STEPHEN MOORE
The Biden administration has announced in recent weeks new stringent emissions requirements for virtually the entire American transportation system.
Within a little more than a decade the Environmental Protection Agency will mandate that every car made and sold in America must be an EV. No more gas cars. The New York Time comically declared that motorists don’t have to worry because this “isn’t a ban gas cars.” Sure, it isn’t. Today less than two percent of cars use the electric power grid for fuel. So now we will see fifty times more demand for electricity from cars.
Then the EPA announced new rules for trains to go electric – even as the American Association of Railroads has declared the mandate infeasible.
But wait. The climate change lobby is just getting started. There is now a new scheme to mandate that the long-haul trucking industry convert to electric battery operation from diesel fuel.
This is a technological and cost nightmare for our trucking industry. A two-ton long haul truck is going to carry cargo across the country on an electric battery? Really?
Even if the technology existed to meet these mandates, which it doesn’t, this added strain on the electric grid system comes at a time when power production is already over-stressed. It also comes at a time when the left has insisted that more than a dozen coal and gas plants need to be shuttered. Locally, greens also have started a movement to stop transmission lines and pipelines from being built.
We still get about two thirds of our power from old-fashioned fossil fuel. Less than 10% of our power comes from wind and solar power and somehow magically we are going to get closer to 100%. This is about as promising a strategy as holding a rain dance to end a drought.
What is the likely outcome of expanding electric power demand at the same time the Biden administration is reducing supply? A manmade energy calamity? Prices could as much as double. California, which is at the forefront of the go green movement already charges its residents twice as much in utility bills as do other states.
California is also a harbinger of the dark things to come for the country if the greens have their way. Over the past several years the Golden State has suffered more power brown and blackouts. The lights go out and the factories, schools and hospitals shutdown.
Then there is the coming AI revolution, which will use three to four times more power than the Internet. Where will that power come from if we take away two-thirds of our energy sources.
Some of the more honest green groups concede that a power shortage is coming as a result of their radical “decarbonization” agenda. They support rationing of energy. The government will tell you how much power you can use and when you can use it. There is also a move afoot to conserve energy by abolishing air conditioners and “non-essential” air travel – as well as gas stoves and power lawnmowers.
What’s next? Abolishing lamps?
Energy is the master resource. Everything we have is derivative of cheap and reliable energy. The more energy a country uses – the richer it is. If you want to disrupt a nation’s progress, take away its energy sources.
This is usually what nations do to their enemies they go to war with. We are foolishly doing it to ourselves. This is a result of sinister de-growth ideology that has taken hold in America. The end game to all of these mandates to save the planet is to take America back to the dark ages – literally and figuratively.
Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He is also co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity.
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