President Joe Biden’s time in the White House is mercifully coming to an end. He is now officially a lame duck with six months to go.
Biden was a victim here of a corrupt Democratic machine that — along with a complicit media — thought they could pull off a grand election-year deceit, despite his failing cognitive abilities. The Democratic establishment and a compliant media convinced millions of primary voters that Biden was of sound mind and ready to serve four more years. This lust for power put America in danger.
How could they be so unpatriotic?
So, where will Biden stand in the history books? He was not a failed president because of his declining cognitive abilities. It was his policies that wrecked America.
It is hard to point to a single policy that he got right. On the economy, he was catastrophically bad.
The trillions of dollars of debt he rung up bought nothing. He sent inflation to the highest levels in almost forty years.
The average family lost $2,000 of income after inflation during his reign. More people died of COVID during his presidency than Trump’s — despite the availability of the vaccine.
Interest rates rose. Biden declared war on American energy. He put America back into the Paris Climate Accord—and the rest of the world went on using more fossil fuels than ever. By impeding U.S. oil and gas production and pipelines he played into the hands of our enemies — China and Iran.
Gas prices rose. Small business confidence sagged. Poverty rates rose.
Then there was the sheer incompetence. The bungled Afghanistan withdrawal was a national security disaster. The border became a broken dam with millions seeking to illegally enter the country. The government spent $7.5 billion on electric vehicle chargers and only a handful got built.
Biden gave away hundreds of billions of dollars for an illegal and immoral student loan forgiveness program. He put regulators in charge of key agencies even though — or because — they hate business. A majority of his appointees had no business experience. It showed.
When he departs the White House in the months ahead he will leave the nation poorer, weaker, more divided, more in debt, more vulnerable, and less respected than when he entered office.
This was a man who pledged to unite the country and did just the opposite. He deserves to go down in history as one of the five worst presidents of the 20th and 21st century.
Here is my list starting with the worst: 1) Woodrow Wilson; 2) Herbert Hoover: 3) Jimmy Carter; 4) Joe Biden; 5) Barack Obama.
Now the Democrats want to run Vice President Kamala Harris, who was on board with every Biden policy and helped oversee the worst border catastrophe in modern history.
Just when you thought things could not get any worse.
Stephen Moore is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and a co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity.
During his debate with former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden claimed: “The only existential threat to humanity is climate change.” What if I told you that it is not climate change but climate policies that are the real existential threat to billions across our planet?
The allure of a green utopia masks the harsh realities of providing affordable and reliable electricity. Americans could soon wake up to a dystopian future if the proposed Net Zero and Build Back Better initiatives — both aimed at an illogical proliferation of unreliable renewables and a clamp down on dependable fossil fuels — are implemented.
Nowhere is this better reflected than in remote regions of India where solar panels — believed to provide clean and green energy — ultimately resulted in being used to construct cattle sheds.
The transformation of Dharnai in the state of Bihar into a “solar village” was marked by great enthusiasm and high expectations. Villagers were told the solar micro-grid would provide reliable electricity for agriculture, social activities and daily living. The promise engendered a naïve trust in a technology that has failed repeatedly around the world.
The news of this Greenpeace initiative quickly spread as international news media showcased it as a success story for “renewable” energy in a third world country. CNN International’s “Connect the World” said Dharnai’s micro-grid provided a continuous supply of electricity. For an unaware viewer sitting in, say, rural Kentucky, solar energy would have appeared to be making great strides as a dependable energy source.
But the Dharnai system would end up on the long list of grand solar failures.
“As soon as we got solar power connections, there were also warnings to not use high power electrical appliances like television, refrigerator, motor and others,” saida villager. “These conditions are not there if you use thermal power. Then what is the use of such a power? The solar energy tariff was also higher compared to thermal power.”
A village shopkeeper said: “But after three years, the batteries were exhausted and it was never repaired. … No one uses solar power anymore here.” Hopefully, the solar panels will last longer as shelter for cows.
Eventually, the village was connected to the main grid, which provided fully reliable coal-powered electricity at a third of the price of the solar power.
Dharnai is not an isolated case. Several other large-scale solar projects in rural India have had a similar fate. Writing for the publication Mongabay, Mainsh Kumar said: “Once (grid) electricity reaches unelectrified villages, the infrastructure and funds used in installation of such off-grid plants could prove futile.”
While green nonprofits and liberal mainstream media have the embarrassment of a ballyhooed solar project being converted to cattle shed, conventional energy sources like coal continue to power India’s over 1.3 billion people and the industries their economies depend on.
India saw a record jump in electricity demand this year, partly due to increased use of air conditioning units and other electrical appliances as more of the population achieved the financial wherewithal to afford them. During power shortages, coal often has come to the rescue. India allows its coal plants to increase coal stockpiles and import additional fuel without restrictions.
India will add more than 15 gigawatts in the year ending March 2025 (the most in nine years) and aims to add a total of 90 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity by 2032.
Energy reality is inescapable in a growing economy like India’s, and only sources such as coal, oil and natural gas can meet the demand. Fossil fuels can be counted on to supply the energy necessary for modern life, and “green” sources cannot.
India’s stance is to put economic growth ahead of any climate-based agenda to reduce the use of fossil fuels. This was reaffirmed when the country refused to set an earlier target for its net zero commitment, delaying it until 2070.
The story of Dharnai serves as a cautionary tale for the implementation of renewable energy projects in rural India, where pragmatism is the official choice over pie in the sky.
Vijay Jayaraj is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, UK.
The Great Climate Change Revolution is headed for failure. You can tell because it was already in big trouble before the ultimate heavy lifting even started.
International accords, (i.e. Paris Agreement) passed with great fanfare to ensure cooperation on emissions reductions, are ignored by most of the signers, notably China. Consumers worldwide are balking at increased energy prices. Unsold EVs are piling up.
All this resistance is occurring well before the full rollout of the regulations and restrictions needed to achieve zero net carbon emissions by 2050, the agreed-upon goal of climate activists worldwide.
It may not seem at first glance like the climate change movement is struggling. After all, mainstream dogma still holds that man-made warming has us careening toward disaster, possibly an uninhabitable planet. The only solution is to “just stop oil” along with coal and gas.
As John Kerry explains, there is no alternative. Biden’s proposals have nothing to do with politics nor ideology. “It’s entirely a reaction to the science, to the mathematics and physics that explain what is happening.”
It was no surprise, then, when Biden officials recently rolled out new CO2 emissions requirements, maintaining the same endpoint by 2032. The only way for auto makers to comply would be for gas-powered cars to comprise only 30% of new car sales.
But there’s a telling detail. The 2030 requirements have been relaxed, which means that they’re still going to put the squeeze on to force more EV sales, just not right now. But what’s going to change to make regulations more palatable in 2032 than in 2030? There’s no evidence that the demand for EVs will be greater or that consumers will be more interested in purchasing them.
EVs were envisioned as the cutting edge of the “zero by fifty” campaign. If we could replace the outmoded, smoke-belching anachronisms on the roads with sleek new vehicles lacking tailpipe emissions, the new atmospheric standards would be a piece of cake.
But there are problems. Consumers aren’t wild about EVs. After years of the feds promoting them and subsidizing them in every way thinkable, they still account for just 8% of new car sales.
They are still too expensive, refueling can be difficult and they have poor resale value. Moreover the giant batteries are a disposal nightmare. EVs increase soot pollution. Depending on the fuel source used to produce the electricity, they may produce no net carbon reduction anyway!
Yet the Biden administration soldiers on, insisting EVs can capture 70% of all sales within eight years. Hint: they can’t. Look for other accommodations to reality to be made. Meanwhile they are doing a lot of economic damage, for no possible benefit.
Americans are less caught up in climate panic than ever. Surveys revealed that of all the issues in this year’s election, voters rank climate change 10th in importance. “We’re number 10” may not make an inspiring campaign slogan, but the massive media, academic, and governmental infrastructure dedicated to its promotion means the climate change industry won’t disappear anytime soon.
As Swedish economist Björn Lomborg points out, climate change is a problem but only one of several mankind must grapple with. Meta-analysis of all scientific estimates shows climate change costs will likely average one percent of GDP across the century, a figure sure to be dwarfed by anticipated economic growth. Meanwhile, the proposed solutions insisted upon by the panic advocates will average $27 trillion annually or seven times more than the problem itself.
Costs aside, we lead better lives because of fossil fuels. Abundant energy has more than doubled lifespans, dramatically reduced hunger, and increased personal income tenfold. Climate related deaths from droughts, storms, floods, and fires have declined an astonishing 97% over the last century.
The worst thing we could do is to drive ourselves into poverty by “following the (false) science.” We need to stay economically and technically strong to be able to accommodate change as needed. Human beings do that, you know.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
Imagine this: You invest a couple of hours towards watching “Juice: Power, Politics, and the Grid,” the excellent new documentary produced by Robert Bryce and Tyson Culver.
It’s a documentary that advocates for greater use of nuclear energy, but also has positive things to say about the need to continue using natural gas and coal to maintain stability in our energy grids. Or, you read the outstanding book by author Alex Epstein, “Fossil Future,” which advocates for the proposition that oil, natural gas, and coal will play significant roles in the global energy mix well into the future.
But then, you wake up the next morning only to find that these three men have been arrested and charged with the crime of, well, of saying nice things about fossil fuels.
Don’t laugh: If one Canadian member of parliament has his way, that will become law up in the Great White North. That MP, Charlie Angus of Timmins-James Bay, Ontario, introduced a bill Monday that would invoke criminal penalties for saying positive things about oil, natural gas, and coal, even when those things are manifestly true. The bill reads, in part, “It is prohibited for a person to promote a fossil fuel, a fossil fuel-related brand element or the production of a fossil fuel.”
The Toronto Sun reported this week that Angus made repeated promises to treat the oil, gas, and coal industries in the same way western governments went after the big tobacco companies in the 1990s. The liberal member of Justin Trudeau’s New Democrat Party claimed his bill was about stopping the spread of falsehoods about these fossil fuels, which the climate alarmist movement has done its best to turn into global boogeymen to which every environmental and weather ill is to be ascribed.
“The Big Tobacco moment has finally arrived for Big Oil. We need to put human health ahead of the lies of the oil sector,” Angus told the House on Monday.
So, Angus says the bill is about “stopping the spread of falsehoods by the oil industry,” but the bill actually says it is about making it a crime to “promote a fossil fuel, a fossil fuel-related brand element or the production of a fossil fuel.” The actual language in the law would make it a crime to advertise the price of gasoline on gas station billboards or for Chevron to run TV ads bragging about the additive it calls “Techron.”
The language in the bill would make it a crime for advocates like Bryce and Culver to produce their documentaries and for Epstein to publish his books. All these would be deemed illegal and indeed heretical to the doctrines of the climate alarm religion under Angus’s bill.
The actual language, in other words, has nothing to do with objective truth. It has to do with banning speech this Canadian MP doesn’t like.
For several years, the great standup comic Jeff Foxworthy hosted a TV show called, “Are You Smarter Than a 5th-Grader?” Obviously, MP Angus would flunk that show since every 5th-grader who ever appeared on it would immediately notice the logical conflict between the bill’s language and the promotion of it by its author.
The simple truth is that Bryce, Culver, Epstein and many other advocates who try to bring some level of sanity to our energy and climate debate are right about the future for fossil fuels and nuclear generation. Those energy sources currently supply roughly 85% of the primary energy mix, a level that has been intractably consistent for the past quarter century despite the spending of trillions of dollars on subsidies and tax breaks for wind, solar and electric vehicles.
Indeed, the nuclear renaissance advocated for by Bryce and Culver could even cause that percentage to rise in the coming decades.
Here’s a thought: Perhaps a better approach here would be for Canada’s Parliament and America’s congress to enact laws making it a crime for MPs or members of congress to spread falsehoods about the bills they’re trying to pass.
That would be a real public service, which of course means it can never happen.
David Blackmon is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, an energy writer, and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
As host of the Sept. 9 G20 summit, India is ready to defend its use of fossil fuels despite the hostility of some of its guests toward the energy source.
Speaking at a pre-summit conclave organized by local media, Union Power Minister R.K. Singh answered criticism that his country is a large emitter of carbon dioxide from its use of fossil fuels, particularly coal. Calling the criticism ridiculous, he said that “you don’t decide on the emissions depending on the size of the country. A small island will be consuming huge quantities of energy per capita, yet its total emissions will be less. You have to talk about it in per capita terms … The narrative has to change.”
India’s per capita emissions are lowest among the top users of fossil fuels and much lower than the global average. This means many Indians continue to consume energy at a rate well below levels reached decades ago in the developed West.
G20 attendees will include the U.S., U.K., Canada, Germany and others, whose leaders seek to eliminate the use of fossil fuels in developing nations even though coal and oil helped to produce western wealth in the Industrial Revolution.
“If you have an economy that is growing at 7%, electricity from coal will also grow,” the minister said. “We will meet the energy requirement for our growth because we have a right to grow. The hypocrisy of developed countries is amazing.”
Mr. Singh pointed out the inconvenient fact that renewables are not a realistic alternative to fossil fuels for generating large amounts of electricity. The requirement to back up wind and solar with batteries increases their cost by nearly fivefold, he said.
The cost of renewables is not just an issue in developing economies. Even in the wealthiest countries, wind and solar are notorious for increasing the overall cost of power.
Writer Michael Shellenberger argues that consumers have been bearing much of these costs. For example, he says that “renewables had contributed to electricity prices rising 50% in Germany and five times more in California than in the rest of the U.S. despite generating just 17% of the state’s electricity.”
Availability and affordability of raw materials for batteries are also a growing concern. Contrary to popular claims that the prices of storage systems have declined, data show that their raw materials are becoming more expensive.
According to Energy Storage News, “Lithium-ion battery pack prices have gone up 7% in 2022, marking the first time that prices have risen since BloombergNEF began its surveys in 2010. The finding that average pack prices for electric vehicles and battery energy storage systems have increased globally in real terms … confirms the consequences of what the industry has been confronted with in recent months.”
Given these uncertainties, countries like India will not commit to any ambitious renewable transition goals. This is evident, given how India has been increasing its dependency on fossil fuels while simultaneously increasing its renewable capacity.
While India may give outward signs of interest in renewable energy installations, it will not risk the cost of risking blackouts or stunted economic growth by overreliance on high-cost wind and solar energy.
Vijay Jayaraj is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, UK.