Green energy

Finally, thankfully, the global warming craze is dying out. To paraphrase Monty Python, the climate parrot may still be nailed to its perch at the recent COP summit in Belém, Brazil – or at Harvard and on CNN – but elsewhere it’s dead. It’s gone to meet its maker, kicked the bucket, shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. By failing to pledge a cut in fossil fuels, COP achieved less than nothing, the venue caught fire, the air-conditioning malfunctioned – and delegates were told on arrival not to flush toilet paper.

Gavin Newsom once touted California as the fossil fuel industry’s “foe.” In 2024 he declared energy workers “the polluted heart of the climate crisis.” Together with Attorney General Rob Bonta he famously filed an outlandish climate lawsuit in 2023 demanding oil majors pay the costs of climate change. And under Newsom anti-energy lawfare has been coupled with burdensome environmental regulations, delays in permitting and punitive legislation such as a pledge to end oil drilling across the state by 2045. But now, a decade since the madness started, the strategy has turned out to be a dud. The “bold” climate plan has produced no reliable or affordable alternatives to oil and gas – and has even forced major refineries to up and leave.

Right before President Biden and Chinese president Xi Jinping met in San Francisco this week, the US State Department and the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment each released a statement on “enhancing cooperation to address climate change.”  “[T]he United States and China reaffirm their commitment to work jointly and together with other countries to address the climate crisis,” the Sunnylands Statement says. Addressing “energy transition,” the statement declares that both countries support pursuing efforts to triple renewable energy capacity globally by 2030 and accelerate renewable energy deployment as a substitute for fossil fuels.

You can lead an electorate to the electronic vehicle charging station, but you can’t make them plug in.   That’s the lesson President Biden is learning as American consumers reject the “green” future the administration has been trying to mandate through the EPA’s proposed emissions standards and billions in EV subsidies and tax credits.   The American people, however, just aren’t buying the climate change is “even more frightening than a nuclear war” line Biden is selling.

At midnight Friday, more than 12,000 workers walked out of factories owned by Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, marking the first time in history that the United Auto Workers union has gone on strike against all of the Big Three auto manufacturers at once. The UAW started contract negotiations asking for a 40 percent pay increase over four years and a four-day work week. The Big Three have countered with an offer of an approximately 20 percent pay increase, which would make up for real wage decline due to inflation since 2008. Neither side has moved significantly since bargaining began two months ago.  The unprecedented strike is centered in the Midwest, but it no doubt has major political ramifications back in the nation’s capital.

There was nothing new about springtime wildfires in Canada until the wind shifted unexpectedly last week. That shift blew smoky air all over the northern and eastern US, producing memorably apocalyptic-like orange air in New York City. Not wanting to waste a crisis, the lamestream media jumped right in with both feet. They blamed the wildfires on the much-dreaded “climate change,” scared the daylights out of everyone about the air quality and then warned that more like it was on the way unless we changed our fossil fuel-burning ways. Not unexpectedly, the media’s knee-jerk take was all wrong. Wildfires and smoky air have always occurred wherever there are forests. At least eighteen of these dark or “yellow days” occurred in the US and Canada from 1706 to 1910.

A pair of Wall Street Journal headlines announced last week that "renewables surpassed coal power generation in 2022 for first time,” and “coal prices tumble while use of wind power, solar energy leaps ahead.” Taken at face value, you might believe fossil fuels are about to go the way of the floppy disk. Not so. News of renewable triumphs is often greatly exaggerated. Pretending that we can dismiss coal and other fossil fuels as energy sources anytime soon is to bite the hand that feeds us.