Q: Aren't we in a rapid free-market energy transition from fossil fuels to solar and wind?
A: No. The 3.7% of American energy that comes from solar and wind is due mostly to *anti-market* policies that force utilities and consumers to buy unreliable, cost-increasing energy.
Claims that we are in a rapid transition away from fossil fuels are wrong.
In the past several decades, solar and wind have gone from providing virtually 0% of American energy to 9.6% of American electricity and just 3.7% of American energy overall.
Solar and wind's 3.7% market share is not due to the free market but rather *anti-market* policies that force consumers to use unreliable solar and wind even though they drive up energy costs.
Anti-market energy policy 1: Unfair electric grid rules that compel utilities to pay the same prices for unreliable solar and wind electricity as they do for reliable natural gas, coal, nuclear, and hydro electricity.
Anti-market energy policy 2: Mandates that force consumers to pay for solar and wind, regardless of how unreliable and expensive they are.
Anti-market energy policy 3: Subsidies that force taxpayers to pay even more unearned money to solar and wind companies.
The modest rise of unreliable solar and wind energy is not a free-market transition that will continue rapidly. It is an anti-competitive, destructive, and therefore unsustainable solar-and-wind welfare program.
If policymakers want to encourage cleaner or lower-carbon forms of energy they should decriminalize reliable nuclear energy, stop attacking modern natural gas production methods such as fracking, and stop opposing hydroelectric dams.
Q: Won't a carbon tax reduce CO2 emissions without hurting our economy?
A: No. A carbon tax would raise energy prices, make every American industry less competitive, and offshore our CO2 emissions to the countries that outcompete us.
Any policy toward CO2 must recognize that CO2 emissions are a global issue--and that that global emissions are rising because of the developing world's increasing use of fossil fuels. The US causes less than 1/6 of global emissions—and falling.
The developing world overwhelmingly uses fossil fuels because that is by far the lowest-cost way for them to get reliable energy. Unreliable solar and wind can’t come close. That’s why China and India have hundreds of new coal plants under construction.
Q: Won’t Joe Biden’s energy plan create enough “green energy jobs” to offset millions of lost jobs in the fossil fuel industry?
A: No. By making energy unreliable and unaffordable for every American industry, the Biden Plan would create mass "green joblessness."
"Creating jobs" is only a good thing if those jobs are productive jobs. If the government pays people to produce inferior products and services or pays people to produce inefficiently, that is "welfare work" that hurts American consumers and American competitiveness.
Many of the jobs created by the Biden Plan would involve building new, unreliable solar and wind infrastructure. This infrastructure can't replace our reliable power plants--it will just add a lot of new costs that consumers and industry have to pay. Classic welfare work.
Biden: “Climate change is the existential threat to humanity. Unchecked, it is going to actually bake this planet. This is not hyperbole. It’s real. And we have a moral obligation.”
Reality: This is hyperbole. It's fake. And we have a moral obligation to use more fossil fuel.
Fact: Fossil fuels' CO2 emissions have contributed to the warming of the last 170 years, but that warming has been mild and manageable—1 degree Celsius, mostly in the colder parts of the world.
Fact: Fossil fuels' CO2 emissions have not only contributed to mild and manageable warming, they have also caused the benefit of significant global greening. Thanks to fossil fuels the Earth is far greener than it was just 40 years ago.
Many politicians and media members media have a vested interest in moving past the CA blackouts and raising as few questions as possible about their cause. But Americans have a vested interest in understanding the cause, which is also the cause of rising costs: "unreliables."
"Unreliables" is the proper term for solar and wind electricity, often misleading labeled as "renewable energy." "Renewable energy" is misleading because it usually excludes reliable, renewable large-scale hydro. And because unreliable solar and wind aren't real, reliable energy.
Wind turbines and solar panels cannot provide the reliable energy that our amazing electrical grid requires 24/7. That’s why every place in the world that uses unreliable wind energy depends 24/7 on massive amounts of reliable energy from coal, gas, hydro, or nuclear plants.
Media coverage of the CA wildfires is designed to do 2 things: 1) Get us to ignore the fundamental role of "green" forest mismanagement in causing the out-of-control fires. 2) Get us to ignore the CA blackouts and the fundamental role of "green energy" policies in causing them.
California is experiencing blackouts because of "green" policies that reward or mandate unreliable electricity from solar and wind and punish or outlaw reliable electricity from nuclear, natural gas, coal, or hydro. We need to understand and apply this lesson this election.
Fact: electricity producers know how to produce enough reliable electricity for virtually any situation--certainly plenty for the heat wave CA has been experiencing this year. All you need to do is build enough reliable power plants: nuclear, natural gas, coal, or hydro.
I angered many climate catastrophists with my claim "The cause of dangerous wildfires is not the one degree of global warming in the last 150 years--it is bad, 'green' forest management." But as I will explain in this thread, this is 100% true.
Gavin Newsom and other California leaders are blaming the dangerous, out-of-control wildfires in CA on climate change. But temperatures have risen 1 degree C in the last 150 years. Is it really possible that that amount of warming makes dangerous wildfires inevitable? No.
With proper forest management we can prevent anything resembling the dangerous, out-of-control wildfires we are experiencing today. And we could do so even if the CA climate were far more fire-prone than it is today. (It has actually been far more fire-prone in the past.)