An electoral reckoning is due, but so is an electrical one. The two are intertwined. A radical movement led primarily by the progressive left insists Americans must spend more to have less. We must electrify everything, they say. We must build enormous Easter Island-like shrines and monuments to appease the sun and wind gods (as it turns out) for nothing.
Not nothing, I suppose. These investments in the so-called energy transition are crippling the American economy, harming the poor and middle class, growing the anchor of our unproductive democracy, and dividing people over yet another issue that, in real terms, is of no consequence. And even if it were (of consequence), their chosen course is, as usual, exactly the opposite of the one needed (assuming any of their lies were even true).
One of the many dirty secrets is that you can’t build monuments without fossil fuels. The other is that Countries like India and China are building coal-powered infrastructure faster than you can say “global warming.”
The need for energy in India is so dire, the Modi government just leaned on the power companies to get their act together. Instead of adding the usual 1 – 2 gigawatts of new coal power, which they have for a lot of the last decade, last year they ordered enough gear to build 10 gigawatts. And this year Modi wants them to aim for 31 gigawatts. Which is about the same capacity as the entire coal generation of the Australian National Grid (and our gas plants too).
Somewhat miraculously, they are talking of building them “in the next 5 or 6 years”: India ‘Asks Utilities to Order $33bn in Gear to Lift Coal Output.’
India, like China, Africa, and many parts of Asia, is modernizing. They see an opportunity to no longer be poor. But you need energy for that, and cheap energy is best. It frees up resources to power growth and modernization—things like indoor plumbing, flush toilets, comfortable living, food security, improved quality of life, health care, and longevity. Basic comforts the moderns in the West despise – at least for others. You don’t see them turning in their Suburaus for rickshaws or their walled villas for dirt-floored hovels in overcrowded shantytowns. Job one for them is taking your comforts away and replacing them with uncertainty and fear.
And that’s not even working.
Globally, we spent almost $2 trillion in 2023 to try to force an energy transition. Over the past decade, solar and wind energy use has soared to record levels. But that hasn’t reduced fossil-fuel use, which increased even more over the same period.
I recently explored this in more detail on Substack.
From 2004 to 2022, for example, 4.1 trillion was spent (just on) on wind and solar. What did we get for that (feel free to tack on the added cost of the electricity it generates)? Wind and solar account for 5% of total generation. In the same span of years, energy from hydrocarbons grew 3.4 times faster.
There is no green transition unless, by green, you mean wealth, prosperity, technology, productivity, and influence from the West to the East. The energy transition shifts power (real and political) out of the hands of nations like America and into the hands of India, the Chinese, Russia, and Africa. And it is not a clean transition. Lifting these nations from second or third to first world will produce “emissions” the likes of which this world has never seen.
You’d be right to ask why these activists are trying to squeeze Americans into releasing fewer emissions and not over there demanding they stop working so hard to destroy the globe. America hs vast energy resources it could use (and would use) more cleanly) to lead an air-quality revolution it could share with the balance of the world – creating real jobs and wealth here and abroad in the process.
They are going to burn coal, oil, and gas. You can’t stop them. They are going to be further industrialized. They aren’t worried about air pollution. It’s a problem for the day after they’ve got enough energy and resources to tackle it.
Ignore whether their ideology or culture becomes a bigger threat to global peace and stability (which, in the case of China, seems likely). Just focus on energy, emissions, and Thr greens stated goals for the planet.
Does it make more sense for America to tap its affordable resources to create jobs and wealth for Americans by building technologies that allow the world to have cleaner, more affordable fossil fuel energy (at a fraction of the cost), or should we keep dumping trillions into “green projects” whose components are built by other nations burning coal that will never be capable of meeting basic residential and business needs (forget heavy manufacturing and transportation)?
Even if you believe the planet is in danger and that all of their prognostications are true, nothing about what modern American progressives have done or proposed begins to address the problem, and in most cases, it just makes matters worse.
