Car Dealers Send Biden a Letter
On Tuesday, thousands of car dealers across the country sent a message to President Joe Biden, urging him to reconsider his administration's expectations for the automotive industry to help ensure that two-thirds of all cars on the road are electrified by 2032.
The dealers, who collectively employ thousands of Americans, expressed their concerns in a letter, stating that the new electric vehicle mandates would limit their ability to manufacture compliant vehicles while consumers are hesitant to pay higher prices for electric models during a period of rampant inflation.
"We are small businesses that are deeply committed to our customers and the communities where we operate. That is why we are asking you to slow down your proposed regulations mandating battery electric vehicle production and distribution," the letter read.
While acknowledging the appeal of electric vehicles, the dealers point out that the demand for them is not keeping up with the influx of vehicles currently arriving at their dealerships. Despite deep price cuts, manufacturer incentives, and government subsidies, the supply of unsold electric vehicles is surging, as they are not selling as fast as they are being produced.
The dealers also highlighted the mismatch between the goals of the regulations and the current and forecasted customer demand. They emphasized that consumer acceptance is critical for electric vehicles to become a reality and that the attempted mandate is unrealistic.
This pushback comes as a blow to Biden's green energy agenda, which has already faced criticism from progressives due to executive orders expanding domestic drilling in Alaska and other areas. The recent strike by auto union workers also cited unrealistic EV mandates and the closure of long-standing production plants as major concerns.
The lack of charging infrastructure across the country has also been a source of embarrassment for Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who recently faced backlash from climate activists during a cross-country EV tour. In one instance, a family, whose spot in line for a charger was taken by Buttigieg's entourage, called out the Deputy Secretary and got their spot back.
The setback from car dealers adds to the challenges faced by the Biden administration in achieving its ambitious goals for electric vehicle adoption. It highlights the need for a more comprehensive and feasible strategy that takes into account various factors such as consumer demand, infrastructure, and economic realities. The letter from the dealers serves as a reminder that for electric vehicles to become a widespread reality, it must be a balanced and well-thought-out transition.
https://leadpatriot.com/car-dealers-send-biden-letter/?email=jonjayray%40hotmail.com&ptn=LP
**********************************************************Three COP28 Updates to Be Concerned About
Last Thursday, November 30th, the 28th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference (or Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC) was kicked off in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The cool kids simply call it COP28.
This year’s conference is the hottest climate event in 2023. Eighty thousand attendees are reportedly there. I understand the appeal. Dubai is a warm, inviting, and modern city. I don’t blame conferencegoers for jetting there, except when they bemoan air travel for us plebeians. But the selection of the UAE and this year’s conference chair, Sultan al-Jaber, has made climate alarmists more unhinged than usual.
Extinction Rebellion UK said, “Despite over 130 lawmakers urging the UN to remove Al Jaber as president of #COP28 due to being CEO and founder of ADNOC - a company who has the largest net-zero-busting expansion plans of any company in the world - he has remained centre stage.”
And unsurprisingly, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres - who benefits from fossil fuel usage yet calls for eliminating them - doubled down on decarbonization, tweeting, “We can't save a burning planet with a firehose of fossil fuels. We must accelerate a just, equitable transition to renewables. The science is clear: The 1.5°C warming limit is only possible if we stop burning fossil fuels. Not reduce. Not abate. Phase out.”
This anti-fossil fuel rhetoric, however, is not the craziest observation from this year’s summit.
One proposal is a “non-binding” net-zero plan for global meat consumption. The UN wants it to align with the 2015 Paris Climate Accords. This proposal stems from the July 2023 COP28 Food Systems and Agriculture Agenda.
Billed as a “global food systems’ road map to 1.5C,” the United Nations’ Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) will “tell” rich nations to scale down agriculture practices on “equity” grounds while giving developing nations with worse environmental footprints a pass.
“The world’s most-developed nations will be told to curb their excessive appetite for meat as part of the first comprehensive plan to bring the global agrifood industry into line with the Paris climate agreement,” Bloomberg reported. “Nations that over-consume meat will be advised to limit their intake, while developing countries — where under-consumption of meat adds to a prevalent nutrition challenge — will need to improve their livestock farming, according to the FAO.”
But the outlet observed, “The guidance on meat is intended to send a clear message to governments. But politicians in richer nations typically shy away from policies aimed at influencing consumer behavior, especially where it involves cutting consumption of everyday items.”
Our media and elected Democrats have dismissed similar efforts like this as a Republican culture war. Except it’s not. NYC wants to reduce food-based emissions–including that of meat– by 33%. Scientific American says eating unquestionable plant-based meat will fight the climate crisis–a sentiment echoed by The Guardian, The Hill, Harvard University, and preservationist environment group Center for Biological Diversity, among many searchable public endorsements calling for red meat phaseouts.
Another concerning item is a petition circulating in Dubai calling to shut down U.S. natural gas production. Fox News reports a letter boasting the signature of Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) is the source of this effort.
"At COP26, the United States and 39 governments and institutions signed the Glasgow Statement, pledging to prioritize the clean energy transition and end new direct public support for the international fossil fuel sector by 2022," the letter states. "This is the very least we can do, considering that even existing production capacities already exceed the limits set by the Paris Agreement."
The report continued: “The letter further argues that while liquefied natural gas (LNG) — natural gas that has been cooled to enable easier transport — was originally looked to as a means to "tackle the consequences of the global energy crisis," additional LNG capacity is "not needed." Climate advocates have long opposed LNG and natural gas production since, when burned for power production, it produces greenhouse gas emissions.”
The letter, Fox adds, will be finalized and published during the conference in concert with the "Global Parliamentary Inquiry on the Progress of the Fossil Fuel Phase-out."
Natural gas is clean, affordable, and essential for daily life. It also ensures energy security and has lower emissions. No wonder why the decarboniser hates it.
The third concerning proposal is a new $250 billion fund called Alterra to fuel “smart” climate investments in the Global South. Alterra will be chaired by the aforementioned COP28 Chair, Sultan al-Jaber, who heads Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) as chief executive. CNBC reports the fund will “direct private markets towards climate investments,” emphasizing “energy transition, industrial decarbonization, and climate technology.” The host nation reportedly will pitch in $30 billion of that $250 billion amount.
This is in response to the oil and gas hub's criticism for leading climate talks at this year’s summit. Reports suggest the UAE is, ironically, using the annual climate conference to lobby for more oil and gas development deals.
Climate pledges do little to bolster the environment except for inviting energy insecurity and poverty while inviting lectures from eco-hypocrites who have big individual footprints.
Governments worldwide are greenlighting more fossil fuel production despite these flashy proclamations of going net-zero and pledging decarbonization. Perhaps it’s because renewables, even with subsidies and government backing, don’t power efficiently, are unreliable, and have a worse environmental footprint.
COP28 might be far away, but the impact could be felt here should these proposals be adopted.
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Why isn’t the media challenging the $60 trillion Net Zero cult?
Those who believe renewable energy will save the planet generally have very little understanding about what the apocalypse is meant to look like … or the engineering reality of the proposed solution.
This is not a criticism.
Climate Change is a political movement. The renewable transition is a collection of opaque policies and corporate deals negotiated in secret. Their failures are a matter for complex engineering reviews and guesswork.
Expecting anyone to understand something that has been deliberately blurred from public view is unfair.
Those who are curious enough to ask questions quickly discover that politicians have no idea what their policies mean in the real world. MPs and Senators struggle to make it through cover speeches written by their advisers, tripping over the big words and mumbling their way in and out of statistics that look fabricated or, at the very least, incomplete.
Net Zero 2050? ‘Decarbonisation’? They are bits of nonsense that look good on a campaign banner.
Political parties, mining companies, and tech firms are pilfering a fortune in public and private money to ‘do things’ that sound ‘green’ – almost all of which are damaging the environment. Is there proof that anything is truly ‘net zero’? No. ‘Carbon neutral’? That is gibberish. But no one asked for proof, so it doesn’t matter.
Where are, for example, the total costings of a wind farm over a 100-year period including ripping it out of the ground and re-building it every 25 years concealed under the feel-good heading ‘re-powering’? What about the construction and maintenance of transmissions lines, the building of the battery backup, and the replacement of that backup at least four times during the life of the wind farm? We haven’t seen that on any of Chris Bowen’s glossy press releases. His department did not include those costs when formulating the ‘cheap energy’ narrative. I am not suggesting that the Minister for Climate Change and Energy (notice the priority order in that title) is hiding the figures, I am suggesting the government has not bothered figuring them out.
Green-tinged governments were either too dumb or lazy to check the detail before signing over billions. They were bamboozled by pitch meetings given by a hungry private sector chasing a piece of the tens of trillions on offer in the energy transition. This negligence in duty is almost more depressing than conspiracy.
That said, the public are starting to realise that having their pristine landscapes draped in wires, blades, solar panels, and batteries is not the environmentally-friendly Utopia they were promised. The industrialisation of our beaches, rainforests, and oceans feels wrong. It looks wrong. It is wrong.
Under Chris Bowen and state Labor Premiers, Australia is vandalising its natural assets in service of backroom handshakes at international talk-fests – the purpose of which is to make money and empower dangerous foreign governments. Ask why mining companies would support a Net Zero ideology that pretends to hate the industry. Ask how much money these companies are making from publicly-funded grants for ‘green’ solutions. Ask how much the price of previously worthless minerals has increased now that they are used for the renewable industry. Ask how much they are making on Lithium with global government policy mandating the market create unsustainable demand. Ask who is making a fortune while pretending to close down… Ask who is keeping their fossil fuel and nuclear assets in the back pocket for a time when all this green zealotry runs out of belief… Ask who profits from your good will.
Australia’s soft-press is refusing to ask these meaningful questions or to risk embarrassing politicians either because they are incapable or, more likely, they want to protect their seat on the press bus (and clicks for their network).
Politicians and the press have developed a sick dependency on each other. Politicians are frightened of the press and the press has grown lazy and ideologically obedient. Yes, those of us who ask uncomfortable questions get quickly cut out of the media circuit and there is no requirement for politicians to suffer the indignity of a tricky interview.
Meanwhile, the independent press, who are at the door with claws and teeth, are held at bay by Silicon Valley tech giants who would prefer to work with the easily-manipulated status quo. Whenever they want another billion-dollar tech contract out of the government, they send memos to the press. It’s win-win-win for them.
Big Tech has teamed up with the Climate Change movement, expanding the pool of potential revenue upward of $60 trillion worldwide. When we take into account the money to be made from Big Pharma’s global health passports, Digital Identity, ‘smart’ cities, fake food, and 15-minute surveillance towns – the cookie jar of corporate sin expands beyond description.
The public asks why there is a consensus of lies and the answer is: money.
This money doesn’t belong to politicians – it belongs to us – and because there are no consequences for this lightweight political class, they are more than happy to wedge the door open for Silicon Valley in exchange for a friendly press and zero push-back to their mistakes thanks to ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ social media guidelines.
Look what happened during Covid. The press, including allegedly conservative-friendly media around the world, took money to promote Covid health policies and then quietly refused to openly acknowledge mounting safety concerns. They laughed at accusations of social media censorship instead of demanding the truth from the Department of Home Affairs which later had to acknowledge leaning on Facebook and Twitter to remove factual information that harmed government message of vaccine safety when those vaccines were later revealed to be as the public had warned – potentially dangerous.
This is not a functioning society. It is a democracy crumbling with the consent of those who see anything with the word ‘free’ as a risk.
During Covid, the public allowed their fear to hold them back from asking questions.
Now, when it comes to the Green Era, ‘virtue’ and embarrassment are playing the role of duct-tape.
Start asking questions.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/12/why-isnt-the-media-challenging-the-60-trillion-net-zero-cult
******************************************************Australian PM under pressure to lift nuclear ban from senior Labor, union figures
Senior Labor and union figures are pushing the Albanese government to lift the ban on nuclear energy to help shield jobs and achieve net zero emissions, as new polling reveals urban voters support cheaper and reliable energy supply ahead of the renewables rollout.
After Emmanuel Macron and former Labor minister Joel Fitzgibbon called on the government to remove prohibitions on nuclear energy at the COP28 summit, Australian Workers’ Union national secretary Paul Farrow said nuclear energy must be on the table to protect heavy industry.
Ahead of Chris Bowen flying to Dubai for the UN climate change conference on Wednesday, Mr Farrow said “if you really believe climate change is a crisis you should be open minded to every single emission reduction option on the table”.
The AWU national secretary, who in July replaced long-time nuclear energy advocate Daniel Walton, said it is “better for the planet if Australia makes steel and aluminium and glass than if those products are made in less regulated countries”.
“But if we want those industries to stay standing we need to accept that some combination of coal, gas or nuclear power is necessary. If nuclear power doesn’t stack up on cost today, that’s one thing. But objecting because of outdated twentieth century ideology is another,” Mr Farrow told The Australian.
“Right now Australia cannot sustain, let alone grow, its heavy industry sector on renewables alone. One day we’ll get there, but anyone serious will tell you that day is a fair way off.”
Mr Fitzgibbon, a former defence and agriculture minister who represented the coalmining electorate of Hunter for 26 years, said the nuclear ban “makes no sense” because every option should be considered.
As the Coalition ramps-up pressure on the government over its renewables-only focus, Mr Fitzgibbon said the world won’t meet its net zero emissions aspirations without installing more nuclear plants.
Another senior Labor figure, who didn’t want to speak publicly, said there was an inevitability in the science community that there’d be a public debate on the uses of nuclear energy, which was only accentuated by the AUKUS agreement.
Mr Fitzgibbon, who led pushback inside Labor ranks following the 2019 election to present a more realistic climate change plan, warned too much faith in a few favoured technologies was a “recipe for failure and economic harm”.
“On the question of whether Australia should also embrace nuclear generation, that should be a matter for the market. Therefore, the prohibition on nuclear generation in Australia should be lifted. It simply makes no sense and every electricity generation option should be readily available to us,” Mr Fitzgibbon said.
“Having said that, if the ban was lifted, it would be a long time – if ever – before we saw a nuclear generator in Australia. It’s hard enough to secure an approval for gas extraction, let alone for a nuclear plant.”
Jim Chalmers, a member of the AWU, rejected any push to lift the moratorium on nuclear power, saying the economics didn’t stack up.
“Nuclear energy doesn’t make sense for Australia, it doesn’t make economic sense and even if it did, it would take too long. We have remarkable advantages here – geological, geographical meteorological – and we need to maximise those advantages,” Dr Chalmers said.
“That means getting more renewable energy into the system so that we can get cleaner and cheaper energy, and broaden and deepen our industrial base.”
The Coalition for Conservation group is hosting Liberal and Nationals MPs and senators at COP28 including opposition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien, Bridget McKenzie, Kevin Hogan, David Gillespie, Dean Smith, Andrew Bragg and Perin Davey.
The fight over nuclear power comes as new CT Group polling testing climate change and energy sentiment in capital cities across the globe reveals a majority of Sydney and Melbourne voters support more investment in combating climate change. However, the poll found support plunged if monthly taxes increased by $15 or $100 per month.
The Global Energy Insights survey found urban voters in the two capital cities ranked keeping energy prices down (40 per cent) as the top priority ahead of keeping energy supply reliable (31 per cent) and transitioning to renewables (29 per cent). The poll showed a +6 favourability towards nuclear, well behind solar, wind and hydro.
CT Group Australia managing-director Catherine Douglas said “costs are the prism through which Australians are measuring everything at the moment”.
“While some segments of the community are advocating for extreme solutions or for government to back winners like nuclear, solar, or wind farms, what the electorate is looking for is a sensible transition to lower emissions energy supply,” Ms Douglas said.
“The business community and voters are of one mind on the need for a pragmatic approach that is not captive to special interests or extremist advocacy at either end of the debate.”
A US-led pledge on the COP28 sidelines to triple global nuclear capacity by 2050, which the government shunned, was endorsed by more than 20 countries. Of the 22 countries who joined the pledge, 18 have existing nuclear energy industries. Fourteen countries with nuclear energy industries, including Germany, did not sign the pledge.
Investor Group on Climate Change chief executive Rebecca Mikula-Wright, who represents super funds and investors managing more than $30tn in assets, said investors were looking for the least-cost pathways for decarbonisation. The IGCC chief said there was “no interest right now” among investors about using nuclear energy to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.
“Comparatively, nuclear has project time blowouts of anything from seven to 15+ years and cost blowouts in the 10s of billions. It just means that, as a technology, it is much further down the field when you’ve got the lowest cost technologies, renewables, batteries and so on, that are available to deploy now, that are more on budget and more on time comparatively than nuclear,” Ms Mikula-Wright said.
Peter Dutton said it was sensible for Australia to embrace nuclear energy just as other developed countries had done, labelling Mr Macron’s call to revoke the nuclear power ban “a cry of common sense”.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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