The ban on carbon-based fuels is a huge cost that Team Biden deliberately ignores
Paul Driessen
The Obama-Biden administration feared that incessant warnings of man-made climate cataclysms would not be enough to end fossil fuel consumption in the US and commissioned a special interagency working group to develop a concept for the “social cost of carbon” . The SCC would “scientifically” calibrate the dollar value of damage that one tonne of carbon dioxide emitted in America today would do to the US and the world in the future.
The price was set at $ 22 / tonne in 2010, raised to $ 36 / tonne in 2013, and just as arbitrarily increased to $ 40 / tonne before the Obama era ended at $ 51 / tonne. President Trump dissolved the IWG and lowered the SCC to less than $ 10 / ton. Within hours of taking office, President Biden revitalized the working group, reinstating $ 51 / ton as a starting point and instructing federal agencies to work out a final SCC by 2022.
This “updated” version will reflect “recent scientific and economic developments” of climate change, including the cost of other greenhouse gases, the White House said. It will also take into account the US commitments under the Paris Agreement, in particular “Environmental and Intergenerational Considerations”. Climate researchers, economists, ethics experts and various stakeholders will all be part of the process that many expect to set a final SCC of $ 100 or even $ 200 / ton.
The IWG method of developing SCC estimates is so infinitely flexible and lacks rigorous standards that almost any estimate can be made that Biden and his Klimazaren deem necessary. The addition of “justice” and “justice” makes the mix doubly malleable and doubly prone to abuse by a government and Democratic Party obsessed with “man-made climate change” (even the agents of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Defense must commit to ending the “climate crisis”) and are determined to make America “climate neutral” by 2050.
The social costs of carbon are intended to drive this agenda and a 981-page bill “CLEAN Future”, according to which electricity producers must supply 80% carbon-free energy by 2030 and 100% “clean” electricity by 2035.
Currently, over 80% of all energy in the US and worldwide comes from fossil fuels – and China, India and other countries are building thousands of new coal-fired power plants in addition to the thousands they already have. Even a complete cessation of fossil fuel consumption and CO2 / greenhouse gas emissions by the United States would be imperceptible and irrelevant given the enormous and increasing levels of both in the world.
The social cost of carbon is a key tactic in a war against reliable, affordable American energy. on jobs, welfare and human rights; and on US and global countries, wildlife and environmental quality. It is used to justify raising carbon taxes and prices to at least $ 160 per tonne of CO2 and introducing covid-on-steroids lockdowns every two years to keep global average temperatures from pre-industrial / afterthought by more than 1.5 ° C. Small ice age levels that alarmists claim are catastrophic.
The SCC enables the agencies and their allies to set any conceivable price for any conceivable cost of using fossil fuels: hotter and colder, wetter and drier climates and weather; more frequent and more intense hurricanes; reduced agricultural production; Forest health and forest fires; Floods, droughts and water resources; “Forced migration” of humans and wildlife; Deterioration in health and disease; flooded coastal cities; Indeed, because of the warmer planetary temperatures, student learning and worker productivity have been reduced.
The SCC also allows practitioners to completely ignore the obvious and enormous benefits of using fossil fuels and carbon dioxide emissions – for example, increasing productivity from affordable air conditioning in summer and heating in winter. improved forest, grassland and plant growth (and green deserts) due to more CO2 in the air; higher survival rates of households and people in extreme weather events; and having the jobs, mobility, standard of living, health care and longevity of modern industrialized life.
In fact, the benefits of hydrocarbons and carbon dioxide outweigh the costs by 50: 1, 400: 1, or even 500: 1! Will Team Biden and other members of the anti-hydrocarbon movement acknowledge this?
Unless our dishes are forced to do so, the chances are likely 500: 1. You won’t even admit that the sun and other natural forces still play a dominant role in climate and weather, as they have throughout history. In their view, all SCC costs are directly and exclusively attributable to fossil fuels. (For a reality check, see Indur Goklany, Patrick Moore, Gregory Wrightstone, Marc Morano, and Jennifer Marohasy.)
Indeed, the elimination of carbon-based energy and carbon dioxide emissions will result in far greater human and environmental costs. It is the substitute for fossil fuels that causes incalculable damage to people and the planet.
Replacing coal, oil, natural gas and combustion vehicles would require millions of wind turbines, billions of solar panels, billions of battery modules, millions of acres of biofuel plantations, a complete overhaul of power grids and infrastructure on millions of acres. Billions of tons of steel, aluminum, copper, lithium, cobalt, rare earth elements, concrete, plastics and other materials are required for this. To do this, hundreds of billions of tons of ores and minerals have to be excavated and processed.
Under Team Biden, Democrats and Big Green, little of this will happen in the US under our strict laws and regulations. It is carried out overseas, in China, Mongolia, Africa, and Bolivia – often with slave and child labor and with little or no workplace safety, air and water pollution, toxic substances, endangered species, or other rules. Do their health, human rights and environmental quality mean nothing?
Technologies may be clean and emission-free in the US, but none of these countries.
Even the turbines, panels, batteries, and other technologies will be manufactured overseas – again with little or no regulations on pollution, health, safety, or fair wages – because of the more expensive, unreliable, weather-prone, blackout-prone electricity in American production and others basic industries will be forgotten, along with millions of good jobs. Minority and working-class families are hit hardest.
The spread of “clean, climate-friendly” wind and solar energy will destroy wildlife and habitats. Wind turbines in the USA already slaughter a million birds and bats every year – far more than Big Wind admits – and that from a “meager” 60,000 turbines. The same thing happens in Europe.
With the best wind locations along the migratory bird tracks, the hunting areas for birds of prey, the bat habitats and the shores of the Great Lake and the sea, the carnage gets worse every year. I have just put new bluebird, hummingbird, and wooden duck nest houses around my home and neighborhood. It is terribly depressing that such suburban efforts are being overwhelmed by a death tsunami in our wildlife kingdoms. When forests, meadows and deserts are torn up for turbines and covered by solar panels and biofuels, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates and wild plants also disappear.
Team Biden, Democrats, Big Green, and Big Media will loudly deny these realities. They will insist that any loss of wildlife is “accidental”. As if the wildlife were less dead because it was accidental; as if negligible accidental deaths from fossil fuel extraction and pipelines are bad, but these are fine.
Wind turbines, solar panels and batteries have a short lifespan – and are difficult or impossible to recycle. Where are we going to bury millions of 300-foot-long fiberglass turbine blades? Billions of solar panels? Will we continue to send solar panels overseas where parents and children burn them on an open fire to reclaim the metals – and breathe toxic fumes all day?
This is just the tip of the iceberg of the adverse effects of the SCC / Green New Deal guidelines. Any honest, accurate, and complete social cost analysis of carbon would require that each and every one of them be fully considered before making any fossil fuel decisions. Will odds makers even accept bets on this event?
Will dishes appear on the plate? Will Attorneys General? Will Republicans be better informed about our energy elixir, better organized, less focused on less critical issues – and more willing to offer passionate, principled resistance to this irresponsible madness? Or will the Democrats just pull this off because they can, because they control the House, Senate, White House and the Executive of the Deep State – maybe by a mere majority of 1 to 10, but arrogant totalitarian control nonetheless?
Paul Driessen is Senior Policy Advisor to the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and the author of books, reports and articles on energy, the environment, climate and human rights issues.
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