Green New Deal
December 11, 2023 — John Hinderaker
The Chinese Communist Party may be evil, but it isn’t stupid. It has been working on dominating the world’s supply of critical minerals for quite a few years now. Geopolitical Monitor has “A Brief History of US-China Rare Earth Rivalry.” First, a little background: Rare earth elements (REEs), comprising 17 (15 commercially relevant) chemical elements and soft heavy-metals like Thulium and Cerium, are vital in modern technologies from cell phones
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October 2, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Global warming hysteria may have given rise to more craziness than anything in the last several centuries. And as bad as it is here in the U.S., it is even worse in Europe. Thus, this astonishing finding from France: On May 30, engineer Jean-Marc Jancovici, an expert on climate change, once again called for drastically limiting plane travel, and declared the need to establish a quota of 4 flights per
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September 14, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Has there ever been a time in world history when so much stupidity has been generated by a patently false ideology? Well, sure, socialism. But climate hysteria is making a run for it on the outside, now closing rapidly with socialism. The latest is the United Nations telling us to completely revamp how we construct buildings. Actually, its message is to stop building at all. So as to achieve “net
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September 10, 2023 — John Hinderaker
There is a financial crisis in the wind industry. You can see it in headlines like Support for offshore wind sinks as costs soar, and The ill wind of offshore wind projects. At the Telegraph, Matt Ridley sums up the ineluctable reasons for the current crisis: The MPs who have forced Rishi Sunak into a U-turn on onshore wind power love to repeat the favourite slogan of the wind industry:
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August 18, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Not only has Joe Biden conceded that the “Inflation Reduction Act” (this week celebrating its one year anniversary) is misnamed, and is really just a green energy pork-barrel program, but it turns out that even as pork barrel it fails the most basic political test, which is that pork barrel spending should go to districts that your party controls. That’s the whole point of pork barrel redistributionism. But guess what?
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August 8, 2023 — John Hinderaker
The Wall Street Journal reports that the wind industry has fallen on hard times: The wind business, viewed by governments as key to meeting climate targets and boosting electricity supplies, is facing a dangerous market squall. After months of warnings about rising prices and logistical hiccups, developers and would-be buyers of wind power are scrapping contracts, putting off projects and postponing investment decisions. The setbacks are piling up for both
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July 30, 2023 — John Hinderaker
One of the climate alarmists’ most intractable problems is the disproportion between the problems their models forecast and the solutions they propose. That is, if you believe the models, there is no remotely plausible course of action we can follow that makes a perceptible difference. So our impoverishment is pointless. The hero of the Senate, John Kennedy, made this point while questioning Deputy Energy Secretary David Turk. The exchange occurred
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April 23, 2023 — John Hinderaker
We are living in the era of stupid energy projects, but offshore wind must be the worst. If there is a dumber way to generate electricity, I don’t know what it might be. The environmental impacts are obvious, which is why well-connected liberals like the Kennedys nix offshore wind projects near where they live. And one can only wonder what will happen as more offshore wind turbines are erected off
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March 19, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Enormous amounts of money are being made by “green” fraudsters, utilities and politicians who tell us we are in the midst of a transition from fossil fuels to wind and solar energy. In fact, no such transition is underway; fossil fuel consumption is higher than ever. And no such transition will take place, ever, either in America or anywhere else in the world. Why? Because wind and solar are both
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February 28, 2023 — Elizabeth Stauffer
Running low on gas? No worries. Find the nearest gas station. Pop the gas cap. Insert the nozzle into the gas tank opening, wait a minute or two and you’re good to go. The process gets a bit more complicated for drivers of electric vehicles. First they must find a nearby charging station. If they’re lucky, they may be able to find a fast charger where the process might take
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October 3, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Human history has largely been a struggle to get enough to eat. Starvation was an ever-present threat, almost everywhere, until very recently. Only in the last century or two has even part of the world learned how to produce an abundant and reliable supply of food. It requires a scientific approach to hybridization, crop rotation, intensive fertilization, pest control, and more. As a result of these modern farming methods, for
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August 28, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Tens of millions of Americans face the prospect of having their electricity shut off, as they are unable to pay the skyrocketing cost of power. The New York Post reports: More than 20 million households face a “tsunami of shutoffs” after falling behind on their utility bills as the price for electricity skyrockets because of decades-high inflation, experts predict. Of course prices of just about everything are rising, but electricity
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May 2, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Global warming hysteria is lowering living standards around the world, but the real disasters are generally a ways off in the future. If countries actually try to meet their foolish carbon reduction pledges, the result will be a human disaster rarely paralleled in history. A small preview of what is in store comes from Northern Ireland: Northern Ireland will need to lose more than 1 million sheep and cattle to
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May 1, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The London Times is liberal but not insane, except when it comes to Donald Trump. So it is better than nearly all American newspapers. Here, the Sunday Times blows the whistle on the fantasy of “green” energy: Addis [Ababa] is just one hub in a global web of Chinese influence, control and money that has arisen as the world’s second largest economy races to secure the minerals needed for the
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March 6, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Sanctions imposed by the U.S. and our NATO allies have brought Russia’s economy to a screeching halt. With the exception, of course, of oil exports–which represent most of Russia’s export economy. But that’s got to be the only exception, right? Wrong. The Wall Street Journal explains: From its base at a former Arctic gulag, Russia’s MMC Norilsk Nickel PJSC digs up a large portion of two metals that are essential
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May 29, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Kamala Harris delivered the commencement address yesterday at the U.S. Naval Academy. In an attempt at woke humor, Harris inserted feminism into her homage to green energy. She said: Just ask any Marine today, would she rather carry 20 pounds of batteries or a rolled up solar panel, and I am positive she will tell you a solar panel. And so would he. At least Harris limited herself to two
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February 10, 2021 — John Hinderaker
Leftists fantasize that before long, we can dispense with all reliable energy sources–coal, natural gas, nuclear, even hydro–and run our society entirely on wind and solar, two forms of energy that have been obsolete for 150 years. How can this be, since wind turbines only produce electricity when the wind is blowing sufficiently, which is around 40% of the time, and solar only works when the sun is shining and
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