Showdown at the UN COP 28 Corral

November 28th, 2023|11 Comments By Duggan Flanakin,

“It ain’t over till it’s over.” – Yogi BerraOr is it?

According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the world has maybe five years to avoid “potentially irreversible effects on the global climate system.” The British bearer of bad news, The Guardian, warns that “the window is closing.” [It may well be on the global power structure’s stranglehold on energy policy.]

If global average surface temperature exceeds 1.5ͦ C above pre-industrial levels and is not quickly reversed, they claim it “could” unleash the collapse of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, the abrupt melting of permafrost, rising sea levels, and bleaching coral reefs – and, if you believe Al Gore, the submersion of the Statue of Liberty.

Six months ago, Alok Sharma, who led the COP 26 talks in Glasgow, said, “COP 28 must deliver strengthened emissions reduction targets and a commitment to peak global emissions by 2025.”

China’s and India’s response was to build more coal-fired power plants to provide energy for their burgeoning industrial, commercial, military, and consumer sectors. There is absolutely no path to “net zero” so long as the world’s two most populous nations smirk at the multi-billionaire fear-mongers in the West.

African leaders in government and industry are focused on the 600 million Africans lacking any access to electricity. They scoff at grotesque demands from rich nations to abandon their effort to follow the West, the Pacific Rim, and other nations in utilizing fossil fuel resources to build a prosperous society.

Growing resistance to the dystopian visions of the global elites may truly mean that COP 28 is their “Custer’s last stand” against the “barbarians” who (in their eyes) are unwilling to submit to a Panem-style society in which elites get richer and everyone else gets poorer.

Rumblings against zero-emission vehicle mandates, expressed by drivers and automakers, have prompted serious challenges to the globalist demand for decarbonization (humans are “carbon units” – Soylent green was people) in the oddest places.

Perhaps it began with Giorgia Meloni’s victory in Italy a year ago. In June, Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party candidate Robert Sesselmann became the first AfD district administrator for a German city; the party gained more victories in October by continuing to attack the Green Party’s climate stance. [The Guardian had “warned” this was coming three years ago.]

Two elections in November shocked the climate world and threw a huge monkey wrench into their grandiose plans for seizing control of agriculture (in favor of laboratory-created “meat” and insects) and shutting down industries.

In the Netherlands, the government’s plans to seize thousands of farms led to an election victory for Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party, which opposes much of the climate agenda. The result “has left climate activists fearful of a drastic shift to fossil fuels and a rollback of climate policies” if Wilders is able to form a government.

Newly elected (by a landslide) Argentine President Javier Milei has promised to “turbocharge” his nation’s oil and gas industry. He named energy executive Horacio Marin to bolster the state-owned oil company YPF with the goal of returning the company to private ownership down the road. The Argentine government needs oil and gas revenues to turn around an economy ruined under socialist governance.

The bad news for the climatocracy gets worse. In Canada, the pro-energy Conservative Party, led by Alberta’s Pierre Poilievre, is up 14 points over Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals. Poilievre wants to eliminate Canada’s federal carbon tax and deep-six the nation’s Impact Assessment Act (a federal environmental law).

And then there is the 2024 race for President of the United States – which could bring about a flipflop of President Biden’s radical “net zero” agenda and its plans to eliminate gasoline vehicles, appliances, and tools and cede the nation’s economic future to Chinese benevolence.

Failed Presidential candidates Al Gore and John F. Kerry, now Biden’s “climate envoy,” led the U.S. campaign for climate surrender (a campaign that has made Al Gore a very wealthy man).

Kerry plans to tout nuclear fusion as an emerging global “climate solution,” but Axios notes “there’s a long and uncertain scientific, technical, and financial road to commercializing” fusion. Axios also says that while UN Secretary Antonio Guterres wants a path to ending fossil fuels, Kerry “is more cautious.”

Private citizen Gore has already expressed doubt that his preferred agenda will be adopted at COP 28, blaming the likely “failure” on the appointment of Sultan al-Jaber, CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, as its president. “We’ve got to get these lobbyists out of the way,” Gore said in September at the Moral Money Summit Americas.

[Is it “moral” to forcibly prevent people from the cheap energy they need to thrive?]

All this really means is that Gore has set up al-Jaber as the boogeyman for any failure to extract more billions for climate hucksters from an unwilling yet oblivious public.

But that’s tomorrow’s climate catastrophe.

Meanwhile, Dubai waits for the party to begin.

Later this week, heads of state (but not Joe Biden) will gather for the World Climate Action Summit (WCAS) to deliver their national climate statements and pose for photos and interviews about how important fancy dinners and five-star hotels (and private jets) are to the charade.

Conference sessions begin today (November 28) with a two-day “Global conference on gender and environmental data,” led by “commitment makers” of the Feminist Action for Climate Justice Action Coalition and the Gender Environment Data Alliance – and various others.

Other sessions at the conference, which formally ends on December 12, cover such topics as “blockchain’s potential and responsible implementation,” “transforming climate finance,” using artificial intelligence and public-private partnerships to improve climate decision-making, the role of technology and AI in the fight against climate change, “how entrepreneurs are the climate heroes we need,” and “youth and education – the latent force of climate action.”

Then there’s our favorite, just for “leaders” – “Transforming food systems in the face of climate change.” The official brochure states the IPCC’s view that “action on agriculture and food systems” are “key to an effective global climate change response. This event will bring the global food community together in a unified expression of collective action.”

[Presumably, speakers will include Frans Timmermans, the European Green Deal Commission’s executive vice president (whose Dutch Labour Party just got smacked), and Irish Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue, whose “proposal” for a “voluntary” dairy reduction scheme (killing up to 200,000 Irish cattle) was condemned by Elon Musk and many Irish farmers.

There are no sessions on feeding a hungry world, preventing climate-destructive wars and acts of arson, or making reliable electricity at affordable prices universally. There are no sessions on how to minimize any negative economic impacts, including restrictions on home ownership (which builds equity that can finance entrepreneurial activities) and travel.

The entire event appears to focus on how the elites can maintain total control over the world’s wealth, its people, and the planet’s natural resources. They claim they are “saving the Earth”, but their true goal requires sacrificing its people not to “save the Earth” (which, as an inanimate object, hardly needs “saving”) but to protect their wealth and power.

Trouble is, people from Argentina to Amsterdam are figuring this out – and they are mad. And they are getting organized. The time is near for a showdown at the COP 28 corral – and for a final reckoning on whether the elites – or the people – will win this war.

 

Climate Enron may be heading for a crash

By Duggan Flanakin  November 18th, 2023 @ CFACT

The modern American version of “the environmental emperor has no clothes” until now has been the rise and fall of Enron. As former Ken Lay speechwriter Robert Bradley, Jr., says, “(T)he cause of Enron’s financial bankruptcy were at root philosophical…. Enron’s leaders were certainly engaged in massive philosophical fraud – an attempt to cheat reality itself.”

For years, Enron was hailed as one of the most forward-thinking corporations, and Lay, its founder and CEO, was a man in great demand. During his 13-year tenure that ended with a bang in 2021, Lay collected over $220 million in cash and company stock, and just months before “the largest bankruptcy in America” (at that time), Lay gave five presentations at the 2001 World Economic Forum meeting in Davos.

As Bradley, now the CEO of the Institute for Economic Research, recounts, Lay was the salesman promoting a business model developed by Jeffrey Skilling, who Lay had brought on as chief operating officer. In Skilling’s “mark-to-market” accounting, anticipated future profits from any deal were accounted for by estimating their present value rather than historical cost. Thus, argued Skilling, Enron did not really need “assets.”

It just needed connections.

And that was Lay’s special skill. His idea was to embrace a “revolution always” business philosophy, which Bradley called “a perpetual search for the first-mover advantage.” To that end, he became all things to all people, winning favor from Republicans, Democrats, environmentalists, minorities, and business leaders. His “illusion-making,” in effect, created a smokescreen so strong that nearly everyone was caught by surprise when the bubble burst.

Today, the collapse of FTX and the recent criminal conviction of founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (who is facing a lifetime behind bars) bring Enron, Skilling, and Lay to mind. But, despite the magnitude of SBF’s fraud, it pales in comparison to the ongoing fraud being perpetrated mostly on America and its Western allies in the name of “climate change.”

A bit like FTX, but unlike Enron, there are plenty of warning signs that the “Green Revolution” is about to come tumbling down and its loudest advocates brought to account. The main thing keeping the mirages afloat today is the massive egos and their investments in folly that may leave them going down with the ship.

While the “Green Revolution” has been underway for decades, it is the Biden Administration that has imposed mandates, attacked popular energy sources and transportation options, and waged war against traditional industrial development. Europeans and states like California had earlier imposed their own mandates with supposedly “hard” deadlines for abolishing the use of oil, natural gas, coal, and every tool or vehicle that uses them.

The green war on fossil fuels, as fleshed out in the “Net Zero” campaign, is perhaps history’s greatest example of philosophical fraud.

“To dream the impossible dream” and turn it into reality would mean sacrificing an estimated 6,000 useful products that rely on byproducts from crude oil refineries – products that range from asphalt for highways to fertilizers, cosmetics, synthetic rubber, medicines and medical devices, cleaning products, plastics, and so many more. The 3 billion who live without the benefits fossil fuels have provided are also the poorest, sickest, and most vulnerable humans on the planet.

Cracks are already developing in the “Net Zero” world, what with countries backing away from the mandates they so recently touted while marching around like peacocks in mating season. In March, the European Union reached an agreement with Germany to formally back away from its total ban on internal combustion engines in 2035.

Still, 30 countries are signatories to the Glasgow Declaration that would force all vehicles sold by 2040 to have zero carbon dioxide emissions, and 21 others have crafted plans to ban new ICE vehicle sales earlier than 2040. Dozens of major cities and states, most notably California and the California clone states, intend to disallow new ICE vehicles by 2035.

Several problems stand in the way of their utopian dream. Even EV advocates are now admitting the “EV-olution” has to overcome “serious issues” — like the use of child labor in lithium mining, the woefully inadequate EV charging infrastructure, and an unprepared power grid. Yet the biggest obstacle is that a majority of the Earth’s people object to having EVs – or heat pumps, or electric stoves, and so on — shoved down their throats.

EVs may be fine for short-trip urban travel but not for construction equipment, airplanes, or even urban buses, as evidenced by the recent horrific scene in San Francisco when a Google-operated electric bus lost power and slid backward downhill into nine vehicles. Today’s EVs are wholly impractical for mountain and prairie residents or others making long trips (worse with children).

Like Ken Lay with Enron, the Green Revolution has relied heavily on government subsidies and a “revolution always” business philosophy aimed at making pariahs of anyone who dares oppose the grandiose – but fatally flawed – plan.

During the Obama Administration, Solyndra went under despite a $535 million government-guaranteed loan, none of which was paid back. Forbes, citing OpenTheBooks.com, noted that taxpayers were left holding the notes for $400 million given to Abound Solar, $280 million wasted by CaliSolar, $193 million doled out to Fisker Automotive (with another $336 million canceled), and $132 million to A123 Systems (a failed battery maker).

Undaunted, the Biden Administration’s $2.3 trillion “jobs” package was rife with more subsidies for technologies that, by their own admission, are unsustainable. Yet despite all the free money, Ford, General Motors, and many other automakers are backing away from multibillion-dollar investments in new EV factories as new EV sales have slowed despite increased rebates.

Ford in March projected a loss of $3 billion on electric vehicles in 2023, offsetting profits of as much as $14 billion from its other divisions. Ford also admitted losses of $900 million in 2021 and $2.1 billion in 2022 in its EV division. Ford and GM believe their EV fortunes will turn around by 2025, but those rosy scenarios seem wholly dependent upon Biden (or an even “greener” Democrat) winning the White House next November.

Even with a Green win in 2024, reality will still bite the EV dream. China has been quietly moving toward total dominance in the global EV marketplace – largely because it controls the lithium battery market. Financial Times wrote in September that China is so far ahead in the EV market that its competitors are trailing in the dust.

Biden’s reliance on huge subsidies to underwrite the “Green Revolution” has brought soaring inflation to the U.S. that is taking away purchasing power faster than it can increase subsidies and Mafia-style “incentives” (you will buy what we want you to buy, or else!).

Lay died of a heart attack shortly after his trial, leaving behind “a legacy of shame” characterized by “mismanagement and dishonesty” that led Politico to rank him as the third-worst American CEO of all time.

America’s doddering President Biden, now facing pre-impeachment hearings for other alleged mistakes, may not live to see his name smeared as Lay’s once was. But does anyone truly believe Biden is calling all the shots here?

Who will, then, get the blame if America’s forced march to EV subservience to Xi’s China brings an end to America’s hegemony on the world stage?

This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy

The climate war is over: China won

Duggan Flanakin October 10th, 2023 @ CFACT

Michael Mann, creator of the debunked hockey stick graph, in 2021 published a book entitled The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet. His thesis was that climate-altering fossil fuel companies, right-wing plutocrats, and petrostates are the enemies of humanity and (by omission) that nature has no significant role in climate change.

Mann’s thesis seems to be that an army of activists who condemn the Industrial Revolution can defeat the desires of Chinese, Russian, Indian, and pan-African people who want the benefits from using fossil fuels and create a utopian world powered solely by renewable energy.

This thesis does not hold up.

But let’s start with the first premise – that the desires of billions of people for cheap energy can be fully supplied by 2050 using only wind, solar, and geothermal (but not nuclear or hydro). It implies that all nations are ready, willing, and able to stop jockeying for power and influence and gather around the Maypole to sing Kum-Ba-Yah.

Mann must otherwise want us to believe a majority of Earth’s people are so concerned about the long-term future of the planet that they will willingly forego cheap energy, affordable housing, and the freedom to travel and even depopulate an overcrowded–by green standards–world.

For decades, European and American (and dependent) governments have paid lip service and even enacted economy-crippling laws and mandates to placate the Michael Manns of the world. The rich can always afford, it seems, to dabble in fads or impose mandates on others that do not really affect their lives at all. We saw plenty of that during the COVID pandemic.

But the worldwide revolt against this foolishness will very likely only grow larger as people awaken to the fact that real wars continue, with devastating consequences. People may realize that not every hurricane, rainstorm, or lightning strike is their fault. They may believe food, clothing, and shelter are much more important than bowing to the whims of naysayers – and to the Chinese.

The European revolt may have started in Italy with the election of Giorgia Meloni as Prime Minister. Her Brothers of Italy party still agrees to “combat the threat of climate change,” but adds the heretical comment that, “We will not achieve these aims by harming the economy or through an exclusively state-led approach. We need to harness the expertise and creativity of businesses and entrepreneurs,” the very people Mann blames.

For the first time in recent memory, there are political debates in Germany, the United Kingdom, and even France, and politicians are toning down their frenetic drive toward energy poverty and political irrelevance.

While Chancellor Olaf Scholz in May announced Germany would contribute 2 billion euros of taxpayer money to the Green Climate Fund, by July, the headlines were that he was “squeezing environmentalists out of his government.”

Meanwhile, the Christian Social Union/Christian Democratic Union alliance led by Friedrich Merz has made “fighting the environmental agenda” its top priority. Recent elections in Hesse and Bavaria saw populist parties take seats away from Scholz’s Social Democrats and his Green and Free Democrat coalition partners. Ordinary Germans are voting against the climate war.

In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak just “tore up” the Tory strategy for meeting UN- and EU-mandated climate targets by rolling back several pro-green measures, including bans on petrol and diesel vehicles and new gas boilers. Many believe Rishi acted to counter the Labour Party, which remains committed to green radicalism, and win votes from economy-minded Britons.

Sunak, whose move was criticized by fellow Tories, says his nation is “stuck between two extremes” on the climate issue. “If we continue down this path,” he said, “we risk losing the consent of the British people.”

French President Emmanuel Macron earlier this year called for a moratorium on new environmental regulations and just last month argued that the “green transition” should focus on providing incentives rather than imposing outright obligations. “We want an ecology that is accessible and fair, an ecology that leaves no one without a solution,” and not punitive, he added.

Still, France, like most other European nations, is committing billions of euros to various climate initiatives and still exerting pressure on companies and individuals to purchase unwanted heat pumps to replace oil- and gas-fired boilers.

In the U.S., President Joe Biden early on proclaimed climate change as the nation’s greatest threat, and even after Russia invaded Ukraine, Biden declared that global warming is “the single most existential threat to humanity we have ever faced, including nuclear weapons.” That his policies still reflect that strange position is evidenced by his cancellation in September of oil and gas leases in Alaska and offshore.

While his European counterparts stray from dogma, Biden — like a Moses held up on each side by John Kerry and Al Gore — is standing firm. But despite the posturing, even a diminished Biden ought to know the climate war is over.

China won.

Yet China’s massive victory, punctuated by its commitment to coal for its own economy and to controlling the market for almost all the components for renewable energy deployment, may well be pyrrhic, as its economy teeters on collapse.

The Diplomat reports that exports from China fell by an unprecedented 14.5 percent year-on-year in July 2023, while imports also fell by 12.4 percent – the worst performance since the onset of the COVID pandemic in February 2020.

Chinese industrial production rose by only 3.7 percent in July (from July 2022), and China’s retail sector growth was just 2.5 percent. Youth unemployment in China was estimated at 21.3 percent, and the Hong Kong stock market index had fallen by 20 percent since January. Even China’s housing market was stagnant.

China’s economic woes, however, have not slowed its massive military buildup to an official defense budget in 2022 of $230 billion but unofficially $60 billion higher. China’s military budget grew about 10 percent a year from 2000 through 2016 and has remained at about 7 percent annual growth since then.

The Chinese have long claimed hegemony over the entire South China Sea and lands bordering the sea, a position disputed by almost all its neighbors. Artificial islands and military installations in the South China Sea threaten trade routes used by Taiwan, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, India, and Australia.

Treating China as an ally (and savior) in the climate war has left U.S. politicians blind to any Chinese threat, and, according to experts, has left the U.S. and its allies increasingly powerless to deny and suppress future Chinese aggression in East Asia.

A recent article in Foreign Policy states that “technology diffusion, growing global challenges, and antiquated force design have eroded the United States’ military edge against China.” China today has the world’s largest navy, army, rocket force, civilian fleet, and industrial base – that builds new ships and missiles at more than twice the U.S. pace.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is bogged down in Ukraine, and Iran-supported Hamas just started a war with Israel. With climate, not defense or containment, as the U.S. focus, China is free to roam.

Only the foolish would ignore the urgent to focus on the mirage of importance now placed on punishing both the West and 600 million Africans without electricity by dancing to Mann’s tune.

A version of this article originally appeared at Town Hall

Author

 

Duggan Flanakin is a Senior Policy Analyst with the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow. A former Senior Fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Mr. Flanakin authored definitive works on the creation of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and on environmental education in Texas. A brief history of his multifaceted career appears in his book, "Infinite Galaxies: Poems from the Dugout."

The U.S. and UK are getting coal cocked

By Duggan Flanakin September 12th, 2023 94 Comments @ CFACT

Some Western nations appear to be waking up to the reality that they are being duped – that Net Zero is a fabrication of their own egos that other nations hardly take seriously. Just don’t count on the world’s two leading English-speaking nations, or the plutocrats in Paris, Geneva, and Davos, to follow suit. They still talk as if they still control the unfolding of world affairs.

Just last year, for example, a German company demolished an aging wind farm to expand a coal mine. To the BBC’s chagrin, Australia, too, continues to rely on its coal industry for much-needed jobs and revenues.

Yet the modern-day utopians in the U.S. and the UK still cling to the myth that emerging superpower nations like China, India, and Russia will bow before the World Economic Forum and United Nations grifters.

The BBC calls Australia “a stark outlier … in a world racing to reduce pollution.” They squawk that China, “along with G7 rich nations,” has made the Net Zero by 2050 pledge – despite watching China and many other nations dramatically increase their reliance on coal energy.

The BBC ignores the fact that global coal consumption has nearly doubled since 1998. Consumption jumped from 94.9 exajoules (3.24 billion tonnes) in 1998 to 150.4 exajoules 5.15 billion tonnes) in 2010 to a record high 8 billion tonnes in 2022.

China has doubled consumption from 1.5 billion tonnes in 2002 to more than 3 billion tonnes in 2022 (officially, but surely higher now). Coal consumption in India has skyrocketed, rising from 240 million tonnes in 2007 to 906 million tonnes in 2021.

China in the first half of 2023 started construction on 37 gigawtts of new coal power capacity, issued permits for another 52 GW, and announced the revival of 49 GW. China now has added 243 GW of new coal power, increasing capacity by up to 33% since January 2022.

India in 2022 reopened more than 100 coal mines to meet the growing demand for coal energy. Again this year India stepped up coal production to stop outages caused by lower hydropower output due to an ongoing drought. India has failed to meet its Paris Agreement goals for renewable energy, as coal in August provided three-quarters of the nation’s electricity.

Meanwhile, the U.S. consumed just 495 million tonnes of coal in 2021, down from a record 1,127 million tonnes in 2007. The major decrease began with President Obama’s pledge to bankrupt the U.S. coal industry. As House Natural Resources Committee chair Rep. Doc Hastings (R, WA) said in 2012, Obama “tried at every turn to make that goal a reality.”

As Hastings put it, the Obama Administration rescinded the 2008 Stream Buffer Zone Rule, entered into a consent agreement with environmental groups spent millions of taxpayer dollars to rewrite the rule, attempted to manipulate data to conceal its economic impact, and hid the final rule from the public until after the 2012 election.

China and India were exempted from having to cut carbon dioxide emissions both under the failed 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the 2016 Paris Agreement.  Grist claimed it was only fair for “the fattest man at the table” to be lenient with “hungry” nations “upon realizing that the food is running out.”

While the U.S. Senate rejected the Kyoto Protocol, the Senate never got to vote on the Paris Agreement. President Biden has doubled down on Obama’s pledge to make coal as much a pariah in the U.S. as it is in the UK.

Just a year ago, President Biden claimed coal plants in the U.S. were “too expensive to operate” – though he did not add, “because of President Obama’s egregious regulations.” He promised that “we’re going to be shutting these plants down all across America” and rely on increasingly expensive, intermittent wind and solar electricity.

U.S. coal production is also being hindered as Western U.S. ports seek to ban coal exports. Just since 2010, nine proposals that would have added 133 million tonnes of annual coal-handling capacity in the Pacific Northwest have been canceled. This has dealt major blows to coal mining operations and the economies in states like Utah, Montana, and Wyoming.

Just last year, the city of Oakland blocked a plan to ship low-sulfur Utah coal to Japan via a bulk terminal on the San Francisco Bay. The Utah Legislature had set aside $53 million to invest in terminal development. Utah coal is still shipped from three other California ports despite growing local opposition to any handling of coal.

To fill the void, Russia is ramping up coal production, with a goal of 668 million tonnes per year by 2035 – up from 441 million tonnes in 2019. Coal production had already risen 30% from 2011 to 2021.

A significant project upgrading operations at the 2.2 billion tonne deposit of coal in the Siberian town of Elga, which is covered by snow up to 9 months a year. According to Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, “Growth prospects are primarily related to the growing market of the Asia-Pacific region.”

Indonesia, on pace to be the world’s fourth-largest economy by 2045, is building 19 gigawatts of new coal plant capacity, two-thirds of which will power nickel, cobalt, and aluminum smelters. The Jakarta government plans to turn Indonesia into a manufacturing hub for electric vehicles and batteries.

Coal today accounts for 43% of Indonesia’s grid electricity, but Indonesia is also one of the world’s leading coal exporters. The new plants will bump national capacity by a third to nearly 60 GW over a short time frame.

U.S. policy, by contrast, is aimed at shuttering coal plants, banning natural gas even for home appliances, and heavily subsidizing wind and solar projects to meet Net Zero decarbonization goals that Congress has never approved. As a result, the nationwide average electricity price rose 11% from 2021 to 2022. Electricity bills in 2023 are rising as much as 40%.

Similarly, household electricity prices in the UK doubled in the past decade despite the government setting a tariff cap to protect consumers. Last summer, electricity prices peaked at £363.7 per megawatt-hour.

A century ago, the British lion was the world’s leading economy. The Suez Crisis of 1956, it is said, confirmed Britain’s decline as a global power, and the transfer of Hong Kong to China in 1997 literally buried the British Empire.

The U.S. secured its position as the world leader after World War II but began a long decline just 15 years later with the Vietnam War. Today, the inheritors of U.S. policy – many from the Vietnam era – are making the withdrawal from Afghanistan (despite the pretenses of power in the Russia-Ukraine war) the sign of the end of the American empire.

How long will it be before the (likely) fall of Taiwan buries the remnants of American power?

How quickly can an empire collapse from its own rot?

Why have the U.S. and the UK backed away from fossil fuels even as other nations doubled down to upgrade their own economies with coal? One might believe that Western leaders just want to transfer their guilt for mismanaging their power by punishing the citizens who let them do it.

This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy

Author

• 
  Duggan Flanakin

  Duggan Flanakin is a Senior Policy Analyst with the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow. A former Senior Fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Mr. Flanakin authored definitive works on the creation of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and on environmental education in Texas. A brief history of his multifaceted career appears in his book, "Infinite Galaxies: Poems from the Dugout."

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The rebirth of ethics in America

By Duggan Flanakin August 31st, 2023

Thirty-five years ago, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas wrote a book entitled The Death of Ethics in America, citing (among many others) a 1987 Wall Street Journal headline, “Ethics can be nice, but they can be a handicap, some executives declare.”

In the book, Thomas was effusive about the ethical standards of the founders of a country which saw itself as having a “manifest destiny” as God’s chosen nation. He laments that two centuries of materialism, relativism, and secular humanism had left America rudderless and called for the re-establishment of ethical standards to guide leaders at all levels into wiser decision making.

Thomas’ book, while perhaps too steeped in religious terminology, zeroed in on his observation that the loss of a sense of responsibility beyond our own profit and pleasure had brought about a callousness to wrongdoing that weakened the nation Ronald Reagan once called “the shining city upon a hill.”

In its place has emerged a potpourri of assertions and demands that have fragmented the nation and left little room for respectful discussion, let alone debate on even the most pressing matters of national survival and purpose. Let’s face it – We now see a return to mudslinging and finger pointing that obscure significant graft and mismanagement from public view.

For example, it is arguable that only a society lacking in ethical standards could produce the recent FTX customer funds scandal; and worse, when charged with fraud and conspiracy, the CEO could honestly (yet naively) say, “I don’t think I tried to do anything wrong.”

And yet, despite perhaps veering off the ethical course our forefathers sought for us, in politics, academics, business, and in life, on the horizon, there are optimism and tangible prospects for lasting change.

Brian Peckrill, the interim Executive Director of the William G. McGowan Charitable Fund, has overseen the Fund’s 14-year-old Fellows Program since 2021. McGowan chooses one second-year MBA candidate from each of ten participating university business programs for intensive training using a teaching method which draws from the Center for Creative Leadership’s internationally recognized leadership development methods.

Named for MCI founder William G. McGowan, the Fellows program began in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, which was blamed in part on an ethical collapse. The McGowan Fund wanted to nurture aspiring leaders who would count social impact as well as shareholder value in their decision-making.

Peckrill says the McGowan Fellows program flips the typical MBA model by devoting only 10 percent of students’ time to classroom activities and another 20 percent to coaching that focuses on teaching McGowan’s six principles of ethical leadership – character, integrity, courage, accountability, self-awareness, and empathy.

The bulk of the program consists of fieldwork via challenging stretch experiences that move the students outside of their comfort zone and press them to look at life from other perspectives. Back in January, the ten second-year MBA candidates provided outreach for a youth shelter, handing out fliers, sanitary kits, and other items valued by the homeless in the Windy City’s zero-degree weather.

The students learned first-hand that quality, career-sustaining jobs can lift even the most disadvantaged people out of homelessness. They visited youth shelters and listened to residents, learning their stories and their dreams and desires for a career and a better future.

Peckrill notes that many former Fellows are already moving into “C class” corporate and other leadership positions and bringing their ethical standards with them. When asked what other academic institutions might do to revive ethical standards for their own students, Peckrill was quite blunt.

“I don’t think just having a class focused on ethical leadership is enough. What we at McGowan believe,” he said, “is that, as students go through their life experiences, ethics should be embedded in all that they learn. Even marketing and finance courses are not immune to ethical challenges. Ethical leadership bleeds into all areas of business.”

He concluded, “business schools seeking to teach ethics should take a holistic approach to integrating an ethical framework across the entire curriculum”.

But then again, ethical leadership is bigger than just business or politics – all industries and societal sectors would benefit from the presence of individuals – especially in leadership positions – who apply an ethical framework in all their actions and decisions, which have impacts far beyond what lies right in front of them.

Peckrill explains that the hands-on approach of ‘learning by doing’ enables McGowan Fellows to better determine what is fair and just. By learning how others less fortunate live and cope with their challenges, these young future leaders learn for themselves the impact of their leadership decisions, and how to respond to the challenges they will face as they climb the ladders of success.

As the Fellows program enters its fourteenth year, Peckrill asserts that ethical leadership is critical for building a sustainable, successful society. People need to see ethical leadership as a positive and honor and celebrate ethical leadership – from the boardroom to the classroom to the workroom.

Toward that end,  two years ago McGowan began honoring the “Ethical Leader of the Year Award,” announced at the annual meeting of the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), as a way to celebrate ethical leadership at its highest level in society. “I think,” Peckrill said at this year’s award ceremony, “that our country is crying out to celebrate and honor individuals who are ethical leaders.”

The Fund, in choosing their honoree, considers their adherence to the six principles of ethical leadership and their contributions to society, their management and leadership of people, and their establishment of ethical processes. This year’s honoree was Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian; the inaugural honoree a year ago was Prudential Financial Chairman and CEO Charles F. Lowrey.

Peckrill praises SHRM for its own commitment to ethical standards. Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., president and CEO of SHRM, agrees that, “The key to a great leader is one who builds a strong workplace culture with personal accountability and a commitment to setting an example in words, decisions, and actions.”

In the whirlwind of today’s political and social confrontations, ethical leadership may make the difference between future prosperity or societal collapse.

It only takes one moment of arrogance to start an irreversible conflict and the destruction it can bring with it.

Only ethical people with ethical leaders can accept the compromises that iconoclasts before us believed were absolutely necessary for society to persevere through trials and tribulations.

This article originally appeared at The Opinion Pages

Author

• 
  Duggan Flanakin

  Duggan Flanakin is a Senior Policy Analyst with the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow. A former Senior Fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Mr. Flanakin authored definitive works on the creation of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and on environmental education in Texas. A brief history of his multifaceted career appears in his book, "Infinite Galaxies: Poems from the Dugout."

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Europeans war against food ignores water pollution

By Duggan Flanakin May 15th, 2023 14 Comments @ CFACT 

According to the World Health Organization, 31 million Europeans have no access to public sanitation and 48 million do not have piped water at home. At least 300,000 Europeans follow San Francisco’s practice of defecating openly – but in the countryside rather on public streets. But just as in the United States, water quality has taken a back seat to “climate change.”

On another front, the European Commission has adopted a “Sustainable EU Food System,” an initiative that intends to set agricultural policies for European farmers from the top down – by bureaucrats most of whom have never plowed a field. The Czech-based Society for Animals commented that a mandatory sustainable food system framework must cover areas related to the environment, climate, water, air, soil, the impact on farmed animals for food – as well as trade, transport, economic instruments, and strict food import rules.No farmers need apply.

Meanwhile, in once-prosperous Europe, the European Environmental Bureau reported in 2021 that over a fifth of all Europeans were at risk of falling into poverty or social exclusion because food is seen as a commodity and not a human right. Only bureaucrats can save Europe, they add. No farmers need be consulted.

The EEB declared that “it is absurd to expect that simply giving people information about the nutrition or sustainability credentials of food and relying on them (the people) to make the ‘right’ choice” is no match for the evils in the “food environment” manufactured by market forces. Only if policymakers “step up to their role as defenders of the public good,” using “all policy instruments at their disposal,” is there hope that European eating habits will be conformeed to the bureaucrats’ demands.

Chief among the bureaucratic “solutions” is the claim that “Europe has a moral responsibility to reduce the land and resources needed for our own food consumption.” The reason? We, they tell us, are living “in a world where fertile land is dwindling due to climate change and environmental degradation and global population is increasing.”

Curiously, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization reported in 2021 that the global value generated by agriculture, forestry, and fishing grew by 73 percent in real terms between 2000 and 2019, and total production of primary crops grew by 53 percent during the same period. Agriculture, they noted, employs 27 percent of the global workforce. [Real world fact: Increased levels of carbon dioxide over the past three decades have caused an 11 percent increase in green foliage over the globe’s arid regions.]

Part of this grand scheme has already been playing out in the Netherlands, where the government in 2022 announced a plan to buy up and close down up to 3,000 farms “near environmentally sensitive areas” to comply with European Union nature preservation rules. Specifically, agriculture is responsible for about half of nitrogen emissions that are alleged to be causing the disappearance of native species.

The European People’s Party stood up for the farmers, calling agriculture a “strategic sector” that delivers food security in Europe and beyond and plays a crucial role for the vitality and economies of rural communities.

The EPP set its sights against the proposed Nature Restoration law, noting that the implementation of existing nature legislation has led to bureaucratic nightmares and planning deadlocks that have endangered rural economic viability, food security, renewable energy production, and crucial infrastructure. Such laws, said the EPP, are a direct assault on property rights, and taking 10 percent of farmland out of production would be extremely irresponsible.

In March, to the chagrin of the planners, the farmer-citizen movement (BBB), created in 2019 in the wake of widespread farmer protests (tractors blocking highways, for example), won 15 seats in the Dutch Senate with almost 20 percent of the vote. The BBB’s aim is to fight the government plan to force farmers off their lands, reduce livestock and crop production – that is, to protect their livelihoods from the foibles of urban disrespect for those who feed them.

The battle is on in Europe for the future of farming – and in a world dominated by urban politics, farmers and other rural residents whose livelihoods for centuries have been intertwined with those of farmers are viewed as just “not with it.” After all, urbanites today eat heavily processed foods and are being introduced to such delicacies as artificial meat and crickets.

Meanwhile, in the United States, the Biden Administration is continuing his former boss’ war on agriculture. According to a “study” funded by a $10 million grant back in the Obama years, fine particulates (dust and soot emissions) from farm operations are killing 17,000 Americans annually. Poppycock, says the Union of Concerned Scientists, citing other studies claiming fine particulates kill between 100,000 and 200,000 people a year. Back in 2011 EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson claimed fine particulates were responsible for a fifth of all U.S. deaths.

In both Europe and the U.S., the eagerness of urban “intellectuals” (bureaucrats) to attack farmers and rural residents has increased as globalist institutions have grown in wealth and power. Concentrated power is easier for the very wealthy to influence, and just as with the pharmaceutical industry’s vaccine gambits surrounding the coronavirus pandemic, the rules government creates always seem to benefit the rich at the expense of the common people.

There is little profit to the wealthy in replacing aging water and wastewater and sewer lines, cleaning rivers and streams of accumulated pollution, or even providing running water to those in isolated communities. To the bureaucrat, there is nothing sexy about enabling the hoi polloi to enjoy water recreation in cleaned up lakes and streams. The regulations they impose on farmers and rural areas do not affect their lives.

In Europe and America – and in developing nations as well – people who live on and from the land are fighting to protect their homes and families from the “wisdom” of urban elites. This is, ultimately, the great battle of our day. [Note: AIs require neither food nor water for sustenance.]

Author

• Duggan Flanakin

  Duggan Flanakin is a Senior Policy Analyst with the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow. A former Senior Fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Mr. Flanakin authored definitive works on the creation of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and on environmental education in Texas. A brief history of his multifaceted career appears in his book, "Infinite Galaxies: Poems from the Dugout."

Death of the EV dream, er, nightmare

By Duggan Flanakin May 13th, 2023 78 Comments @ CFACT

Now that the American Dream has been turned into a nightmare in part by overspending that has led to the highest interest rates in the 21 st Century, it is high time to admit that, as Melanie Mcdonagh writes in The Telegraph , the electric vehicle dream, too, “has turned into a nightmare.”

Mcdonagh, who admits she does not drive, points out many problems, among them the horrific impact when a heavy, quiet-running electric vehicle hits an unsuspecting pedestrian or a cyclist. She also notes that some of these “vehicles” are collecting data on route history and road speed that governments (and corporations) can use for remote surveillance (and marketing gimmickry). Another problem is that the much heavier EVs could collapse bridges and force lengthy detours.

Mcdonagh, however, has barely scratched the surface of the mess created by the hipster culture that believes everything sacred must be sacrificed before the god of carbon (dioxide) reduction. It turns out that manufacturing electric vehicles has to date been a bad investment for automakers, despite all the subsidies.

Ford Motor Co. says it will lose $3 billion on EV sales this year, after losing $900 million in 2021 and $2.1 billion in 2022, when the company sold 96,000 units. Price drops by Ford and Tesla (and doubtless other companies) are not coming because the vehicles are cheaper to manufacture but because demand has slowed despite the new Biden subsidies. As Robert Bryce points out, Ford in the first quarter of this year lost $66,446 on every EV it sold.

One reason for the huge losses is the increasing price of battery materials, reflected in the 7 percent increase in the volume-weighted average for lithium-ion battery packs from 2021 to 2022. The Biden subsidies are supposed to offset such costs, just as the Biden build in America plan (in Michigan, at least, by Chinese companies) has no chance of diminishing China’s huge lead in EV battery and vehicle production.

Senator John Kennedy (R, LA) recently asked, “If electric cars are so swell. why does government have to pay people to drive them?”

A new J.D. Power report points to a number of reasons that American consumers are sticking with internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. While the highest objections to EVs are high prices and lack of public charging infrastructure, vehicle range, charging times, and the threat of grid disruptions that render EVs useless are also deterrents. Other concerns are fires, power surges that lead to accidents, towing capacity and range, and performance in bad weather.

Even a third of Gen Z shoppers, who have been bombarded with pro-EV propaganda for most of their lives, admit they are unlikely to buy one.

It is obvious that the EV boom, such as it is, has been powered nearly entirely by heavy subsidies and marketing hype initiated by bureaucrats and politicians, most of whom have no background in auto sales or any service industries. Their M.O. is bribery and thuggery (forcing people into unwanted choices through market manipulation). Automakers are beginning to balk at these techniques, if only because they see their customer base shrinking once people cannot buy the vehicles they have used for decades.

While Ford and other companies are now boasting of the towing capacity of their EVs, the proof is in the pudding, as they say. >MotorBiscuit last month reported that the Ford F-150 Lightning and Rivian R1T can be souped up to tow 10,000 pounds, far short of the gasoline-powered F-150, but with an average range of only 88 miles. That hardly works for multiple tows in a day or for towing a trailer to a campsite 100 or more miles from home.

Imagine putting your family into the truck, hitching up the Airstream, and driving out to the mountains for a weekend at the lake. Finding a charging station where you don’t have to unhitch the trailer to get to the plug-in is a huge challenge, and you have to do this multiple times on a 300-mile trip. With a maximum 90-mile range, you need to recharge every 60 or 70 miles, taking 30 minutes or more for each recharge. You lose an entire day each way. So practical.

Far worse, though, are the risks and challenges to tow truck drivers with an EV that has stopped running. Not only are the vehicles heavy, they are dead weight, locked in park, and potentially suspect to spontaneous fires that ordinary extinguishers cannot put out. A 2021 National Transportation Safety Board report notes that “the energy

remaining in a damaged high-voltage lithium-ion battery, known as stranded energy, poses a risk of electric shock and creates the potential for thermal runaway that can result in battery reignition and fire.”

Of course, the bean counters with their glorious visions for an all-electric future (replete with blackouts, price increases, and other tricks to keep the majority of people off the roads entirely) do not take into consideration ANY of the real reasons people drive cars and trucks. Their ONLY consideration appears to be the imaginary reduction in carbon dioxide emissions their computer models insist can only happen by inconveniencing “the little people.”

But should those “little people” elect leaders who will end the inflationary subsidies and dictatorial mandates (including those that ban gas appliances, cripple the performance of dishwashers and HVAC units, etc.), the automakers who have heavily invested in EVs will adjust to real market conditions and continue improving long-cherished technologies.

In today’s increasingly top-down world, Mcdonagh points out that “you can’t even discuss the problems with electric cars without getting jumped on.” That is already beginning to change, especially in a freedom-loving America that has had a century-long love affair with the open road.

>Meanwhile, lurking in the shadows is an option that could both reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide and keep ICE vehicles on the road. Hydrogen-based synthetic e-fuels may be expensive today, but they can power ICE vehicles today and tomorrow without sacrificing a nation to the whims of China’s maniacal leadership.

Author

• Duggan Flanakin

  Duggan Flanakin is a Senior Policy Analyst with the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow. A former Senior Fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Mr. Flanakin authored definitive works on the creation of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and on environmental education in Texas. A brief history of his multifaceted career appears in his book, "Infinite Galaxies: Poems from the Dugout."

Electric Cars: Square peg, round hole

By Duggan Flanakin |January 25th, 2023 Energy 80 Comments @ CFACT

The big story of 2023 just might be the clash between those who have imposed electric vehicle mandates and those for whom an electric vehicle is not on their shopping list.

The federal government, many state governments, and much of the automobile industry – and their counterparts worldwide – have decreed that the world abandon the internal combustion engine in favor of the (often-coal-fired) electric vehicle.

Mandates for banning new sales of conventional vehicles are as plentiful as schemes to disallow further production of “evil” fossil fuels that brought a total transformation of the world economy in little more than a century. Moreover, most automakers have pledged to end production of conventional vehicles within the next few years.

While sales of EVs “boomed” last year, the 6 million EVs still comprise less than half a percent of the world’s 1.4 billion vehicles. Yet Bloomberg New Energy Finance claims that by 2040 a third of all vehicles on the road will be EVs, and EVs will account for 58 percent of global passenger vehicle sales.

From 6 million to 500 million in 17 years? Or will the total number of vehicles shrink dramatically as fewer people either want or can afford a personal vehicle?

Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares put it, “What is clear is that electrification is a technology chosen by politicians, not by industry.” Policymakers, realizing that a vast majority have yet to embrace EVs, have turned to coercion to force people out of the vehicles they have relied upon for over a century. Some are even gleeful that the result will be far fewer vehicles on the road.

Reports from the United Kingdom provide a few clues as to why people’s skepticism is warranted. For starters, EV charging stations are often unreliable. An analysis of public charging data by LeaseLoco found that 43 percent of chargers at major supermarket sites had connection issues or were completely out of order – meaning no charge at all or a longer wait to charge.

And about those charging times? Does it always take five days to fully charge the new GMC Hummer EV? The entire U.S. “network” of EV chargers (especially those “fast” chargers that enable you to eat lunch at the convenience store that once was a gasoline station) today can only accommodate a very small percentage of the nation’s 280 million vehicles.

And that’s when there IS available electricity! California and the EU have already proven that a massive switch to EVs will ensure the regularity of power blackouts. In cold weather, a dead EV battery may not even take a charge. Just another byproduct of central planning that fails to take into consideration every variable.

And forget about saving money down the road despite the higher initial cost of the EV.  The AA in the UK reports that new peak pricing at EV charging stations can leave consumers worse off than if they had kept their gasoline vehicle. That’s hardly an incentive to purchase an EV that in Europe is 27 percent more expensive than a gasoline-powered vehicle.

In the U.S., just as in Europe, the less reliable the electric grid, the higher the price of electricity that governments and billionaires want to force you to use to go anywhere. Worldwide, people are waking up to the burdensome costs of the super-regulatory state.

Then there is the materials issue. As Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe explained last April, “Put very simply, all the world’s cell production combined represents well under 10 percent of what we will need in 10 years [to fulfill EV mandates]– meaning 90 to 95 percent of the supply chain does not exist.”

Then there is the geopolitics issue. Nearly all of the lithium required for today’s EV batteries is processed in China, and China is using its dominance to roll out EVs with much lower sticker prices than American, European, Japanese, and Korean automakers can match. Increased dependence on China could lead to subservience far beyond what exists (though largely hidden from public view) today.

The bleak prospect of working around Chinese dominance took another hit recently with the collapse of Britishvolt – before the heavily subsidized startup ever built a single EV battery. Investors who a year ago thought the company was worth a billion dollars now face a fire sale (to an Indonesian company) that might get back 13 cents per dollar invested.

The Telegraph summarizes this embarrassing moment in British history as the result of adopting a “cart before the horse” approach – trying to stimulate demand by creating supply. Another way of saying trying to pound a square peg into a round hole.

What’s the solution to these top-down mandates for a pie-in-the-sky “solution” to the imagined crisis posed by the continued use of gasoline and diesel fuel? Wyoming lawmakers are taking the hard-line approach – banning the sale of EVs in the state by 2035.

State lawmakers who proposed the ban cited the lack of supply of critical minerals, the high cost of EV battery disposal to in-state landfills, the need to protect the state’s profitable oil and gas industry, and the impracticality of EVs in Wyoming’s sparsely populated territory as reasons to fight back against nationwide EV mandates.

Maybe it’s the mountain air. Maybe it’s self-preservation. Whatever the reason for this rare display of wisdom, it is high time for more states to “have what Wyoming’s having” and fight back against the elites whose plans for the future do not include our continued prosperity.

Will we listen to the good people of tiny Wyoming? Or will we laugh them off as kooks as the World Economic Forum crowd steps up its timetable for when “we will own nothing?”

This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy

Author

• Duggan Flanakin is the Director of Policy Research at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow. A former Senior Fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Mr. Flanakin authored definitive works on the creation of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and on environmental education in Texas. A brief history of his multifaceted career appears in his book, "Infinite Galaxies: Poems from the Dugout."

“Fueling” a counter-revolution in Europe: Can it happen here?

By Duggan Flanakin September 13th, 2022 Energy 44 Comments @ CFACT

 

Shades of Emanuel Macron! 

California Governor Gavin Newsom has horrified his core constituency by announcing his state will NOT be shutting down the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. The state legislature, perhaps remembering that power outages two decades ago led to Gov. Gray Davis being recalled, voted to extend the life of the plant until 2030, only because of an urgent need to boost uncertain grid reliability:

The last-minute decision not to close Diablo Canyon, for now reverses the anti-nuclear trend begun by Boy Governor Jerry Brown in the 1970s that stopped all new construction and eventually led to the closure of power plants at San Onofre and Rancho Seco.

Across the United States, according to the fifth annual ecoAmerica survey, support for nuclear energy has risen to 60% (up from Gallup-reported 51% in 2015. Business Wire says support for nuclear has never been higher, though the survey also reported a majority still harbor fears about nuclear solid waste disposal, health and safety, security and weaponization, and cost.

According to the survey, despite these concerns support for spending more on next-generation nuclear energy research and development has grown to over 60%, not far behind the 77% who support wind and solar energy and far above the 47% who still support natural gas R&D. Despite the nation’s continued heavy reliance on oil and coal, these fuels command support at low levels of just 36% and 27%, respectively.

The failure of the U.S. to match the pace of France’s 1980s adoption of nuclear power plants is a major reason for today’s alleged climate change “disasters,” according to Anthropocene Institute nuclear engineer Dinara Emakova. This “failure” is largely due to massive protests following the relatively minor incident at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island power plant in 1979.

Speaking of France, back in February (just before the Russia-Ukraine war broke out), President Emanuel Macron announced his country would build six new nuclear reactors in the coming decades. What a reversal from Macron’s 2018 promise to shutter 14 of the nation’s existing 58 nuclear reactors by 2035!

By contrast, the German government, reacting to the Fukushima nuclear incident in Japan, closed three of its remaining six nuclear reactors in January, a major step in fulfilling the 2011 commitment to end nuclear power generation by the end of 2022. The German retreat from nuclear began in 2002 under Gerhard Schroeder. Angela Merkel originally opted for extending the life of German nuclear plants but conceded to the anti-nuke movement after Fukushima.

Spain, Italy, Belgium, and Austria have also pledged to close existing nuclear power plants, while the British – who are even calling for fracking and renewed oil and gas exploration and development in the North Sea – are bullish on nuclear energy today despite plans to close five of its eight old reactors. Finland and Hungary are also building new nuclear plants, and Poland, Romania, and the Czech Republic want to go nuclear.

The German retreat now seems ridiculous given that Japan, the only nation that suffered significantly from nuclear incidents since Chernobyl, has recommitted to nuclear power. Just days ago, Yasutoshi Nishimura, Japan’s minister of economy, trade, and industry, announced that nuclear power is once again the key to his nation’s energy security.

Nishimura stated that Japan has already secured 10 plants for reactivation and is working to reactivate another seven plants by the end of 2023. With the nation currently 94% dependent on imports for its energy supply, the 1 million tons worth of energy produced by each reactivated nuclear plant will go a long way toward securing energy for the nation’s future, he added.

According to the Energy Information Administration, as of July 1, the U.S. had 92 reactors operating at 54 nuclear power plants in 28 states. These power plants have supplied about 20% of America’s electricity since 1990. Surprisingly, the EIA says that the U.S. has the world’s largest nuclear electricity generation capacity of any nation and has generated more nuclear electricity than any other country.

On the other hand, the most recent nuclear power plant in the U.S. is Watts Bar Unit 2 in Tennessee, which went online in October 2016. Two other units in Georgia – Vogtle Units 3 and 4 — remain in the construction stage. Despite Congressional directives dating to 2006, the “nuclear renaissance” projected by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has yet to generate any other new reactor licensing applications. One reason may be the oppressive regulatory jungle that nuclear operators have to negotiate.

Beyond Nuclear, which opposes nuclear energy, reported in January that no utilities are seeking new construction or operating licenses for earlier nuclear designs (Gen I and II), and the demonstrated failure of prior applicants has caused many companies to suspend or cancel initiation of new Gen III light water reactors in the U.S.

Beyond Nuclear also claims the “nuclear renaissance” has proven to be an “empty propaganda slogan,” and says the NRC and the nuclear industry are now hoping that an American nuclear future is achievable through construction of thousands of small modular reactors (SMRs). But opponents argue that these SMRs can be weaponized if exported to other nations, and that the cost per energy generated is higher than that for larger reactors.

The group further notes that back in January the NRC staff rejected a license application for an “advanced reactor” filed by Okio Incorporated, which wanted to design, construct, and operate its pilot “Aurora PowerHouse” microreactor at the Idaho National Laboratory. Once again, Beyond Nuclear and 27 other anti-nuke consumer and environmental groups fought the application.

So, while panic-stricken California lawmakers have perhaps extended their political lives by NOT shutting down Diablo Canyon, and despite a more favorable climate in the U.S. for nuclear energy than at any time since Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, any hopes for nuclear supplying this nation with new electricity are about as likely as the Washington Generals beating the Harlem Globetrotters.

Other nations, despite their own anti-nuclear activists and funding concerns, are much more likely to move ahead with nuclear power than the United States. China and India are building new nuclear power plants at a rate that will soon push both nations ahead of the U.S. in nuclear energy generation. Even energy-deprived African nations are actively seeking a nuclear future.

With three-quarters of America still Jonesing for wind and solar (though often not in their own backyards), and anti-nuke groups with huge war chests, I might even bet on the Generals.

This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy

Author

• Duggan Flanakin

  Duggan Flanakin is the Director of Policy Research at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow. A former Senior Fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Mr. Flanakin authored definitive works on the creation of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and on environmental education in Texas. A brief history of his multifaceted career appears in his book, "Infinite Galaxies: Poems from the Dugout."