term “energy quite” and “environmental equity” actually means that backward and repressive governments like China are artificially promoted by a fake green agenda to do as well as free merit-based and once-Christian nations … it’s a population reduction elitist scam in line with the desire to reduce earth population to 500M and have a predominantly subservient (socially speaking) Asian worker class and kill everyone else- sorry to say it’s been advertised as this already by globalists
Climate change is total crap perpetuated by the left and Al Gore in 2000 with his idiotic book! Why are these clowns still flying on private jets? What about all the wild fires caused by states that refuse to manage their forests? What about India and China the two biggest polluters on the planet?! Their is no scientific proof to back up this green new deal that the left is pushing and they won’t listen! Its all about control and staying in power while they cripple our country! Wake up America! We alone are not going to change a damn thing! Those of you that keep voting blue deserve everything that is coming!!!
Carbon is a solid and is not present in our atmosphere. Our atmosphere is 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen, .9% Argon, and about 400 PPM (0.04%) CO2. And only about 4% of the CO2 (0.0016% of atmosphere) is man-made from burning of fossil fuels. Do you seriously believe that this miniscule volume of life giving CO2 plant food produced by human activity is a threat to life on earth?
They want zero carbon? Can someone happens if we have zero carbon air? They want solar and wind power. So now biden wants to block sun. Welcome to total insanity.
..and most people lack the basic knowledge to understand what a pie in the sky scheme it is.
Don’t forget that the socialists claim that cow flatulence (methane) is going to kill us all also! Soon they will be going after beans! We are doomed!
0 carbon will destroy more than it will help PERIOD
(Before Bidumb) It used to be, the EPA and auto companies worked together to write costly but achievable rules. . (After Bidum and his clowns took over) and came up with absurd standards or dictums, the auto companies must have realized the clowns, Bidumb put in charge would never understand science and engineering and just gave up! Now we are faced with Bidum destroying our auto industry and colluding with China to put 2 Chinese owned EV battery plants in Michigan (thanks to Gov. Whimer). “Climate Change” is another Bidum hoax. Yes climate changes, it always has and always will. But no matter how much of our tax money Bidumb wastes on it, he will not affect it! Especially with China, India and many other nations adding industries faster than Bidum can shut America’s industries down. Bidumb wants to shut off our heat, our A/C, Farming and meat industry, (you will eat insects and like it) etc. In other words we will return to the “Dark Ages”. And you will get your electricity from Wind turbines (when the wind blows) and from Solar Panels if and when the Sun shines. But do not complain or say anything negative. That’s not allowed and you will be fired!
Read the Bible – this is all part of the end of times. Storms, earthquakes, fires and famines increase five fold before the end of times
The best statement of this article related to: the rapid push to go to net-zero ignores the facts of not only unsustainability but airlines will be shut down (as well as private jets wealthy & politicians use for personal travel, etc, not to mention China is the biggest polluter and obviously has no intention of complying.
Climate change is normal and has been ongoing since earth and the universe was created. Yes, we should take good care of our planet. We should also take good care of our families. And we should take good care of our countries. Net zero does not take good care of anyone or anything.