By Larry Bell, Ph.D.
You should fully expect your future carbon footprints to be traced to a crime scene subject to “climate and energy justice” violations in the high tribunal of sustainability.
The prospective charges?
Such sins will include ownership and operation of an internal combustion vehicle, tampering with regulated upper or lower thermostat setting limits, and/or excessive electricity consumption based on your maximum household square foot per occupancy allowances.
No, there won’t be any escape.
‘Fast Track Train Wreck’
Why believe me?
Quite simply because the political party that recently gained control of the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government has already initiated a fast track train wreck agenda to shut down and replace 80 percent of our abundant and reliable hydrocarbon energy by forcibly increasing the 5 percent currently provided by anemic, intermittent wind and solar electricity.
On top of this, the plan will vastly increase electricity demand and costs by phasing out most petroleum-fueled vehicles in favor of heavy taxpayer- and consumer-subsidized plug-in models.
When the inevitable power shortages occur, rationing is almost certain to follow.
And you can bet your last incandescent lightbulb that they’re very serious about doing this.
Biden’s Harmful Early Actions
On his first day in the Oval Office, President Joe Biden halted construction of the Keystone XL pipeline at the Canadian border, along with the 11,000 jobs and 830,000 barrels of oil per day it would have delivered, which must now be transported by more-expensive (and less safe) rail and trucks.
As part of his $2 trillion “Equitable Clean Energy Future” agenda, Biden has pledged to recommit America to the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement: eliminating carbon emissions from electricity by 2035, and shifting from oil, natural gas, and coal to achieve “net-zero carbon” emissions by 2050.
In short, the Biden agenda will terminate an energy resource that has stimulated more than $200 billion of investment in new factories, generated millions of jobs, produced vital federal and state revenues, reduced the trade deficit by several hundred billion dollars, and expanded America’s policy flexibility and influence regarding foreign adversaries and allies alike.
Other Biden executive actions will cut back U.S. oil and gas production, which has recently made our country energy-independent, by canceling new oil and gas leases on public lands and waters.
Cabinet of Climate Alarmists
Biden will frontload his Cabinet appointments with radical climate activists empowered to wield vast regulatory influence over every major American economic and social life sector.
Former Secretary of State John Kerry, who co-chaired the Biden-Sanders “Unity Task Force on Combatting the Climate Crisis and Pursuing Environmental Justice,” is appointed to a newly created cabinet position as international diplomacy “climate envoy.”
Former South Bend, Indiana mayor and Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg has been nominated to be Biden’s transportation secretary. Buttigieg’s primary campaign site said he would “require zero emissions for all new vehicles” by 2035.
Buttigieg does not explain how to recharge all those added plug-ins at night when the sun is hidden and the wind isn’t blowing.
Former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, Joe Biden’s selection for Energy Secretary, will be charged with the responsibility of making good on his election promise to help build 550,000 electric vehicle charging stations as part of the president’s plan to “fight climate change,” which has been occurring since our planet first had an atmosphere.
A January 27 executive order officially creates a White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy to be headed by “climate czar” Gina McCarthy, who formerly led the Obama-Biden administration’s EPA with open hostility toward fossil fuels.
Environmental Justice in Focus
The order also creates a White House Environmental Justice Interagency Council and a White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council.
So, exactly what comprises “environmental justice?
One sweeping presidential directive calls for stronger action to protect public health and the environment and hold polluters accountable, including those who “disproportionately harm communities of color and low-income communities.”
And who can really argue with that? No one wants air, land, or water “pollution,” but that has nothing to do with responsible, clean use of hydrocarbon fuels or production of atmospheric CO2 (which is natural plant food).
Less than 24 hours after his inauguration, Biden welcomed Northeastern University law and racial justice professor Shalanda Baker into his administration as deputy director for “energy justice” in the Department of Energy.
Energy justice, much like environmental justice, refers to “the goal of achieving equity in both the social and economic participation in the energy system, while also remediating social, economic, and health burdens on those disproportionately harmed by the energy system,” according to the nonprofit Initiative for Energy Justice.
Again, who would possibly wish to deny energy justice to anyone, most particularly for disproportionately disadvantaged low-income populations of all races? However, it is clear that the greatest justice will be served by lowering energy costs and raising abundance for everyone—the direct opposite of what the Biden agenda portends.
Look to California
A harbinger of coming events occurred when power blackouts rolled across California cities and towns during a 2020 heat wave because of the forced removal of nuclear- and fossil-fueled plants from the grid.
California already has the nation’s least reliable power system, recording the greatest number of annual outages, 4,297, between 2008 and 2017. Conditions will only become far worse, as the state now requires that all new homes be nearly entirely electric. More than 30 cities, including San Francisco, have enacted bans on new gas appliance hookups. California plans to outlaw gasoline and diesel cars eventually.
There is no reason for anyone in energy-rich America to be deprived of affordable energy in order to “save the planet” from an imperceptible 0.06o Celsius increase in warming based on U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) hypothetical computer models that are directly observed to run two to three times too hot.
Nor is either solar or wind power environmentally “cleaner” than hydrocarbons, when the mining and toxic rare earth materials that go into making them are accounted for.
Artificial energy shortages premised upon environmental and energy justice will lead only to justifications for rationing to redistribute energy poverty more equitably.
Larry Bell, Ph.D. (lsbell@Central.UH.edu) is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA). He is the author of several books, including “Scared Witless: Prophets and Profits of Climate Doom.”
This article originally appeared on America Out Loud and was republished with the permission of its author.