President Biden’s Climate Aspirations
Most of what the political class calls policies are really aspirations with no policy content. They are feel-good statements that promote goals most people would support, with no associated policies that would move toward those goals. The following is an example.
The White House’s web page for the National Climate Task Force (skip down to the section “President Biden’s Actions to Tackle the Climate Crisis”) lists emissions goals for 2030, 2035, and 2050, well after President Biden will have left office, even if he serves out a second term. These are aspirations and aspirations that would have to be met by his successors, letting the president off the accountability hook.
What prompted me to write about this subject was this article titled “Biden’s scaled-back power rule raises doubts over US climate target,” which reports on an actual policy. The Biden administration has decided to exclude natural gas power plants from upcoming emissions standards.
The key point in this example is that the president’s actual policy works against the president’s stated goals.
Further down, the website lists the Biden administration’s accomplishments toward fulfilling his climate aspirations. They include a record number of electric vehicles and charging stations, new solar and wind projects, and supporting domestic manufacturing of clean energy technologies.
Those may be good things, but they are things the private sector is doing. “Support” isn’t a policy; it’s an attempt to take political credit for private sector action. If these things count as accomplishments, they are private sector accomplishments, not Biden administration accomplishments.
The website also credits the Biden administration for finalizing the strongest vehicle emissions standards in American history and proposing more robust standards for greenhouse gas and air pollution emissions. Those are not policies; they are aspirations. Should those aspirations be realized, it will be because the private sector has figured out how to reduce its emissions.
As the political season ramps up this year, notice that the “policies” that politicians will propose are not really policies at all; they are aspirations. They say, “Here are some good things I would like to accomplish if I am elected,” but they don’t say how they intend to accomplish them. They amount to feel-good slogans rather than actual public policies.
Most people will be in favor of mitigating climate change, reducing crime, securing the border, and reducing the budget deficit. Those are feel-good aspirations. Fewer people will favor specific policies aimed at realizing those aspirations. That’s why politicians talk about aspirations rather than specific policies. That’s also why those aspirations often fail to be realized.
The aspirations are popular; the policies to accomplish them are less so. That’s why the Biden administration is enacting a policy that works against his own stated goals.
https://blog.independent.org/2024/03/05/president-bidens-climate-aspirations/
**************************************************UK: Net Zero an urgent threat to national security
A new paper from Net Zero Watch makes a comprehensive case that efforts to decarbonise the steel and electricity fundamentals of the economy now represent a real and present danger to national security.
In an important intervention, Sir Gerald Howarth, Minister for International Security Strategy under David Cameron, says in the paper’s foreword:
“Our adversaries are watching us like hawks, so let us leave them in no doubt: we are rearming and rebuilding, and Net Zero is firmly on hold.”
Professor Gwythian Prins, a defence expert and one of the paper’s authors, agrees that with the recent deterioration of the world's security situation, luxury beliefs such as Net Zero must be jettisoned as a matter of urgency:
“This is the moment when the music stops. The Port Talbot closure harshly exposes the costs of luxury ‘green’ beliefs. We cannot be dependent on imports for the full range of necessary steels to rebuild our arsenals – the Navy first and foremost – and, most ridiculously, we cannot depend for them on our global antagonists."
"Furthermore, our armed forces are wholly dependent on oil to keep them in the field, and our electricity grid will collapse without gas. Any attempt to abandon them will leave us entirely at the mercy of hostile powers."
The paper also includes contributions from Gautam Kalghatgi, a professor of combustion and energy engineering, who ridicules plans to decarbonise the armed forces through use of batteries and biofuels, and the historian Guy de la Bédoyère, who sets out the eternal historical lesson that technological laggards usually end up the victims of conquest by their more advanced neighbours.
Mr de la Bédoyère said:
“It is impossible to diminish the effectiveness of a nation’s armed forces without making it a sitting duck for a more ambitious rival’s greed. But that’s exactly what our leaders seem to want to do.”
Andrew Montford, director of Net Zero Watch said:
“The three contributors make it clear that Net Zero is leaving us at the mercy of hostile powers. A Net Zero army and a Net Zero economy could both be brought to their knees in a matter of days. In these dangerous times, our politicians must re-order their priorities.”
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Population is not being told the true cost of Net Zero, warns former World Bank economist
Squeezing domestic consumption, in other words making the already squeezed poor even poorer by removing all their remaining luxuries in life (older cars, cheap foreign holidays, meat), is the only realistic way to fund the enormous sums required for the Net Zero energy transition.
Bankrupt, blackout Britain where the ever-expanding ranks of the poor get clobbered, open borders place intolerable burdens on public spending and services, the rich spivs get richer backing heavily-subsidised energy white elephants – and those of a certain age look back to the good old days of the 1970s. That isn’t quite how Professor Gordon Hughes spells it out in his excellent new report that crunches the energy transition numbers of the collectivist Net Zero project, but it might be considered a fair summation of reading between the lines.
The insanity of Net Zero becomes clearer by the day. The idea that hydrocarbons – a natural resource whose use from medicines to reliable energy is ubiquitous in modern industrial society – can be removed within less than 30 years is ridiculous. In his report published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Professor Hughes concerns himself with the transition from hydrocarbons to ‘green’ technologies such as wind and solar. Forget all the politically-inspired low-ball figures of transition, he is suggesting. Looking at you, Climate Change Committee. It is likely that the amount of new investment needed for the transition will be a minimum of 5% of gross domestic product for the next 20 years, and might exceed 7.5%. Gordon Hughes is a former World Bank economist, and is Professor of Economics at the University of Edinburgh.
There is no chance of borrowing such an “astronomical” amount, notes Hughes, and the only viable way to raise the cash for new capital expenditure would be a two decades-long reduction in private consumption of up to 10%. “Such a shock has never occurred in the last century outside war, and even then never for more than a decade,” he notes.
Recent polling in the U.S. has shown that the desire of a majority of citizens to pay for Net Zero barely stretches to more than the ‘chump’ change in their back pockets. “Commitment to the energy transition is a classic ‘luxury belief’ held most strongly by those who are sufficiently well-off not to worry about the costs… Indeed at least some of those who promote the transition most strongly are among those who expect to gain from the business opportunities.” On this latter point, Hughes was possibly recalling the recent activities of rising media star Dale Vince (£110 million in wind subsidies to date, and counting).
Politicians sometimes blather about the pioneering role taken by European countries in Net Zero. Hughes points out that leaders in China and India are not fools. “Posturing about targets that are patently not achievable and might be economically ruinous is unlikely to convince anyone, although most will be too polite to point this out,” he observed.
Writing a foreword, Lord Frost identified a make-believe world inhabited by Net Zero proponents where it is claimed costs will magically come down, new technologies will somehow be invented and promised green growth will pay for everything. “But they never give any evidence for believing this – and, where we can check what they say, for example in the real costs of wind power, we can see that these cost reductions are simply not happening,” he said.
On the immigration front, Hughes notes a 1% increase in the British population every year. He notes that 4% of GDP must be invested every year in new (not replacement) capital per head. Of course nothing like this is being spent and capital per head is falling rapidly. “Just maintaining the amounts of capital per head will eat up an amount of investment equivalent to that required for the energy transition,” he states.
Squeezing domestic consumption, in other words making the already squeezed poor even poorer by removing all their remaining luxuries in life (older cars, cheap foreign holidays, meat), is the only realistic way to fund the enormous sums required for the Net Zero energy transition.
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Australian conservative opposition Confirms It Will Develop 6 Nuclear Power Sites
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has confirmed the Coalition’s energy policy—expected to be released ahead of the federal budget in May—will probably include six nuclear plant sites.
While he has yet to name the exact locations, Tasmania has been ruled out as a potential host state. It’s considered likely that the reactors would be built on the sites of old coal stations to take advantage of existing transmission infrastructure.
This means the Labor-held seat of Hunter, the independent seat of Calare, and Coalition-held Flynn, Maranoa, O’Connor, and Gippsland may be all on the shortlist for nuclear power stations.
At the Australian Financial Review Business Summit in Sydney on March 12, Mr. Dutton said the Coalition would encourage nearby communities to accept the plants by offering them subsidised energy—a model he said was used in the United States. He told the audience that it would also provide an incentive for the industry to establish jobs.
“Nuclear is the only proven technology which emits zero emission and firms up renewables,” he said.
The opposition’s position comes as modelling on Australia’s net zero transition estimates the country will need to invest hundreds of billions, and even trillions, to fully reduce emissions.
The tremendous cost stems from the widescale investment in wind turbines, solar panels, batteries, and pumped hydro (where available), but also into transmission infrastructure, as well as electrification of public transport networks and private vehicles (buying EVs instead of regular cars).
Nuclear Detractors Also Point to Cost
Energy experts say it’s difficult to estimate the cost of transitioning to nuclear, given the technology is not currently commercially available.
But during the speech, Mr. Dutton dismissed what he described as “straw man arguments” against nuclear, including cost.
“Australia’s energy mix is about 21 percent gas, 47 per cent coal, and 32 percent renewables. Ontario province in Canada is about 5 percent gas, 35 percent renewables, and 60 percent nuclear. South Korea is about 30 percent gas, 30 percent coal, and 30 percent nuclear, with the balance mainly hydro … Australians pay almost double what Ontario and South Korean residents pay,” he said.
He said reactors produce a “small amount of waste” and said the government had already signed up to deal with nuclear waste via the AUKUS agreement.
The Australian Radioactive Waste Agency (ARWA) found there were 2,061 cubic metres of intermediate-level waste in 2021, compared to 1,771 cubic metres in 2018. It projects 4,377 cubic metres in the next 50 years, compared to 3,734 cubic metres projected in 2018.
Intermediate-level waste is produced in nuclear medicine—for example, imaging, scanning and radiotherapy.
Currently, the waste is stored in more than 100 places, but most of it is held at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) facilities in Lucas Heights, Sydney.
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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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