Screw the Whales?; The Vatican's Climate Commitments Backfire; and An Announcement
Enemies of the People: Sam Brinton
Beginning today and continuing for the next two weeks, The Pipeline is taking the fight to the Climate Cultists, with a series on “climate change.” Here is the first entry in the series, Michael Walsh’s Editor’s Column. But keep an eye on the site for each daily entry.
Hoax of the Millennium
This week Elizabeth Nickson contributed a piece on whale death and environmentalist double standards.
The 'Green' Movement: Endemic Sorrow and Permanent Fear
Green energy subsidy deserves every criticism thrown at market capitalism by the woke. Twenty more years of this and we will be back in the middle ages with hordes of beggars surrounding every Range Rover the moment it leaves its gated community. In fact we are already there. In every mega-city, the underclass grows and grows. Have you seen the videos of cobalt miners in Africa and Asia? Without them, none of our luxury, no solar, no digital, no wind, is possible. They are kids, children, underfed, working fourteen hours days, breathing poison. Like the check-out lady’s fear and pain, they will break your heart. We have rare earth minerals in North America that greens won't let us mine. We have the technology to restore land after mining. Greens won't allow it.
This corruption was sharply illustrated earlier this year by the several hundred whales washing up on the shores of the East Coast of the U.S., caused some say by wind turbine noise and vibration. Whatever happened to Saving The Whales? In any case, people living near wind turbines are not happy about it, unless they are very poor and being paid via taxpayer subsidy to grin and bear it. The noise is something else, the whine, the vibration causes sleep deprivation, anxiety, depression and elevated blood pressure which is one of the reasons developers have moved off-shore. In Oregon the state supreme court ignored pleas of residents and forced wind installations into rural areas. All their arguments were tossed on the burn pile of "green," which has burned through trillions already, and is slated to burn another $200 trillion in the next decade to appease its dark and savage god.
In high winds, wind farms do become louder. Under full load, noise levels can reach up to 105 decibels at the turbine hub, which is 100 meters high. That's about as loud as an excavator.
The Bloomberg piece that announced the dead whales washing up on shore is interesting in its presentation of argument. Those NGOs intent on more "green energy," more offshore wind, etc, are presented as wholly ethical, virtuous beyond reason, and all criticism of them is paid for by the oil companies and associated with the Republican Party, which is of course evil. Bloomberg pretty much has to be on the side of wind, since it has been promoting catastrophic "climate change" for 20 years – I remember its first scare cover clearly – and Mike Bloomberg himself was a major player in setting up investors to take advantage of wind and solar subsidies. The numbers it cites are impressive:
Developers spent a record $4.4 billion last year just for the rights to install turbines off the coast of New York and New Jersey, in a blockbuster auction that underscored the surging enthusiasm for renewable energy. Building the actual wind farms will take much more investment, with a $10 billion price tag for some of the biggest projects. By 2030 total capital expenditures to achieve the country’s offshore wind targets could total some $100 billion according to one estimate that has been cited by the US Department of Energy.
All that money, the $100 billion and more, much much much more, is given favorable tax status and is underwritten by the taxpayer. It is nearly impossible to track how much money has already been spent on "green" subsidies for energy, since when you start to search, links are broken over and over again.
Steven Hayward wrote about Joe Biden’s environmentalist policies, which are shaping up to be much more radical than his Democratic predecessor.
Biden Ratchets Up 'Climate' Radicalism
It is popular to say that the Biden Administration represents a third term for Barack Obama, but on climate and energy policy Biden is far more radical than Obama. Nothing makes this fact more evident than Biden’s new proposed regulations of greenhouse gas emissions from electric power plants.
Let’s do a brief review. President Obama also proposed in his so-called Clean Power Plan in 2015 to regulate power plant emissions through an obscure section of the Clean Air Act of 1970 (Section 111d), but the plan was blocked by the Supreme Court, and ultimately ruled unconstitutional in last year’s landmark West Virginia vs. EPA ruling that announced the new “major questions” doctrine that threatens the power of the administrative state across the board.
But set aside the law for a moment, and focus on the policy. Obama’s Clean Power Plan sought to impose new performance standards on power plants that would have forced most coal-fired plants to switch to natural gas, or mitigate their emissions by supporting energy conservation measures by their customers. Environmentalists didn’t like this “outside the fence line” option because it wasn’t tough enough on fossil fuels, and it proved to be one of the legal vulnerabilities of the plan.
The proposed Biden plan, which many observers are calling “Clean Power Plan 2” (the Biden team hasn’t offered up name for their new plan yet), will eliminate almost all coal-fired power with much tougher emissions standards that not even natural gas plants can realistically meet, and eliminates the mitigation-through-conservation option. This change ironically might enable the Biden plan pass muster with the Supreme Court, though there are several reasons to think a new legal challenge may work.
The Biden climate crew has been very candid that their purpose with these rules is to eliminate coal and natural gas from America’s electricity mix by the middle of the next decade. In other words, while the Obama Clean Power Plan sought essentially to nationalize the electric utility industry with costly though modest emissions standards, the Biden plan seeks to pulverize the electric utility industry with openly prohibitive emission standards. They are not even trying to disguise their intention to kill coal and gas power.
Even if wind and solar power installations could be reliably scaled up in a decade to replace the existing fleet (a highly doubtful proposition, even with magical batteries), for such a system to have a chance of supplying our electricity needs will require thousands of miles of new transmission lines. The Biden plan also leaves the door open a tiny crack for carbon sequestration, by which a coal or gas plant could theoretically still remain in business if it can capture, at huge expense, its CO2 emissions and stuff them underground somewhere. But carbon sequestration, despite billions of dollars for research and demonstration projects over the last 20 years, still isn’t feasible, and would require thousands of miles of new pipelines to transport CO2, and large new deep injection underground storage sites.
David Cavena wrote about the relationship between electricity/modern conveniences and happiness.
Prosperity per Kilowatt
How bad is this disconnect? To find out, let's see how many kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity are produced in three major nations per dollar of GDP output. Based on the Cantrill Ladder, a measurement system for quantifying life satisfaction, how satisfied do the people in these countries say they are?
In America, to create and maintain our lifestyles, we generate 4,152 TWh (Tera-Watt-hours; billions of kWh) of electricity and produce $20.49 trillion of goods & services (GDP), using 0.203 kWh to produce $1.00 of GDP, a kWh per dollar of GDP ratio of 0.203. Americans rank themselves at 6.89 on the Cantrill ladder (on a scale of 0-10; higher is better).
China, a nation our elites ignore in their climate plans, generates 8,484 TWh of electricity and produces $1.34 trillion of GDP, using over three times as much electricity and generating three times as much CO2 as America to produce $1.00 of GDP, a kWh per dollar of GDP ratio of 0.633. China reports a Cantrill satisfaction of 5.82.
In Nigeria, the most prosperous sub-Saharan African country, generates 31 TWh of electricity and produces $580 billion of GDP, using one-fourth of the electricity of America to produce $1.00 of GDP, a kWh per dollar of GDP ratio of 0.053. Nigeria’s residents report a “happiness and life satisfaction” metric of 4.98. It's not a surprise, but modernity -- and electricity -- makes people happier.
If we measure prosperity in kWh per dollar of GDP, America has a prosperity metric of 0.203, China of 0.633, and Nigeria of 0.053. Having the lowest living standard of the compared nations, Nigeria uses the least amount of electricity to produce $1.00 of goods. More readily available electricity would over time lead to the increase of their GDP, wages, education, infrastructure development, and standard of living.
And yet, western elites are actively trying to prevent Africa from modernizing. This modernity-for-me-and-not-for-thee looks suspiciously like the elite caricature of “colonialism,” which they themselves proclaim to be the root of all modern evils.
Lisa Schiffren wrote about how the Vatican’s environmentalist turn backfiring on them.
Is Vatican City a Moral Shirker?
So, it turns out that Vatican City — Europe’s smallest nation, less than half a square kilometer in size and with a population of only several hundred — isn’t living up to its moral obligations. Not those moral obligations, the ones spelled out in the Holy Bible or the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Those are mostly fine, though there are increasingly issues there too, what with the leftist Pope Francis at the helm. But that’s not the morality on which the Vatican has been tried and found wanting.
Last September, the Vatican signed on to the Paris Climate Accords. It committed, along with the other Paris signatories, to reduce carbon emissions in a meaningful way. In fact, Francis had already promised to reduce Vatican City’s emissions to net-zero by 2050. These actions probably seemed like low-cost virtue-signaling opportunities. But unfortunately for the Pope, Paris tries to hold its signatories to account. And they've recently made use of their new Implementation and Compliance Committee to publicly harass the Vatican for their failure to produce an actual plan for how they’re going to go green. The committee even tweeted about it.
One wonders just what it is that tiny Vatican City can actually do to scale back emissions. Should it stop investing in the kind of heavy, energy intensive industries that climate cultists object to the most? Oh wait — there are no industries in Vatican City, except a lot of tourism and some industrial strength religious observance. There's very little low-hanging fruit there. They aren't running any coal-powered electricity plants.
In fact, the microstate had already installed lots of solar panels years ago. Not on the roofs of its main buildings, mind you, which happen to be known for their delicate frescos and massive domes. Further, way back in 2020 the Pope committed to planting more trees and getting rid of single use plastic bags. And he has promised that 75 percent of Vatican waste will be recycled by the end of this year. So, that’ll make a difference…
And, according to Reuters, the Vatican has pledged "to substitute all its combustion engine cars with electric or hybrid vehicles." Vatican City is, of course, the ideal state for the use of unreliable E.V.s, since there are zero distances to travel. We’re mostly talking golf carts for aging clergy. And Pope Francis has issued orders for Catholic schools around the world to provide “an education for integral ecology to favor development and sustainability and encourage economic policies that respect the environment.” Will this come during science class, or religious instruction?
Again, what can Vatican City, which occupies land smaller than most ranches in Wyoming, actually do to comply with the literal terms of the Paris Treaty? If the answer is that it really can't, why would Pope Francis sign on to this treaty? Because he wants to hang out with all of the Cool Countries? You know, the ones that like to bully farmers whose cows' farts they believe threaten human existence? The ones which consistently ignored the last pope's requests to acknowledge their own Christian roots? The countries which actively promote alternative faiths that are assiduously attempting to displace the Judeo-Christian religions?
One of the key requirements of the Paris Climate Accords is that developed countries must provide money to help less developed countries to meet their climate goals. But given its strengths, perhaps the Vatican should offer to pray, instead of pay. Of course, the kind of people who believe deeply in “climate change” don’t tend to believe in the traditional power of prayer to a personal God. Because “climate change” is itself one of those religious alternatives to Christianity, with Mother Gaia (or perhaps Saint Greta Thunberg, with her honorary degree in Theology) as the "saving victim" on her own cross, and all of us climate sinners, with our air conditioners and gas-powered cars, taking the place of Pontius Pilate and the Sanhedrin. That bit actually appears to be what Pope Francis himself believes.
Tom Finnerty provided an update on our recent story on Canada’s enormous "green” energy subsidies. It turns out other companies are jealous of Volkswagen’s sweetheart deal.
Canadians Getting It Coming and Going
A quick follow-up to our article on Volkswagen's recently announced E.V. battery “gigafactory” slated to be built in St. Thomas, Ontario. Despite the extreme cost -- $13.8 billion in Canadian taxpayer dollars, almost three times the average annual cost of all government aid for all corporations across Canada -- this is being sold as a big win for the Trudeau government, because of the thousands of jobs it's supposed to bring in to that not-exactly-thriving area. But it has already started to cause headaches as well.
The Toronto Star reports that as news of Volkswagen's sweetheart deal made its way through the industry, other companies started to wonder why Justin hadn't worked so hard to woo them too. Stellanis -- which owns Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Fiat -- has begun threatening to pull out of their recently announced E.V. plant in Windsor, Ontario, if they don't get their own Volkswagen-style subsidies, and quick. In that case, they'll just head south of the border, where Biden's recently signed (and atrociously misnamed) Inflation Reduction Act promises more subsidies than they'd ever thought possible back when their original Ontario deal was signed….
[T]he Star further reports that "provincial and federal officials have been locked in crisis talks for days aimed at clearing the impasse," and that it is looking like Ontario will end up kicking in a bit more money to keep Stellantis happy. Whether the feds will follows suit is uncertain, but it seems likely. In their editorial on the Volkswagen plant, the Toronto Sun said the following:
[T]his is the future of so-called clean energy technology across Canada — massive public subsidies paid for by federal and provincial taxpayers to compete with the U.S. for as long as Biden’s legislation remains in place in America.
Barely one month later and that's already being proved exactly right.
Finnerty also blogged about a recent Supreme Court case which slightly clipped the wings of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Reining in the E.P.A.
And about the French government’s recently announced plan to ban flights of under two-and-a-half hours.
Allons Enfants, et Prendre le Train
Thanks for reading, and keep a look out for upcoming pieces from our “climate change” project from our regular contributors. All this and more this week at The Pipeline!