Joe Biden's escalating bans on domestic fossil fuel production, combined with mandates of unreliable solar and wind overwhelmingly produced by unreliable China, are an existential threat to our energy security and therefore our national security.
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In the last decade, America has achieved unprecedented energy security thanks to domestic, reliable energy production from coal and especially from oil and natural gas unlocked from abundant, once-useless shale deposits via "fracking."
While we are taught to take energy security for granted, that is a huge mistake. In the 1970s, thanks in large part to a lack of domestic energy production, we suffered two enormous energy crises that ground life to a halt. Endless gas lines, unheated schools, blackouts, etc.
Energy security is national security. When hostile foreign powers can meaningfully cut off our access to energy they can manipulate us politically. Examples: US appeasement of Saudi Arabia and European appeasement of Russia.
Energy security is national security, above all in wartime. War requires continuous high-energy manufacturing and continuous fueling of high-energy mobile machines such as planes and aircraft carriers. Both world wars were won by the side with the most oil, the fuel of mobility.
In past administrations, even Presidents who campaigned against oil quickly learned that it's suicide to stop oil production. Obama ran on ending “the tyranny of oil” but later bragged: “America’s like the biggest oil producer…that was me, people.”
But Biden is different.
Joe Biden's early moves are centered around destroying any fossil fuel production and transportation he can get his hands on. His later moves promise to be mandates of unreliable solar and wind. This is a recipe for unprecedented energy insecurity.
Destroying fossil fuel production and mandating unreliable solar and wind will cause unprecedented energy insecurity in two ways: 1) making domestic energy unreliable, 2) depending on unreliable countries, above all China, for solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries.
The most obvious way in which Biden's policies will cause energy insecurity is that by outlawing fossil fuels, mandating unreliable solar/wind, and failing to decriminalize nuclear, he will turn America into a third-world grid. CA is just a minor preview.
Unreliable solar and wind are failing around the world. Germany pays 3X US prices to get 1/3 of electricity from solar and wind. UK rising prices are causing more people to die of cold, with "energy poor" people trying to stay warm by huddling in libraries and buses all day.
For more on how Biden's policies will, if implemented, destroy our grid, see this breakdown.
As bad as solar and wind are for electricity, they're even worse for mobility, which is dominated by oil. Even if solar/wind could reliably charge still-expensive small EVs, there is no EV for large mobile machines like planes and cargo ships, let alone a cost-effective one.
As bad as solar and wind are for electricity, they're even worse for widely-overlooked "industrial process heat"--the high-temp heat we need to make steel, plastics, and cement. Even reliable, cheap electric heat is often 4X more expensive than natural gas or coal heat.
Banning domestic production of fossil fuels and relying on "unreliables" means frequent blackouts, skyrocketing electricity prices, and increasing imports + shortages of the fossil fuels that mobile and industrial heat machines will run on for many decades to come.
On top of making our energy insecure by making it unreliable and unaffordable, Biden's plan to rely on solar and wind will make our energy even more insecure because it will overwhelmingly rely on materials and machines that will be made by China and other problematic countries.
Biden and his team seem to be completely clueless as to how solar, wind, and batteries will be produced for the foreseeable future. That production will be dominated by China--which dominates the mining of materials, processing of materials, and cheap manufacturing.
China dominates the mining and processing of "renewable" materials to a staggering degree. The US does little mining or processing of the needed materials, largely because of "green" regulations. Our dependence on China for "renewables" dwarfs past mideast oil dependence.
Not only does China dominate mining and processing of "renewable" materials, they dominate its manufacturing thanks to low-cost fossil fueled factories--the kind Biden wants to ban. Biden's "Fact Sheet" promise to buy "Made in America" is total fiction.
As the Biden administration acts to destroy US energy security, China, Russia, and others continue to pursue fossil fuel projects around the world. They know that if they have low-cost, reliable, versatile energy and we don't, the global balance of power will shift.
The best policy for energy security and everything else is energy freedom. Liberate all forms of energy, including nuclear--which the "climate crisis" crowd continues to criminalize, despite it being the only scalable way to produce non-carbon electricity. energytalkingpoints.com/energy-policy/
Joe Biden was pitched as a guy who could not do very much harm. But on energy, he is a maniac. His energy policy literally threatens the security of this nation, which is an incomparably greater threat than climate change (real not remotely catastrophic).
Biden’s ban on oil/gas leasing on federal lands is a dictatorial measure that will 1) increase US energy costs, 2) decrease US energy security, 3) destroy US companies, 4) destroy US jobs, 5) discourage US industry, 6) decrease US tax revenue, and 7) increase global emissions.
Biden's oil/gas leasing ban is dictatorial. Federal lands under the Bureau of Land Mgmt are by Federal law required to be open to energy development, including oil/gas. If Biden disagrees with this he should try to change the law, not put himself above the law.
Consequence 1 of the Biden oil/gas leasing ban: increasing US energy costs. Anything we do to restrict domestic oil production means higher prices due to the increased transportation costs involved in importing oil from other countries.
The Paris Climate Accords is an immoral, self-destructive agreement that on paper commits the US to huge productivity losses in the short term and total economic destruction in the long term. Unfortunately, Joe Biden’s plan to implement the Paris Accords is far worse.
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In 2015 the Obama/Biden administration, without Senate authorization, committed the US to the Paris Climate Accords. The Accords called for a 28% cut in emissions by 2025 and at least an 80% cut by 2050.
The costs of Obama's Paris plan would have been enormous. The nonpartisan National Economic Research Associates concluded that Obama's plan would cause rising economic damage reaching $2 trillion a year—about $15,000 a household—by 2040.
If the US shouldn't rejoin the Paris Climate Accords, what should we do?
First, recognize reality: there is climate change but no climate crisis. Fossil fuels' overall impact is incredibly positive.
Second, liberate oppressed non-carbon alternatives, above all nuclear energy.
The only way to lower CO2 emissions and benefit America is developing ways to produce low-carbon energy that are truly reliable and low-cost. Are China and India going to stop using fossil fuels so long as they are the lowest-cost option? They won’t and they shouldn’t.
America can lower emissions and energy costs by decriminalizing nuclear energy. Nuclear is actually the safest source of energy and the only way to provide reliable non-carbon electricity anywhere in the world. Yet politicians are overregulating it to death.
Reason #3 why Biden should not rejoin the Paris Climate Accords: it is immoral. A moral international policy is one that expands human flourishing and human freedom. Paris is a path to outlawing fossil fuels, the way to provide affordable, reliable energy for billions of people.
Global CO2 emissions are rising, and not because of the US (1/6th and falling). They are rising because billions of people in the developing world are bringing themselves out of poverty by using fossil fuels to power factories, farms, vehicles, and appliances.
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 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.