“Green” Is Unsustainable

August 1, 2022 — John Hinderaker 

The administration’s “green” energy proposals, like those that have been adopted in Europe, are leading this country toward an economic, social and strategic disaster. It is hard to think of any set of policies, adopted by any government at any moment in history, that rival our “green” mania for sheer destructiveness. Although, that said, Sri Lanka’s brief commitment to “sustainability” comes to mind. 

Speaking of sustainability, this piece by Stuart Gottlieb in today’s Wall Street Journal, titled “Biden’s Climate Plans Are Unsustainable,” makes some great points.

[T]he greatest threat to [environmental] progress—particularly in the critical realm of climate—comes not from such emerging mega-emitters as China and India, although they certainly play a role. It comes from the energy and climate initiatives promoted by the Biden White House, which are themselves unsustainable—so aggressive and unduly optimistic that they risk a backlash that would set back the cause of environmental sustainability for generations.

This is true for at least three reasons.

To begin with, the agenda is economically unsustainable. According to the federal Energy Information Administration, global demand for energy will rise nearly 50% by 2050, with fossil fuels still accounting for roughly 75% of world supply. Though many Democrats insist this simply proves the urgency of making the transition, there are no economic models showing how that could occur without causing massive harm to the underlying economy. A McKinsey & Co. report shows that achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 would require nearly $6 trillion in new spending globally every year for the next 30 years—roughly equal to one-third of all tax receipts by every government in the world.

My experience with energy-related studies by companies like McKinsey causes me to think that this estimate is probably low by a factor of several times, if not orders of magnitude. But McKinsey’s numbers are bad enough. It simply isn’t going to happen..............On energy, as on a number of other issues, the Democratic Party is on a collision course with reality. Call me an optimist, but throughout human history when ideology meets reality, reality generally wins................To Read More....