“Big Oil has been lying to us,” Governor Gavin Newsom asserted, “covering up” facts about “wildfires wiping out entire communities, toxic smoke clogging our air [and] deadly heat waves.”
This stuff belongs on Saturday Night Live. The references to “wildfires” has been debunked as, globally, wildfires have been declining. U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports America is currently is undergoing its longest period in recorded history with less than 40 percent of the country experiencing “very dry” conditions. Analysts have likewise eviscerated the false hype about hurricanes and the endless, ridiculous attempts to link every calamity to “manmade climate change.”
No, what Newsom is doing has little to do with addressing an abbreviation labeled “CO2.” It’s more like “CYA”. Sadly, it’s become the first and last resort for slick politicians who want to avoid accountability for their incompetence and abysmal failures to protect their constituents from natural disasters. Governor Newsom is a consummate practitioner of misdirection and deception.
But people are still being conned by politicians like him into believing that virtue-signaling actions in their home, city, state or even country can somehow offset the monumental greenhouse gas emissions from China, India and other rapidly modernizing nations – and that wind, solar and battery power will somehow save Planet Earth.
Here are some cold, hard facts that activists and politicians have been hiding.
* Green energy is not Green. Replacing coal, gas and nuclear power requires hundreds of thousands of wind turbines, millions of solar panels, millions of battery modules and tens of thousands of miles of new transmission lines, sprawling across wildlife habitats, croplands, scenic areas and coastal vistas. Mining, ore processing and manufacturing to build those systems is increasingly done overseas, employing zero to minimal environmental standards. Such operations are powered by fossil fuels and discharge mammoth amounts of toxic pollutants into local air and water. Most worn out, damaged and obsolete “green energy” equipment cannot be recycled. It will be dumped in enormous landfills, in somebody’s backyard, and could leach toxic chemicals into soil and water.
* “Renewables” are not “carbon free.” Solar panels, batteries and wind turbines must be fabricated, and this requires enormous uses of fossil-fuel energy for mining, processing and manufacturing. While such emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases may be spewed far from California and America, and thus out of the sight of virtue signaling liberals, they still go into the global atmosphere.
* “Renewables” are the antithesis of fair, equitable and just. Solar and wind energy tend to jack up rates wherever they’re widely implemented, and experts acknowledge their widescale use will cost 2-3 times what we’re paying today. Such hikes, naturally, hit those on fixed and limited incomes much harder than they do on the rich. Further, the minerals and components of Green energy are typically garnered overseas, chiefly in China, Africa and Latin America. What this means is that it will be on the backs of poor Asians, Blacks and Hispanics to provide the low cost, cheap labor that will drive a “Green revolution” – to include any potential child and slave labor.
* “Renewables” are intermittent and unreliable. Wind facilities only generate their stated output about 30-40 percent of the time. Solar units typically only kick in 25% of their purported “capacity factor.” That means backup energy must be provided for the other 60-75% percent of the time they’re napping. Huge battery modules could help provide power during the lengthy gaps in wind and solar electricity generation; stabilize our increasingly complex, overstressed and fragile grid; and reduce recurrent blackouts. But they would cost $23-293 trillion – before we are forced to go all-electric. Home, neighborhood, state and national electric systems and grids will have to be upgraded to handle the massively increased loads. That will cost trillions more.
Climate activists like Gov. Newsom claim they’re devoted to transparency. They want oil companies and manufacturers to publicly disclose all greenhouse gas and other emissions associated with their products. But it is clear, they’re simply blowing smoke.
If they were truly and sincerely interested in transparency and addressing a “climate crisis” they would also insist that solar and wind “green” energy systems – and companies that make, install or operate them – disclose all their emissions, environmental, and human rights impacts as well.
But they don’t. And when they’re confronted as to “why” they don’t by activists opposing renewable projects in communities across the nation … the only sound heard is crickets.
