The Biden administration made two virtue-signaling proclamations at the COP28 conference in Dubai that it says will help save the planet from climate change.
Fiirst, Team Biden announced it will stop production of all new coal plants in the US. This comes on the heels of Biden's EPA saying this year it would impose new emission regulations virtually impossible for coal plants to comply with.
Bottom line: No more coal. Period. But the White House was just getting started.
VP Kamala Harris trumpeted the next day new rules to "sharply reduce methane from the oil and natural gas industry." The administration calls methane a "super-pollutant" to be eliminated as it's "many times more potent than carbon dioxide."
But methane is effectively a hydrocarbon that comes from natural gas. Eliminating methane is a de facto ban on natural gas power plants.
Upward of 60% of America's electric power generation will go away — and soon. Coal still provides roughly 20% of our electric power; natural gas supplies around 40%.
What will make up for this loss, especially given that demands on the power grid are only going to multiply in coming years as the greens want the entire network of cars, trucks and vans to be powered by charging up on the electric grid?
The Biden administration, in other words, wants to nearly double the demands on the electric grid network at the same time it wants to shut down more than half of the nation's power generation — and the most reliable sources at that.
Something must give. Without gas & coal plants, hospitals, schools, the internet, construction projects and factories will be routinely shut down when unreliable alternative energy sources like wind & solar power don't deliver enough juice.
Rolling blackouts and brownouts will become ubiquitous across the country, much like already seen in California — America's forerunner of radical anti-fossil fuel policies. The lights will go out intermittently, and home heating in the winter and air conditioning in the summer will have to be turned off or rationed.
Some people may believe these mandatory sacrifices and rationing of modern-age conveniences are justified to stave off "catastrophic climate change." Except the shutdown of our coal and natural gas power plants won't move the needle a millimeter on greenhouse gas emissions.
That's because the biggest greenhouse gas emitter by far — China — isn't playing in this climate-change sandbox. We shut down one plant; they bring on line two or three new ones. This math doesn't add up — especially since we have cleaner coal plants than China does.
Biden is playing a dangerous game of unilateral energy disarmament. If he has his way, we will jump off the cliff first in the naïve hope China, India, Russia & Europe are right behind us.
This radical green agenda will cripple our economy and make Americans colder in their homes in the winter and hotter in the summer. Does that seem like a smart way to protect ourselves from the dangers of a changing climate, real or imagined?
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