January 19, 2023 Updated: January 19, 2023
(Hillebrand Steve/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)
Commentary
At long last, the Biden administration is admitting what
experts have always known: reckless energy policies have disastrous consequences. This
time, the Department of Energy quietly released a report highlighting
the positive economic benefits of developing the Keystone XL pipeline from
Canada, an energy project canceled by President Biden in the hours following
his inauguration.
But the DOE’s report is a proverbial day late and a dollar
short. The cancelation of the Keystone XL pipeline has already cost the United
States thousands of jobs and billions in economic growth while families suffer
under the weight of record high energy prices.
It’s time for lawmakers to make American energy independence a top priority.
Released without a formal announcement, the DOE’s report
points out that the pipeline would have created between 16,149 and 59,000 jobs
and would have had an economic benefit of between $3.4 and 9.6 billion. That’s
no small impact. Yet with one stroke of his pen, Biden slashed the project and
instead focused his efforts on costly ”green energy”
goals. As a result of his executive action, 11,000 pipeline workers were
promptly laid off and told to “go to work to make solar panels” instead.
But Biden’s green energy efforts are bound to backfire
sooner rather than later. That’s because today, more than 70 percent of
the energy produced and consumed in America comes from oil, gas, and
coal. That’s not likely to substantially change anytime soon. In fact,
the International Energy Agency predicts
that oil’s share of energy production in the United States will only fall 8
percent in the next two decades, from 31 to 23 percent. And that’s assuming a
sustained commitment to green energy policies. The forecast spells bad news for
the Biden White House. At his political peril, Biden ignores the lessons of
Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, who both lost elections due
to spiked oil prices and accompanying recessions.
Two years into sowing its Green New Deal policies, the
administration is reaping a bitter harvest. Due to Biden’s folly, oil,
natural gas and electricity prices have more than doubled in just a single year. Meanwhile,
more than 28 percent of
Americans abstained from purchasing food or medicine to pay an energy bill in
2021. And now, the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act includes
wind and solar spending that will cost Americans $369 billion.
If the president and his Democratic allies in Congress
refuse to heed lessons from the past, they have a rare opportunity to view an
even more desperate future of what will certainly come to pass by staying on
the same irresponsible course.
Conditions in Europe serve as a timely warning of that
future. European leaders are years ahead of the United States in their quest
towards achieving a green utopia, but they’ve seen little success. In Germany,
the situation has gotten so desperate that candle sales are skyrocketing as
families anticipate power outages in the dead of winter. Some German villages
are being ploughed over to
make way for digging brown coal, a step necessitated by Germany’s misguided
overcommitment to wind and solar power. These desperate measures might help but
are insufficient to protect the vulnerable.
Europe’s obsession with green energy and overreliance on
Russian gas have resulted in energy cost increases so
severe that 147,000 more people are projected to die this
winter from cold-related illness than if electricity prices had remained at the
2015–2019 average.
Despite this, in Finland, electric car owners are being
told not to warm up their
vehicles on cold mornings to avoid
putting unnecessary strain on the nation’s failing electricity grid. The United
Kingdom takes the prize for dystopian power-saving measures, where families are
being bribed to sit in the
dark in exchange for electric bill savings and other prizes. If the United
States follows in Europe’s green footsteps, it risks ushering in a similarly
dark, cold, and dismal existence.
American families deserve better. The problem is that the
Biden administration is waging unrelenting war on energy producers and
sabotaging American energy production in pursuit of a green energy pipedream.
Our nation has the resources and the technology to produce energy for all our
needs. Lawmakers must recommit themselves to the goal of an abundant energy
future that brings prosperity and fuels dreams in America’s communities.
From RealClearWire
Views expressed in this article
are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The
Epoch Times.
Tom Harris is executive director of the non-partisan Ottawa,
Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition.
Opinion:This is bad, because running the country should not be based
on feelings, trends, doctrines...the above things are only used to deceive the
people, the Courts, FBI...
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could face energy bills misery until 2030: Gas and electricity prices are
'unlikely to return to normal' until next decade, experts warn
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11586571/Gas-electricity-prices-unlikely-return-normal-decade-experts-warn.html?ico=topics_pagination_desktop
Greta
Thunberg Detained By German Police At Anti-Coal Climate Protest
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2023/01/17/greta-thunberg-detained-by-german-police-at-anti-coal-climate-protest/?sh=2188a3777132
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