President Obama’s final State of the Union address was full of nonsense, especially on the matter closest to his heart — energy and the environment.
Look, if anybody still wants to dispute the science around climate change, have at it. You’ll be pretty lonely, because you’ll be debating our military, most of America’s business leaders, the majority of the American people, almost the entire scientific community, and 200 nations around the world who agree it’s a problem and intend to solve it.
If you put enough swill in the trough, Mr. President, the piggies will come running.
Our military
The military are on board because the government pays them to be (see also Muslim outreach; women in the military; etc) and because the Commander in Chief orders them to be.
America’s business leaders
The corporations are in it to “greenwash” their image and because they welcome the extra regulatory costs which are effective at closing down smaller competitors. Also, if they’re called Solyndra or Bright Source, or they’re part of the subsidised wind industry, they’re in it because you’re bribing them with taxpayers’ money.
The majority of the American people
In a Pew Survey in November last year, 45 percent of Americans considered climate change a “serious problem”, 41 percent believed it was “harming people now” and 30 percent were “very concerned it will harm me personally.” Not a majority then.
Almost the entire scientific community
The scientific community — like the military — is largely dependent on public funding, which is currently heavily geared towards the “global warming” scam. Still, we know that since 1998 more than 31,000 scientists — 9,000 with PhDs — have signed a petition disputing man-made global warming theory. We also know that the ’97 percent consensus’ figure often cited by Obama (but not this time: his spin doctors are getting cannier) has been roundly debunked as a complete fabrication.
200 nations
If they really think climate change is such an urgent threat, how come not one of them at the recent COP21 meeting in Paris agreed to do a damn thing about it?
But even if the planet wasn’t at stake; even if 2014 wasn’t the warmest year on record – until 2015 turned out even hotter – why would we want to pass up the chance for American businesses to produce and sell the energy of the future?
a) because those record temperatures you quote are another fabrication. The satellite records show no recent warming trend — and anyway it was probably hotter in the Medieval, Roman and Minoan warming periods when there were no 4 x 4s or Chinese power plants.
b) because government is lousy at picking winners. If American businesses wish to make money out of “the energy of the future” then they should take all the financial risks and reap all the benefits.
Seven years ago, we made the single biggest investment in clean energy in our history.
Surprised you want to bring that one up, Mr. President. Solyndra alone cost the taxpayer over $500 million before it filed for bankruptcy. Your green jobs program has been created at costs variously estimated at between $82,000 and $2 million per job.
Here are the results. In fields from Iowa to Texas, wind power is now cheaper than dirtier, conventional power.
On rooftops from Arizona to New York, solar is saving Americans tens of millions of dollars a year on their energy bills, and employs more Americans than coal – in jobs that pay better than average.
As with wind, solar jobs are non-jobs. Potemkin jobs. Like the industry itself, they only exist because of massive taxpayer subsidies. When the grants dry up, the industry dies — as happened to SolarCity’s UK offshoot when subsidies were slashed.
We’re taking steps to give homeowners the freedom to generate and store their own energy – something environmentalists and Tea Partiers have teamed up to support.
“Freedom” is not something the government is in a position to “give,” only to take away. Which is basically how you’re funding this scam — taking away the money of poorer energy users to bribe richer, cannier energy users to install solar panels on their roofs etc.
Meanwhile, we’ve cut our imports of foreign oil by nearly sixty percent, and cut carbon pollution more than any other country on Earth. Gas under two bucks a gallon ain’t bad, either.
Not you, Mr. President. This is down to fracking (none of which took place on federal land because you’re ideologically opposed to it) and geopolitics. You actually did your best to make gas more expensive by nixing Keystone XL.
Now we’ve got to accelerate the transition away from dirty energy.
AKA cheap, effective energy. Good luck with that. It currently supplies at least 87 per cent of the world’s needs.
Rather than subsidize the past, we should invest in the future – especially in communities that rely on fossil fuels.
Fossil fuels aren’t subsidized in any meaningful sense of the word. Stop fobbing us off with green propaganda.
That’s why I’m going to push to change the way we manage our oil and coal resources, so that they better reflect the costs they impose on taxpayers and our planet.
ie regulating them out of existence — confiscating private property in order to deal with the imaginary problem of global warming. We understand that this sort of thing is what happens in places like Mao’s China and Stalin’s Soviet Union. But in early 21st century USA? Really?
That way, we put money back into those communities and put tens of thousands of Americans to work building a 21st century transportation system.
High Speed Rail: the Solyndra of the transportation system
None of this will happen overnight
Or, indeed, ever if the electorate wakes up and smells the coffee.
And yes, there are plenty of entrenched interests who want to protect the status quo.
Yeah, pesky stuff like fiscal responsibility, scientific integrity, economic credibility.
But the jobs we’ll create, the money we’ll save, and the planet we’ll preserve – that’s the kind of future our kids and grandkids deserve.
But the needless Potemkin jobs we’ll subsidize (destroying real jobs in the real economy), the money we’ll print, and the planet we’ll help ruin with more wind turbines and palm oil plantations and untended overgrown forests ruined by our eco Nazi spotted owl regulations — that’s the kind of green horror we intend to inflict on future generations because that’s the kind of people we are.
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