New York Takes A Stab At A Green New Deal Demonstration Project: The Case Of Ithaca

March 20, 2025 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 

 Many political jurisdictions claim to be on a path to eliminating emissions of carbon dioxide from their energy systems. Notable examples include California and New York in the U.S., and the UK and Germany in Europe. The Biden administration during its term in office even claimed to have set the entire U.S. onto a path toward what they called “net zero.” But so far none of these places has gotten anywhere near the goal. Indeed, as of today, many hundreds of billions of dollars into the effort, not one of them has even issued a detailed engineering plan of how this is supposed to be accomplished.

For reasons expressed in some dozens of posts on this blog, with the exception of a vast expansion of nuclear energy, I don’t believe that this “net zero” thing can actually be done, at least without entirely impoverishing the people. However, I’m completely willing to be proved wrong. For many years, I have been calling for a Demonstration Project to prove whether or not an economically-developed community is capable of achieving zero carbon emissions, or anything close to that (example here from 2022). Surely, if the entire U.S. can be expected to accomplish “net zero” in response to a government command, then it should be simple to build a working “net zero” Demonstration Project for a small town of, say, a few tens of thousands of people.

I’ve even proposed the perfect place as my candidate to be the guinea pig for the “net zero” demonstration: Ithaca, New York. After all, Ithaca is the most exquisitely climate virtuous place in what is already a deep blue state. It is home to two thoroughly left-wing academic institutions (Cornell University and Ithaca College), with their thousands of radical left-wing climate activist faculty and students. These people should leap at the chance to show the rest of the world how this “net zero” thing can be done. Also, the population (approximately 50,000) is in about the right range for a net zero demonstration project. (Note that the 50,000 is the combined population of the City of Ithaca and Town of Ithaca. Yes, for reasons known only to the geniuses of New York State local governance, Ithaca consists of two independent adjoining municipalities, a City and a Town, sharing the same name.). If “net zero” doesn’t work in a small place like this, the loss of investment could be large, but not catastrophic.

And in fact, when it comes to talking the talk, Ithaca would appear to be at the forefront of the green energy transition. Back in June 2019, the Ithaca City Common Council unanimously adopted what they called the “Ithaca Green New Deal.” A few months later, in March 2020, the Ithaca Town Council, also unanimously, adopted their own “Green New Deal Resolution.” Although there are differences, the Town’s Resolution incorporated much of the language of the City’s Resolution word-for-word. Not to be caught standing still, the next year, 2021, the City of Ithaca went a step further and announced that it would electrify all of its 6000 buildings. They didn’t actually use the words “demonstration project,” but clearly the key elements were now in place. Should we check in on how it’s going?

The short answer: It’s a complete joke.

First, let’s take note of some of the official goals. From the City of Ithaca Green New Deal resolution:

RESOLVED, That the City of Ithaca adopts a goal to meet the electricity needs of City government operations with 100% renewable electricity by 2025. . . .  

RESOLVED, That the City of Ithaca hereby adopts a goal of achieving a carbon neutral city by 2030. . . .  

RESOLVED, That the City of Ithaca endorses the following actions to achieve these goals: Create a climate action plan (CAP) in 2020 to provide details on how to achieve the Ithaca Green New Deal, and update the CAP regularly. . . .

And then there’s this, not found (at least today) on the City of Ithaca’s website, but reported on January 29, 2025 at the website of WSKG, the Ithaca PBS affiliate:

In 2021, the small city of Ithaca announced it would electrify all of its 6,000 buildings.

And how exactly was Ithaca going to electrify 6000 buildings within a few short years?

[Ithaca planned to achieve building electrification] with the help of one key partner: a technology company called BlocPower, whose then-CEO Donnel Baird said the company would make the mass electrification process fast and affordable. “There’s a lot of expensive engineering and financial and workforce development costs,” Baird told Ithaca’s common council in 2021, after it approved the mass electrification plan. “Our job is to remove all of that friction.”

OK, those were the goals. Now for the progress toward achieving them. If you go to the website of the City of Ithaca today, everything seems great:

Ithaca is leading the world. On June 5th, 2019, the City of Ithaca Common Council unanimously adopted the Ithaca Green New Deal resolution, a government-led commitment to community-wide carbon neutrality by 2030 that focuses on addressing historical inequities, economic inequality, and social justice. Two years after the resolution was signed, Ithaca established itself as a world-leader in climate mitigation planning and continues to pave the path forward as a blueprint for other cities across the U.S. and the globe.

But how about some actual facts on the ground. Let’s start with that building electrification thing. From that same January 25 WSKG piece:

[I]n recent months, BlocPower has quietly deserted its electrification and workforce training programs in Ithaca and several other cities, according to municipal leaders and organizations that worked with BlocPower. . . . In Ithaca, BlocPower ended its collaboration with the city after completing the electrification of only 10 buildings, according to Ithaca’s current sustainability director, Rebecca Evans. Last November, the company furloughed its Ithaca staff members and ended all partnerships in the city, Evans said.

6000 buildings, 10, whatever. Here is a picture from WSKG of “sustainability director” Rebecca Evans: 

 

 So, Ms. Evans, how about the big Climate Action Plan by which Ithaca will instruct the ignorant world how to get to carbon neutrality? Here’s another piece from WSKG, this one from several months ago (October 2024) reporting on recent revisions to the Plan. Excerpt:

The [Green New Deal] resolution . . . charged city staff with creating a formal climate action plan that would outline how the city would achieve those goals. Ithaca's sustainability director, Rebecca Evans, wrote in a post on LinkedIn last month that she recently decided to scrap the version of that plan she had been working on. The decision, she said in an interview with WSKG, does not change the goals of the Green New Deal, but instead reframes the city’s approach of how it will achieve its commitments. Evans said that rather than prioritizing reducing emissions, the new plan will prioritize helping residents adapt to living in a warming world, while also working towards the city’s emissions-reduction goals. That could include providing residents with better access to social services, like housing and job training, and improving the city's emergency response and electricity reliability.

Got it — They’ve given up on reducing emissions. And how about the City’s promise to get 100% of its own electricity from renewable sources by 2025? Are they really doing that right now? I can’t find a recent report, but there’s this from back in December 2011:

Beginning in January [2012], the City of Ithaca will purchase 100% of its electricity consumption from renewable sources. Under a new agreement with Integrys Energy Services of New York, Inc., Ithaca will purchase Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) certified by Green-e Energy for all of its electricity.

Aha! It’s the magic of “Renewable Energy Certificates.” Apparently, those make it possible to get your electricity from wind turbines and solar panels on completely calm nights. If you are willing to believe it. Al Gore would be proud.

In short, everything about Ithaca’s Green New Deal is either a scam, or has been quietly abandoned, or both.

Here in New York City we have our own building electrification mandate called “Local Law 97” that is said to require some 50,000 buildings to convert to electric heat and cooking by 2030. Does anybody really think we can make any more progress toward such a goal than Ithaca?

Europe’s Suicidal Green New Deal

February 10, 2025 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

The American version of the Green New Deal included some subsidies for inefficient wind and solar, but it was largely just a marketing gimmick for a big expansion in the burden of government (everything from Medicare for All to student loan bailouts).

The European version, by contrast, has been more focused on making energy more expensive by forcing consumers to use wind and solar. And, on that basis, this chart shows that it has been very effective.

But in a bad way.

Electricity prices are two to three times more expensive than they are in the United States (and about three to four times more expensive than they are in India and China).

At the risk of sounding alarmist, this is a slow-motion form of economic suicide.

The chart comes for a Wall Street Journal column by Bjorn Lomborg. Here are some excerpts.

The claim that green energy is cheaper relies on bogus math that measures the cost of electricity only when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. Modern societies need around-the-clock power, requiring backup, often powered by fossil fuels. That means we’re paying for two power systems: renewables and backup. …The International Energy Agency’s latest data (from 2022) on solar and wind power generation costs and consumption across nearly 70 countries shows a clear correlation between more solar and wind and higher average household and industry energy prices. …At least climate-obsessed European governments are generally honest about solar and wind costs and raise electricity prices accordingly.

Some of our friends on the left applaud these outcomes as part of their campaign to discourage fossil fuels.

But what they don’t understand (or don’t care about) is that these policies make Europe very uncompetitive.

Germany is a good example of what’s happening. Though maybe I should say it’s a bad example.

Writing in National Review last November, Peter Cleppe of Brusselsreport.eu explained the consequences of “net zero” extremism. Here are a few of the relevant passages.

Ahead of the traditional October summit of EU leaders, Germany’s leading business association, BDI, launched a stern warning that deindustrialization was no longer a risk but a reality. …It is not hard to understand why German industry is struggling. …there’s the European Union’s Emission Trading Scheme (ETS), a de facto climate tax that is so high that it exceeds the full U.S. natural-gas price. …scrapping the EU’s ETS system remains an absolute taboo, despite the dire consequences this approach is having for Europe’s economic well-being. …

Europeans are wary that the incoming Trump administration will start a trade war, but at the moment, it is the EU that is introducing new tariffs under the pretext of climate policy, with its new Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism… The logic of the EU is that because the rest of the world refuses to follow its self-damaging energy policies, imports into the EU should be burdened with this new tariff.

I’ve written about the E.U.’s awful Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. It’s a terrible example of protectionism that almost makes Trump seem like a free trader.

To emphasize the damage of the E.U.’s “net zero” policies, I’ll close with this tweet from @MichaelAArouet.

Wow. Germany at one point was the poster child for economic success in Europe.

Now it’s backsliding and the damage is self-inflicted (and for other reasons in addition to environmental policy).

P.S. In addition to the immigration issue, I think Europe’s climate policies are driving the rise of illiberal political movements.

Democrats reintroduce Green New Deal in Congress

Adam Houser April 24th, 2023 32 Comments @ CFACT

Congressional Democrats have reintroduced the Green New Deal in both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. The formal introduction date comes on the four-year anniversary of the introduction of the original Green New Deal.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) sponsors the piece of legislation in the House, while Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) sponsors the bill in the Senate.

“[The sponsors] said the legislation, which calls for ditching fossil fuels to achieve a net-zero economy within a decade, has already had an impact on environmental and infrastructure policies passed under Mr. Biden.

“‘We said we are not going to take crumbs, that we need bold, big climate action, and we need it now. And that fight resulted in the largest piece of climate legislation in American history,’ Ms. Ocasio-Cortez told reporters outside the Capitol. ‘We are showing how we can use the dollars secured in the Inflation Reduction Act to make this a reality.’

“The Democrats also unveiled a ‘Green New Deal implementation guideline’ that Mr. Markey said is designed to show how the tax-and-climate bill known as the Inflation Reduction Act and a 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law ‘can and must be used to turn Green New Deal aims into Green New Deal action across our country.'”

While climate activists may be patting themselves on the back over influencing the Biden Administration to pursue more aggressive climate policy, Republican officials and conservative grassroots organizations aren’t exactly upset with the reintroduction of the Green New Deal. The Green New Deal has provided right-leaning pundits and elected officials with an ideal political punching bag on climate change issues.

Indeed, the question must be raised whether, in the grand political balance, more climate gains have been achieved by influencing the Biden Administration versus ostracizing independent voters with some of the more radical policies espoused in the Green New Deal.

This is a political reality that seems to be recognized by the Biden Administration, as despite some of the policy wins Biden has handed the climate wing of his party, he has also made some policy moves highly criticized by climate activists.

According to the Washington Times:

“However, the president has walked a fine line to appease climate change activists and Americans struggling with soaring energy prices. He has rebuffed activists’ calls to end fossil fuel drilling on federal lands and prodded oil companies to produce more to blunt high prices at the pump.

“In his latest move that infuriated environmentalists and broke a campaign promise, Mr. Biden greenlit the Willow oil project that is expected to produce nearly 629 million barrels of oil from federal lands in Alaska in the coming decades.”

The Washington Times article can be read in full here.

• Adam Houser

  Adam Houser coordinates student leaders as National Director of CFACT's collegians program and writes on issues of climate and energy.

If You're Reading This Message, You're Ready to Resist Tyranny

June 9, 2022 By J.B. Shurk

Great Reset. Green New Deal. Build Back Better. New World Order. Bilderberg. Davos. Council on Foreign Relations. World Health Organization. The list of secretive global societies and their mission directives for humanity are daunting. Many people who would prefer to be left alone to live their lives free from government interference have an understandable sense of impending doom.

The COVID Crisis showed Westerners how quickly (and easily) their governments would impose unilateral mandates against their will, destroying any illusion that self-congratulating "democracies" have any more respect for individual rights or bodily autonomy than the authoritarian regimes the West routinely condemns.  If an unsuspecting citizen once took "freedom" for granted, forced experimental injections, arbitrary and capricious closures of private businesses, mass surveillance, vaccine passports, and government-sponsored censorship of dissenting medical opinion have demonstrated how rapidly undefended freedom slips away.  Westerners were not prepared to take a vigorous stand for freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom of conscience, or personal privacy.  Their silence was interpreted as acquiescence to government control and rewarded with only more intrusive and authoritarian measures............To Read More... 

 

 

A History Lesson Ahead of Biden’s Green New Tax

“The thing I’m proudest of that we were able to get done in the first term was the Recovery Act. It had $90 billion in clean-energy programs.” -Vice President Joe Biden, May 9, 2013. 

August 13th, 2022

By Larry Behrens @ CFACT  115 Comments 

The start of a new week brought a renewed sense of momentum for President Joe Biden’s administration and his allies in Congress. At long last, the months-long gridlock, caused by their own party, finally broke and another gusher of tax dollars appears ready to flood our country. Economic realities and those pesky inflation reports be damned.

Proponents have dubbed the bill the “Inflation Reduction Act” because they know it sounds better than the truth: “Biden’s Green New Tax.” History will be the judge about the wisdom of pouring trillions of dollars on an economy struggling with excessive spending. No matter how you slice it, with $369 billion dollars devoted to climate and energy programs, it’s clear there’s a lot on the line for the American taxpayer. If we want to know how the Biden Administration will dole out our dollars, we need look no further than the last time Biden got billions to go green.

As part of the so-called “Recovery Act” passed during the first term of President Obama, there was $90 billion set aside for the very same climate and energy reasoning. President Obama turned to his trusty Vice President to help administer those funds. The results were disastrous.

First, the well-known failure of Solyndra was pinned on Obama, but it was Biden who led the charge in losing $535 million in the fiasco.  Solyndra became the poster child of green failure, but it was far from alone.

Then there was $20.5 billion in federal loans distributed from that 2009 stimulus. One examination found that a whopping 80 percent of that money when to “10 members of former President Barack Obama’s finance committee, and more than 12 of his bundlers.”

Note: This number is shockingly close to the current $20 billion Joe Biden wants to send to “green banks” so it can, once again, be distributed to people and organizations that may have ties to supporting Biden’s campaigns.

Two years before Joe Biden called his work on the recovery funds the “proudest” part of his first term as vice president, the Government Accountability Office raised concerns about how those funds we handled. The federal loan program “lacked appropriate tools for assessing progress,” showed favoritism to some applicants and found “reporting and quality issues” when it came to figuring out just how many “green” jobs were created. Keep in mind, this was Joe Biden’s “proudest” accomplishment.

Fast forward to 2022 and President Biden is again proud to have four times more money than he had in 2009.  Included in his Green New Tax is the extension of a massive giveaway to those who buy electric vehicles. Studies have shown that those looking to buy an EV make at least $150,000 in annual income, but apparently Joe Biden feels they need a tax break.

Past tends to be prologue for a reason. What we are witnessing with Biden’s Green New Tax is a repeat of 2009. A bill packed with billions of pork that will mostly benefit the rich and those who support President Biden’s failed energy agenda. Joe Biden may be proud of what he did in 2009, but history shows us his pride comes with a huge tag.

Larry Behrens is the Communications Director for Power The Future, a non-profit that advocates for America’s energy workers. You can find him on Twitter @larrybehrens or you can email him: larry@powerthefuture.com

This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy

Bringing Britain’s woes to America?

Will Biden-AOC energy policies do to Americans what UK climate obsession is doing to Brits? 

Paul Driessen 

Virginia enacted a Clean Economy Act; other states have implemented similar laws. AOC demands a national Green New Deal; President Biden is imposing one via executive decree. The United Kingdom is determined to reach Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions; the European Union is pursuing a Green Deal. 

All these policies send energy prices rocketing upward, eliminating jobs and killing people. Instead of reducing emissions, they simply move them overseas, where they combine with massive air and water pollution, habitat destruction and wildlife decimation – as China and other countries burn more coal, oil and gas every year, to improve their people’s living standards ... and to mine and process raw materials for the wind turbines, solar panels and battery modules they manufacture for climate-obsessed nations. 

The net result: Progress toward global Net Zero is zero – worse than zero – and all the lost jobs, rising poverty, reduced living standards and policy-driven deaths are for nothing. 

President Biden wants hydrocarbon-free electricity generation by 2035, and elimination of all fossil fuel extraction and use by 2050. That means no gasoline or diesel vehicles; no natural gas to power factories or heat, warm water and cook in homes, hospitals and businesses; no petrochemical feedstocks for fertilizers, plastics, pharmaceuticals and thousands of other essential, everyday products. 

All US energy will be provided by wind, solar and battery power – millions of wind turbines, billions of solar panels and billions of battery modules, sprawling across continental United States and along its coasts. Petrochemicals will come from crops planted on millions of acres of former wildlife habitat. 

To drive this extreme agenda, Team Biden has canceled pipelines, leases and permits; pressured banks to stop lending money for drilling; and issued scores of regulations that delay and drive up costs for fossil fuel projects – while making it easy for industrial-scale wind and solar installations to get permits. Prices for energy, transportation, food, services and used cars predictably shot up. Inflation and consumer prices reached 40-year highs. 

Henry Hub natural gas prices doubled from $2.61 per mcf (thousand cubic feet or million BTUs) in November 2020 to $5.51 in October 2021, before falling to $4.75 in January 2022, as skyrocketing global prices spurred drilling, fracking and production on US state and private lands. Regular gasoline averaged $2.17 a gallon nationwide in 2020 – but hit $3.39/gal ($4.38 in California) in the same timeframe. 

As Americans fret and fume over the needlessly high prices – and wonder what the future might hold – they can look to the UK and EU (a) to count their blessings for comparatively low prices today and (b) to ponder how continued climate-centric policies could impact American livelihoods and living standards. 

Britain and continental Europe have already embraced a wind-and-solar future, closed coal and nuclear power plants, and banned fracking for the trillions of cubic feet of natural gas beneath their feet, while North Sea production keeps falling. They have reaped the whirlwind from those callously inept policies. 

(It is illuminating and ironic that Russian organizations finance many US, UK and EU anti-fracking disinformation campaigns, funneling funds through a Bermuda law firm, a shell company and the Sea Change Foundation to the Sierra Club, Climate Action Network and other groups.) 

Britain and Europe’s vaunted wind turbines have been generating electricity at a dismal 14% of “nameplate capacity” – providing power three hours a day, one day a week, four days a month, in short spurts, at completely unpredictable times. Their wintertime solar power has been equally sporadic and unpredictable. No modern society can function on such energy. 

The huge gaps have been plugged with gas- and coal-fired generation, with much of the gas coming from Russia and the USA. But Asia also wants the gas, and Russia is playing Ukraine/Nord Stream 2 pipeline politics with its gas, tightening supplies as demand soars. UK and EU home and business gas and electricity prices are in the stratosphere – five to ten times the Biden Era prices Americans are paying. 

Luckily for families and businesses, Britain’s Office of Gas & Electric Markets (Ofgem) regulates how much utility companies can charge. But that often means keeping household, hospital, school and business energy prices well below the utilities’ actual costs – with predictable results. 

Experts say the average annual household bill of £1,277 ($1,755) could surge to £1,865 ($2,530) when the current price cap is raised in April 2022 – for homes and apartments that are much smaller than US counterparts, in a climate with much less extreme summer and winter temperatures than in much of the United States. Annual bills could exceed £2,000 ($2,715) or much more at Ofgem’s August review. 

National Energy Action says this could put more than 6 million UK households (nearly one-fourth of all households) in “fuel poverty” – unable to afford proper heat, and often having to choose between heating or eating, even when cold indoor temperatures put their health and lives at risk. 

For families that want budgetary certainty, the average 12-month fixed deal for a typical household now costs almost £2,500 ($3,430). But the UK’s second-biggest energy supplier’s most recent fixed-rate offer is almost £4,200 ($5,750)! That’s because natural gas and electricity generation costs are expected to keep rising – and because utilities must pay wind turbine operators “constraint payments” to turn turbines off whenever they generate more power than the grid needs and can absorb! 

The month-ahead natural gas price at the Dutch TTF hub (a European benchmark for trading gas) recently hit €93.3 ($107) per megawatt-hour. That’s $31 an mcf – more than six times the January 2022 Henry Hub price. Just a month earlier, the European day-ahead gas price reached $61 per mcf! 

No wonder 30 UK energy suppliers went bankrupt by the end of 2021 – leaving families and businesses scrambling to find new suppliers, at skyrocketing prices for heating and cooking. When utilities cannot charge customers anywhere near operating costs, they go belly-up. 

No wonder two-thirds of UK renters struggle to pay their energy bills, and 400,000 more UK households were in danger of losing their gas and electricity provider before last Christmas. People are “genuinely terrified” about rising energy costs. Excess winter energy-poverty death tolls are likely to set new records. 

Health and living standards in Britain and Europe will likely get far worse. In addition to insane energy costs, wages and environmental regulation costs are much higher than in Asia. Ceramic, steel, aluminum, automotive and other energy-intensive companies and industries are becoming uncompetitive. Manufacturing, jobs, energy use and greenhouse gas emissions are just moving to Asia. 

Climate and energy politics, combined with fierce global demand, make it unlikely that Europe’s energy prices will go down. And while the EU recently voted to define natural gas and nuclear power as “sustainable,” acquiring affordable gas and building new nuclear plants will take years and be battled every step of the way. Rolling blackouts could become as common as in California. 

British politicians “rail at energy costs” and argue about trimming them at the margins, says journalist Madeline Grant, perhaps by reducing the 5% VAT on energy or the 25% green-social subsidy levies on electricity bills. But they “dare not question the green policies” that cause energy price increases, end up taking no action, and then slap hefty new “pollution taxes” on gas and diesel vehicles. 

Britain and Europe need to drill and frack their vast shale deposits. Having shut down their older nuclear plants, they must start building small modular reactors. The rest of the developed world needs to take similar actions – and not only because China, India and the rest of the developing world are not about to give up fossil fuels and rely on unreliable wind and solar power, but to save jobs and lives. 

Otherwise, Britain’s Christmas just past will be its, Europe’s and America’s Christmas future, forever. Scrooge learned from Marley. Will Boris Johnson, Joe Biden, AOC and their lot learn from reality? 

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues.

 

The Sun's Morning Wire: War Over Green New Deal Comes to Lovell, Maine

By Staff Reporter of the Sun | December 13, 2021 

Good morning from Lovell, Maine, where Tom McLaughlin reports that the town is up in arms over a plan to put tens of thousands of solar panels smack in the middle of the foothills of one of the most cherished vistas in the state — Mt. Kearsarge.  Why might that be?,,,,,,, Read More

Also up this morning is an editorial on America’s victory in the campaign to extradite Julian Assange of Wikileaks to stand trial for espionage against the United States. The fight isn’t over, but a major ruling moves it a step closer and is a vote of confidence by Britain that America is acting in good faith,,,,,,,,, Read More....

And the world’s worst human rights offender, Xi Jinping of Communist China, is out with a new book promoting himself as a defender of human rights. The aim is to recast the very concept in favor of the communist approach to things. ........................Our China watcher, Philip Lenczycki, has the story.........Read More......

Democrats still embrace their slavemaster roots

The party of slavery, segregation and the Klan now runs eco-slavery operations

Paul Driessen

History isn’t always quite what’s portrayed in popular culture or taught today in schools, especially regarding racial politics. Do your kids know the Republican Party was formed in 1854 to keep slavery out of new American territories? Or that for over a century Republicans battled Democrats who supported slavery and segregation, poll taxes, pre-vote “literacy” tests, Jim Crow and Ku Klux Klan terrorism?
 
Today, Democrats and their media, social media, teacher union, Black Lives Matter and “mostly peaceful” Antifa rioter allies advance 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory (CRT) claims that America was founded on racism and is still plagued by systemic racism – while hiding, whitewashing and rewriting the Democrat Party’s long, sordid role.
 
Commentators accurately observe, “This is not your parents’ Democrat Party.” Indeed. The Democrat Party now embraces some of the most radical, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, anti-energy, America-bashing elements in American history. A favorite tactic is “greenwashing” policies with assertions that Democrats are “saving the Earth” from climate change and other purported environmental disasters.
 
Their power grabs recently led an African-American Democrat California Assemblyman to say these policies “systematically drive racial economic inequities and fuel environmental racism,” by constantly and repeatedly increasing energy costs for poor and minority families and businesses. 
 
It’s not rocket science. Ban leasing, drilling, fracking, pipelines and coal use, as the Biden-Harris team is doing – and energy prices skyrocket as supplies dwindle. Since the 2020 election, crude oil prices have doubled, to over $80 a barrel, and US gasoline is up more than a dollar a gallon. Families that heat with natural gas could pay up to 50% more this winter than last year.
 
That’s still well below Europe’s Green Madness prices, but congressional Democrats continue to push “clean power” fantasies that would eradicate secure, reliable, affordable US energy – and the Biden-Harris Administration could unilaterally impose numerous equally destructive measures. And for what?
 
A recent study in Nature calculated that reducing US carbon dioxide emissions 95% by 2050 would have an annual price tag greater than what America spent in 2019 on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid combined: nearly 12% of our Gross Domestic Product – $11,300 per person per year! Meanwhile, China, India and 100 other countries will continue using fossil fuels and emitting prodigious amounts of plant-fertilizing CO2. Net climate benefits? Somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.06 to 0.30 degrees F by 2100!  
 
Moreover, this entire energy-and-climate-crisis charade is based on the assumption, the assertion that – after countless millions of years of natural climate change – every climate and weather fluctuation and aberration today is due to fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions. The Democrat ruling class and its government-funded “scientist” acolytes have models but no actual data or evidence to back up their claims.
 
But they don’t need any, because pressure groups, the media and academia endlessly repeat and validate their unfounded claims – and cancel, silence, deplatform and defund alternative viewpoints and evidence. Meanwhile, their corporate collaborators rake in billions in taxpayer subsidies and guaranteed loans.
 
Climate change is their ticket to controlling our livelihoods and living standards: they as our masters, we as their servants – with no accountability for their mistakes and lies, or the damage and death they cause.
 
Wags like Dave Chappelle would be banished if they suggested that the Master Race has devolved into the Master Party. But today’s Democrats are the most radical in Congressional and Executive Branch history. Egged on by even more radical activists, they truly think they’re smarter than the rest of us, and were ordained to rule us unwashed masses, employing all the powers of centralized government.
 
The way they see it, we and our states and communities must simply accept our new subservient status, our lost personal freedoms, our reduced living standards – and the overseas child and slave labor and environmental desecration that Green New Deal technologies are inflicting.
 
40,000 Congolese children as young as four already labor alongside their parents – for slave wages, under constant threats of cave-ins and exposure to toxic mud, dust and water – to mine the cobalt needed for electric vehicle and backup batteries. The ore is sent to China for processing in plants with equally abominable safety and pollution conditions.
 
Rare earth mining and processing in Inner Mongolia has destroyed agriculture, created a vast toxic dump, and brought life-threatening health issues to workers and residents. China also uses thousands of Uighur slave laborers to manufacture solar panels for sale to the US and EU.
 
John Kerry doesn’t think Uighur slavery should affect America’s climate strategy – and Democrat California legislators voted down a bill requiring that the state certify that electric vehicles sold there must be free of any materials or components involving child labor. Certification would cost too much and imperil state climate goals, they said.
 
Fair Trade and Fair Wages are vital for T-shirts, coffee and sneakers. But ignore them for Green Tech.
 
Green New Deal schemes would multiply these human rights abuses many times over. They would make the US dangerously dependent on an increasingly belligerent China for “green” metals and minerals.
 
Worse, Democrat overseer roots have metastasized into a global cancer that infects government programs, foreign aid and financial institutions, with often deadly results. It is eco-imperialism – Green power that brings widespread Black death.
 
People desperately seeking better health and lives in Africa, Asia and Latin America are told any US and Western help will be limited to what radical activists determine is ecological and climate friendly.
 
Improve your living standards, the Masters say, but only to degrees that can be supported by wind and solar power – not by fossil fuels, nuclear or even hydroelectric power. Our banks and other institutions will approve and finance only land-intensive, wildlife-killing, raw materials-hungry “renewable” energy.
 
Improve your agricultural productivity and crop yields – but only through agro-ecology. Modern herbicides, insecticides, fertilizers and even tractors must be banned. Stoop labor will reign supreme.
 
Reduce malaria and yellow fever – but only with bed nets and “integrated pest management.” Larvacides and insecticides, or DDT to keep mosquitoes out of homes for months with one spray – absolutely not.
 
Climate change will make summers hotter and winters colder; people will die. Wrong. With today’s housing and energy systems, people will do just fine – unless climate and energy policies take away their air conditioning and heating, ration them, make them unaffordable, or subject them to recurrent blackouts.
 
Americans “use too much” and “live too well,” they claim – so our overseers want to limit our homes to 640 square feet and “allow” us to fly on vacation or to see family only once every three years!
 
Bear in mind, all this is just the climate and energy cabal of the Democrat Master Party. Other equally loud, demanding, unaccountable elements want to defund the police, and disarm us as crime skyrockets. They’re indoctrinating our kids in CRT, gender fluidity, preferred pronouns, explicit sex, and far more.
 
Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe doesn’t think parents should have a say in what schools teach. (The UN Human Rights Declaration specifically says “parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.”) Attorney General Merrick Garland has a growing list of outspoken parents and other conservatives whom he and the National School Boards Association want investigated, harassed, prosecuted and even jailed as “domestic terrorists.” They embrace and impose seemingly endless totalitarian Covid mandates.
 
All this is why the 2021 Virginia elections are so critical: Glen Youngkin versus Terry McAuliffe, Winsome Sears vs. Hala Ayala for Lt. Governor, Jason Miyares vs. Mark Herring for AG, and dozens of senate and delegate seats. Other state elections two weeks hence are equally important. And the 2022 national elections will be a watershed moment in US history. Responsible voting is an absolute must.
 
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues.