Government making us use play-like energy forms will consign us to a cold, dark future

 Per the Washington Free Beacon:

President Joe Biden's aggressive climate regulations targeting fossil-fuel-fired power plants will create widespread electric grid instability and lead to mass blackouts impacting millions of Americans, according to a recent studycommissioned by North Dakota's state government.

The research, conducted in May by the firm Always On Energy Research, concluded that the Environmental Protection Agency's recently finalized regulations are not technologically feasible and will foreseeably lead to the retirement of coal power generation units. Intermittent and weather-dependent green energy sources, such as wind and solar, will replace such retired generators, leading to unreliable conditions, the study found.

The study largely echoes concerns that have been voiced by the U.S. grid watchdog, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation; regional grid operators; and power utility companies. Four regional grid operators that oversee the infrastructure supplying power for 154 million Americans warnedafter the EPA regulations were first proposed last year that grid reliability would "dwindle to concerning levels" under the regulations. The Edison Electric Institute, the lead industry group representing U.S. electric companies, in late May joined a lawsuit that challenged the EPA's finalized regulations.

"Biden's Green Agenda is shutting down baseload power and is rapidly destabilizing our electrical grid. Electricity costs are up 30% under Biden already," North Dakota governor Doug Burgum (R.) told the Washington Free Beacon in a statement. "Prices will continue to skyrocket if he's re-elected as real power demand increases dramatically for the first time in decades—for chip manufacturing and new foundational industries like AI."

Burgum, a member of the North Dakota Industrial Commission, which commissioned the study, added that Biden's regulatory regime will reduce power supplies, leading to "higher prices AND less reliability."

There's a dive into some numbers so we can compare and contrast:

Solar panels, for example, produce just 25 percent and wind turbines produce 34 percent of their listed capacity, according to the Energy Information Administration. Coal and natural gas plants, meanwhile, respectively produce 49 percent and 54 percent of their listed capacity.

Factoring in that disparity, Always On Energy Research concluded the grid across the majority of the Midwest would experience nearly 9 million megawatt hours of unserved load, leading to blackouts costing tens of billions of dollars.

"The EPA power plant rule is exactly the wrong thing to be doing for grid reliability right now," Paige Lambermont, a research fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told the Free Beacon. "To be intentionally closing and, essentially, banning the facilities that are keeping the grid functioning while, at the same time, in other ways, encouraging the penetration on the grid of things like wind and solar that are making the grid less reliable is going to have incredibly poor aftereffects."

Nationwide, natural gas plants generated roughly 43 percent of total electricity produced in 2023 while coal plants generated another 16 percent, according to additional Energy Information Administration data. By comparison, wind power generated 10 percent of total electricity in the United States, and solar produced less than 6 percent.

But let's not conclude on a note of making this the main point.

The main point is that government has no effing business getting between producers and consumers of energy and limiting the two parties' options as they desire to come to an agreement - that is, a transaction. 

The pointy-headed overlords don't think we have the individual capacity to make decisions that serve our own best interests. 

The EPA will make the lights flicker, cost us an arm and a leg, and greatly erode the second most precious thing we have as human beings (after our lives): our freedom.

 

 

Imposing tyranny on two policy fronts: the family and energy

 LITD readers are familiar with my explanation regarding why, while I can't vote for a Republican Party that has wholly given itself over to the MAGA cult, I also cannot vote for any candidate of the Democratic Party. It's the party of climate alarmism, militant identity politics, and wealth redistribution.

The third characteristic is the means by which it enacts policies motivated by the first two.

Today's Exhibit A is the Biden administration's plan to subsidize day care:

It’s an election year, and so the Biden administration is going all-in on an ill-considered, poorly targeted campaign of subsidizing child care.

Biden’s child care plan is expensive social engineering that would create shortages and reward special interests while providing no help to millions of parents. While we grant it will get glowing press and might sound good in a stump speech, there are no redeeming traits to this plan. None. It is wretched from top to bottom.

“Make no mistake,” Vice President Kamala Harris posted last week. “President Joe Biden and I intend to cap child care costs at $10 a day for the average family and make preschool free for all four-year-olds.”

It’s imprudent for the government to spend tens of billions of dollars a year on child care at a time of record deficits and high inflation. Any pro-family spending or tax breaks Congress sees fit to provide should go to slight expansions of the child tax credit (indexing it for inflation, at the very least).

Giving parents money or letting them keep more of their own is obviously superior family policy because it gives parents a choice. Some will spend their tax savings on day care. Others will use the cash cushion as a way to work less and thus spend more time with children. Still others will use the money to build a granny flat or hire a nanny.

But the Biden administration seems dominated by ideologues who think there is only one right choice for a couple: two full-time jobs and institutional day care.

Most parents, however, do not want this. American Compass found in a 2021 poll that 53% of married mothers prefer to have one stay-at-home parent at least until the youngest child is in kindergarten.

This truth will be lost on the governing and media elites. “Whereas lower-, working-, and middle-class adults are most likely to choose a full-time worker and a stay-at-home parent as their ideal,” American Compass reported, “upper-class adults prefer both parents to work full-time and to rely on paid childcare.”

In this way, Biden’s day care subsidies are like his student loan bailouts: Wealth transfers to his highly educated, high-income base in high-cost states.

What’s more, the $10-dollars-a-day child care plan simply will not work. Ten dollars a day is the same tagline used by the liberal government of Canada, where the day care industry is imploding.

Subsidizing demand is not the way to make a thing more available and affordable. If you simply subsidize demand for a thing, it gets more and more expensive: See American healthcare and higher education.

Then there is the ever-more aggressive government interference in the agreements which millions of free individuals, some of whom produce cars and some of whom buy them, enter into as to what kinds of vehicles are produced and consumed, all in the name of forcing play-like energy forms down our throats:

The Biden administration is expected this week to finalize highly anticipated regulations targeting gas-powered vehicle tailpipe emissions, considered the tip of the spear in its efforts to electrify the transportation sector.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is slated to issue the final rulemaking — which officials have boasted will incentivize greater adoption of electric vehicles (EV), but which opponents have criticized as a de facto mandate — as soon as Wednesday, industry sources told Fox News Digital. The regulations, a key part of President Biden's climate agenda, would ultimately force automakers to more rapidly expand electric options in their fleets beginning in a matter of years.

They are targeting specific percentages:

Overall, under the proposal, which EPA unveiled in April 2023 and will go into effect in 2027, the White House projected that 67% of new sedan, crossover, SUV and light truck purchases would be electric by 2032. In addition, up to 50% of bus and garbage truck, 35% of short-haul freight tractor and 25% of long-haul freight tractor purchases could also be electric by then.

The White House said the proposal, which represents the most aggressive proposal of its kind ever proposed, would "accelerate the clean vehicle transition" and reduce oil imports by 20 billion barrels. Biden and climate activists have taken aim at the transportation sector over its high emissions profile — it alone produces roughly 29% of America's greenhouse gas emissions, federal data shows.

So, no, I can't subscribe to the idea that, because I understand what a disaster a Trump victory would be,  I'm obligated to vote for the alternative.

I'm staying home in November. I don't want the eternal record book to show I had anything to do with either form of American ruination. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Biden thumbs-down on LNG exports: more hatred of human advancement

 I hope that you're aware of this development:

The White House is halting the permitting process for several proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal projects over their potential impacts on climate change, an unprecedented move environmentalists have demanded in recent months.

In a joint announcement Friday morning, the White House and Department of Energy (DOE) said the pause would occur while federal officials conduct a rigorous environmental review assessing the projects’ carbon emissions, which could take more than a year to complete. Climate activists have loudly taken aim at LNG export projects in recent weeks, arguing they will lead to a large uptick in emissions and worsen global warming.

“As our exports increase, we must review export applications using the most comprehensive up-to-date analysis of the economic, environmental and national security considerations,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told reporters on a press call. “This action includes a pause on pending applications for exports of U.S. natural gas as LNG to non-free trade agreement countries until the department can update the underlying analyses for authorizations.”

Is there any doubt who has had the administration's ear on this subject?

LNG export terminals have been opposed by Democrats and environmentalists who argue they would create harmful pollution and contribute to global warming. The issue has led to activists posting videos on social media which, over the last two months, have generated tens of millions of views.

Additionally, in December, dozens of environmental groups wrote to Granholm, imploring her to reject the LNG development “for the sake of our climate and communities.” Days later, 170 scientists penned a letter to President Biden, asking him to reject pending LNG facilities.

Here's another viewpoint, one based less on hysterics and preening, and more on an understanding of LNG's comparative advantages:

Natural gas is an incredibly versatile fuel--providing low-cost, clean residential heating; low-cost, clean "industrial process heat"; and low-cost, highly controllable and reliable clean electricity.

While natural gas used to be so hard to get that the US imported it, thanks to fracking and other shale energy technologies, the US now has a virtually limitless supply of low-cost, reliable, versatile, clean natural gas.¹

Between 2008 and 2018 fracking natural gas added 17 times more energy to the US than all solar panels and wind turbines combined. And that’s 100% reliable energy, unlike the unreliable energy from solar and wind that needs constant backup from...fracked natural gas.²

One of the best things American energy producers can do with our endless natural gas supplies is to export natural gas to places that need it. There are 800 million people who have no electricity and the 2.6 billion people still using wood or dung for heating and cooking.³

The key to exporting natural gas is LNG--liquefied natural gas. By cooling natural gas to very low temperatures, we can turn it into a liquid that can be easily and cost-effectively transported nearly anywhere in the world.

The world wants US natural gas and American companies want to build the LNG facilities to get it to them. But our government is strangling progress with an onerous and irrational permitting process.

LNG export facilities are burdened not only by standard, onerous state and federal permitting requirements in need of reform, but also requiring additional approval by the Department of Energy--which can take years.

Fortunately, there is proposed legislation that would expedite permitting for LNG exports: the “Natural Gas Export Expansion Act,” introduced by @AugustPfluger, which would allow expedited LNG approval for any country except those determined to be national security threats.⁴

There is no good reason for opposing expedited permitting of LNG. Those who complain about LNG's emissions ignore the fact that if we don't export LNG, it will be substituted for by higher-emissions Russian LNG or by coal.⁵

And our trading partners are going to find some LNG to import anyway - or substitute coal for it:

Countries that would have purchased U.S. LNG can substitute LNG from other countries. Mother Earth doesn’t really care which country it comes from.

Countries that aren’t able to substitute LNG from elsewhere are likely to use coal instead. Coal burns dirtier than LNG. The largest single reason for the decline in U.S. carbon emissions in the past several years is the switch from coal to natural gas for electricity generation. Making LNG exports more difficult hinders the ability of other countries to make that switch.

As has been proven with such developments as "gender-affirming" mutilation of thirteen year olds and an electeds-of-color holiday party hosted by the mayor of a major post-American city, progressivism doesn't need a majority of the population to impose its corrosion on the rest of us.

Climate alarmism brings together an older element of the leftist impulse - class-based antipathy toward organizations formed for industrial purposes (see California Governor Gavin Newsom's accusation that "big oil" is gouging prices and lying about the effects of its products), and the profits resulting from their activity - with more modern features of that impulse: a deification of the ball of dirt and water we inhabit, and an "intersectional" lumping together of its adversarial stance toward normal-people energy forms with its paradoxical portrayal of the female half of the human species: portraying them simultaneously as helpless and particularly vulnerable, and powerful and assertive in the same way a man is. 

The entire vision is mad. It's also collectivist in the extreme. It allows its architects to supposedly justify the sinking of government's teeth into every realm of human activity.

Would that we had some kind of coherent and viable political counterforce that could mitigate this onslaught. That's not in the offing at present. 

 

 

 

Ginning up climate alarmism is all about tyranny; now they're coming after what's on your dinner plate

 The United Nations is utterly worthless when it comes to calming actual global hot spots, such as Ukraine or Israel. However, it does seem to have the resources for this:

The world’s most-developed nations will be told to curb their excessive appetite for meat as part of the first comprehensive plan to bring the global agrifood industry into line with the Paris climate agreement.

The global food systems’ road map to 1.5C is expected to be published by the United Nations’ Food & Agriculture Organization during the COP28 summit next month. Nations that over-consume meat will be advised to limit their intake, while developing countries — where under-consumption of meat adds to a prevalent nutrition challenge — will need to improve their livestock farming, according to the FAO.

From farm to fork, food systems account for about a third of global greenhouse gas emissions and much of that footprint is linked to livestock farming — a major source of methane, deforestation and biodiversity loss. Although non-binding, the FAO’s plan is expected to inform policy and investment decisions and give a push to the food industry’s climate transition which has lagged other sectors in commitments.

The guidance on meat is intended to send a clear message to governments. But politicians in richer nations typically shy away from policies aimed at influencing consumer behavior, especially where it involves cutting consumption of everyday items.

“Livestock is politically sensitive, but we need to deal with sensitive issues to solve the problem,” said Dhanush Dinesh, the founder of Clim-Eat, which works to accelerate climate action in food systems. “If we don’t tackle the livestock problem, we are not going to solve climate change. The key problem is overconsumption.”

Who's this "we" that has to "tackle the livestock problem"? Is I just the pointy-heads at your agency? Are you sure the world's cattle ranchers and pork producers are going to get on board? What's your plan for making this more effective than the feeble attempt to get China to stop building coal-fired power plants?

Here's a term to make one's hair stand on end: "road map [for a] shared direction of travel":

The plan will be rolled out in three parts over the next few years to eventually include country-specific recommendations.

The road map has the potential to offer a “shared direction of travel” for livestock companies and their investors, mirroring the role of the International Energy Agency’s net zero document for the energy sector, according to FAIRR Initiative, an investor network focused on intensive animal production.

“This road map is needed to bring clarity to both companies and investors so that they can plan for the transition,” said Sofía Condés, head of investor outreach at FAIRR. “The longer companies wait to act, the more drastic and potentially disruptive the transition.”

The FAO’s work is one of several food-focused announcements and pledges that are expected to come out of the COP28 summit in Dubai. While climate summits have tended to steer away from agrifood issues largely due to sensitivities over food security, this year’s organizers are trying to push through a number of initiatives outside the formal talks, said Clim-Eat’s Dinesh.

Anybody who has read LITD for any length of time knows I am most definitely not a MAGA type. That movement has employed the term "globalism" in a manipulative way to justify protectionist economic policy. But there is, on the other hand, a cadre of administrative dweebs who clearly hold the free market in disdain and are constantly devising ways to intrude into the personal lives and decision-making of people who live far from their ivory-tower offices and conference rooms. James Burnham first brought this to our attention in 1941 in The Managerial Revolution. 

My message to them is that when they start eyeing my grill, oven and dinner plate, it's getting real personal. 

This citizen of a sovereign nation - not of some kind of "global community" - says, resoundingly, "Like hell you will."

 

Neither Biden nor Trump is acceptable to me

 Carlos Lozada, writing at the New York Times, makes about as compelling a case as could be made for why, even though it's incredibly unpopular, a 2024 rematch between the current president and the Very Stable Genius is just what we need:

Only a third of Americans view President Biden favorably, and two-thirds of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters want to nominate someone else for the presidency (no one in particular, just someone else, please). Trump is the overwhelming favorite to become the Republican nominee for the third consecutive time, but his overall approval rating is lower than Biden’s. And while 60 percent of voters don’t want to put Trump back in the White House, 65 percent don’t want to hand Biden a second term, either. The one thing on which Americans seem to agree is that we find a Biden-Trump 2024 rematch entirely disagreeable.

This disdain may reflect the standard gripes about the candidates. (One is too old, the other too Trump.) But it also may signal an underlying reluctance to acknowledge the meaning of their standoff and the inescapability of our decision. A contest between Biden and Trump would compel Americans to either reaffirm or discard basic democratic and governing principles. More so than any other pairing, Biden versus Trump forces us to decide, or at least to clarify, who we think we are and what we strive to be.

The VSG's Claremont, New Hampshire speech yesterday reinforced this assertion by Lozada:

Trump is running as an overtly authoritarian candidate — the illusion of pivots, of adults in the room, of a man molded by the office, is long gone. He is dismissive of the law, except when he can harness it for his benefit; of open expression, except when it fawns all over him; and of free elections, except when they produce victories he likes. He has called for the “termination” of the Constitution based on his persistent claims of 2020 electoral fraud, and according to The Washington Post, in a new term he would use the Justice Department as an instrument of vengeance against political opponents. We know who Trump is and what he offers.

But he offers weak tea when he frames his reasoning for why Biden is a foil to that:

Biden’s case to the electorate — for 2020, 2022 and 2024 — has been premised on the preservation of American democratic traditions. In the video announcing his 2020 campaign, he asserted that “our very democracy” was at stake in the race against Trump. In a speech two months before the midterm vote last year, he asserted that Trump and his allies “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundation of our Republic.” And the video kicking off his 2024 re-election bid featured multiple scenes of the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. “The question we are facing,” Biden said, “is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom.” That is our choice in 2024.

Why do I say that? After all, what happened on 1/6/21 was indeed a major assault in American democracy.

But consider the issue, along with preserving democracy, on which Biden polls better than Trump:

A recent New York Times/Siena College poll that shows Trump leading Biden in five battleground states also asked registered voters which candidate they trust on key questions. Trump won on the economy, immigration and national security; Biden received higher marks on just two issues. The first was abortion, a core priority among Democratic voters and one that proved powerful in last year’s midterms and the off-year elections and ballot initiatives last Tuesday in states like Ohio, Kentucky and Virginia.

My view on abortion boils down to this: If it's a diabolical act, a criminal act warranting the most severe punishment, and a sin against God for me to pop a hole in your skull and vacuum your brains out, why is it any less so if you're not born yet?

As I put it in my latest piece at Precipice, 

The division between those who are pro-life and those who assert the necessity of legalized abortion hinges on the notion of a human soul, and whether one is present from the moment of conception. That’s why the rejoinder to the right-to-make-my-own-decisions-about-my-body argument is to assert that more than one body - and hence more than one soul - is involved when a woman is pregnant.

I’ve never been demonstrative about my own pro-life position, never attended any rallies or dinners or engaged any elected officials about the matter. It may not be the most laudable way to be pro-life, but I’ve reacted to the state of affairs over the last fifty-plus years by being sad. Sad that pro-choicers want to put worst-case scenarios - rape, incest and fathers unwilling to be fathers - first. What a hard and cold way to view human development. What would it take to uphold the ideal of family, that most basic of social units, where, when it’s in a healthy condition, is the environment in which we learn about how to lovingly interact with other people? What about venerating nurturing, guidance, encouragement, team spirit, humor, and generosity?

There seems something bitter at the core of a pro-choice position. Its inclination is to respond to what I’m saying in the above paragraph with, “Yeah, show me an actual family that unfailingly venerates those things, that sustains the happiness of everyone in it, that isn’t fraught with underlying issues.”

If you want to see the playing-out of that particular argument, click the link.

But here I bring up abortion because it's only one element of why I can't vote for Biden, or, more broadly, for Democrats.

Abortion is really a sub-category of identity politics militancy. It sets women up, not as roughly half of the human species, but as an oppressed demographic - alongside people who happen to be black, people with unorthodox sexual attractions, and people who have some notion that they'd find fulfillment in mutilating their crotches and messing with their God-given hormonal balance. 

And then there's climate alarmism. Biden is a full-throated champion of having the federal government interfere in the millions of freely-entered-into agreements on the value of millions of goods and services that take place every day, in the name of weaning society off fossil fuels, which are cheap, dense and readily available, compared to any the play-like energy forms our overlords would impose on us. 

And he endorses wealth redistribution as the cudgel by which he'd bring this agenda to fruition. 

James Madison, the architect of our Constitution, was quite clear on this point. It is not within the proper purview of government to influence people's choices on energy forms, or to mandate preferences in hiring or college admission based on demographics, or to change the thousands-of-years-old definition of marriage, or indulge anyone's insistence on being regarded as the gender opposite what he or she obviously is.

It is wrong to take Citizen A's money to address the particular needs or wants of Citizen B.

Indeed, we ought to insist that government puke all over itself to justify taking the first red cent from any of us, ever. 

So I cannot accept a choice between a cult leader who makes it clear he'll try to jail anyone who is not 100 recent loyal to him, and a candidate who has been steeped all his life in the ever-more-collectivist tilt of the Democrat party.

I have no problem with staying home next May and nest November. 

I will not have the eternal record book showing that I contributed to the final shattering of this country, even if that's inevitable. 

 

 

Take it from Britain, folks: net zero amounts to government telling you to adjust your lifestyle, and play-like energy forms won't be able to step in and keep you warm

 Over in Albion, government is "recommending" "behavior change" to the subjects and folks need to step it up with making those changes :

this news (via the Daily Telegraph) is another reminder of how net zero is a step back:

Millions of families will be urged by a green quango not to heat their homes in the evening to help the Government hit its net zero target.

The Climate Change Committee (CCC) said people should turn off their radiators at peak times as part of a wider drive to deliver “emissions savings”.

In a document on “behaviour change” the body recommended Britons “pre-heat” their houses in the afternoon when electricity usage is lower.

It said the move would save families money, but critics suggested the real reason was that renewables will not be able to provide enough energy to cope with peak demand.

“Critics” are almost certainly correct.

A quango (for those who don’t speak British-English) is, to quote Wikipedia,

an organisation to which a government has devolved power, but which is still partly controlled and/or financed by government bodies. The term was originally a shortening of “quasi autonomous NGO”, where NGO is the acronym for a non-government organization.

The CCC, explains the Daily Telegraph’s Nick Gutteridge,

is an independent body set up by ministers in 2008 to advise the Government on how to hit its climate targets.

In its latest report, the committee criticises No 10 over its “worryingly slow” action on climate.

It states that Downing Street’s support for new oil and coal exploration and the expansion of airports meant Britain was no longer a global green leader.

“No longer a global green leader.”

And this little aspect of the situation points up something I've long observed: that hypocrisy becomes a problem when pointy-headed overlords aren't doing what they'r telling the subject to do. It's especially galling when they admit that it's because they can't afford to:

The CCC, it seems, still clings to some remnant of British imperial nostalgia. And, as for its “independence,” all that that means is that the CCC has become a playground for climate fundamentalists. It also advises the U.K. government on an “appropriate” level for its “carbon budgets.” It is largely unaccountable, apart from the occasional embarrassment.

The Daily Telegraph:

The use of “carbon budgets”, which set the Government legally binding targets for reducing emissions, has increasingly come under fire from Tory MPs.

Last month the head of the CCC revealed that he still has a gas boiler in his own flat even though his committee is urging Britons to switch to heat pumps.

Chris Stark said more than four years ago that he was “keen” to switch to an electric heating system but admitted that he had not been able to do so.

He also acknowledged that heat pumps were too expensive for many people and that it was “very difficult” to install them in existing flats like his own.

Oh.

The reason why this issue needs to be front and center is not because there's some need for urgency in addressing a climate "crisis." It's because the overlords are bringing human advancement, comfort and convenience to a screaming halt. 

 

 

One reason having Trump as the GOP standard bearer is harmful to conservatism: it taints the effort to show that transitioning to play-like energy forms is a lot of hooey

 Scott Waldman, who covers the climate beat for Politico, doesn't even try to conceal where he's coming from regarding the energy-policy component of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025.

Let 'er rip, Scott:

Conservative groups have crafted a plan for demolishing the federal government’s efforts to counter climate change — and it wouldn’t stop with President Joe Biden’s policies.

The 920-page blueprint, whose hundreds of authors include former Trump administration officials, would go far beyond past GOP efforts to slash environmental agencies’ budgets or oust “deep state” employees.

Called Project 2025, it would block the expansion of the electrical grid for wind and solar energy; slash funding for the Environmental Protection Agency’s environmental justice office; shutter the Energy Department’s renewable energy offices; prevent states from adopting California’s car pollution standards; and delegate more regulation of polluting industries to Republican state officials.

If enacted, it could decimate the federal government’s climate work, stymie the transition to clean energy and shift agencies toward nurturing the fossil fuel industry rather than regulating it. It’s designed to be implemented on the first day of a Republican presidency.

“Project 2025 is not a white paper. We are not tinkering at the edges. We are writing a battle plan, and we are marshaling our forces,” said Paul Dans, director of Project 2025 at the Heritage Foundation, which compiled the plan as a road map for the first 180 days of the next GOP administration. “Never before has the whole conservative movement banded together to systematically prepare to take power day one and deconstruct the administrative state.”

Now, yes, Heritage has undergone a Trumpward drift in the last few years, and a lot of the rest of Project 2025 reflects "deep state" paranoia - and would set the table for the Very Stable Genius to amass power unconstitutionally in the presidency, but the energy-policy aspect is good stuff. Waldman writes his article with a can-you-believe-how-awful-this-is tone, but anybody who actually understands why fossils fuels are a blessing and essential to human advancement will have a "sounds great to me" response.

More than 400 people participated in crafting Project 2025’s details. Former Trump administration officials played a key role in writing the chapters on dismantling EPA and DOE.

The plan to gut the Department of Energy was written by Bernard McNamee, a former DOE official whom Trump appointed to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. McNamee, who did not have regulatory experience, was one of the most overtly political FERC appointees in decades. He was a director at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank that fights climate regulations, and was a senior adviser to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

McNamee outlines cutting key divisions at DOE, including the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations and the Loan Programs Office. He has called climate change a “progressive policy.”

He also calls for cutting funding to DOE’s Grid Deployment Office, in part to stop “focusing on grid expansion for the benefit of renewable resources or supporting low/carbon generation.” Instead, he calls for strengthening grid reliability, which he describes as expanding the use of fossil fuels and slowing or stopping the addition of cleaner energy. Part of his plan includes a massive expansion of natural gas infrastructure.

“Prevent socializing costs for customers who do not benefit from the projects or justifying such cost shifts as advancing vague ‘societal benefits’ such as climate change,” McNamee wrote in the report.

McNamee did not respond to requests for comment.

Preventing the expansion of the electric grid would slow down renewable energy projects, threatening U.S. climate goals while cooling the sector’s economic growth, said Mike O’Boyle, a senior director at the nonpartisan policy firm Energy Innovation and head of its electricity program.

“If we totally step away from the role of the federal government, our economy is going to miss out in a big way because the rest of the world is moving on climate, so they’re poised to reap the benefits both for their energy consumers but also in terms of manufacturing,” he said.

Mandy Gunasekara, who was EPA’s chief of staff under Trump, wrote a chapter within the plan to move the agency away from its focus on climate policy and reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

It outlines eliminating or downsizing agency functions including the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assistance, and the Office of Public Engagement and Environmental Education. It also would also relocate regional EPA offices and would “downsize by terminating the newest hires in low-value programs.”

The overarching theme in remaking federal agencies is to shift power away from the federal government and toward states, in an effort to diminish regulations.

“The challenge of creating a conservative EPA will be to balance justified skepticism toward an agency that has long been amenable to being coopted by the Left for political ends against the need to implement the agency’s true function: protecting public health and the environment in cooperation with states,” Gunasekara wrote.

Diminish regulations! Heaven forfend!

McNamee is exactly right when he speaks of justifying cost shifts. It's also known as redistribution backed by the unique coercive power of government. 

Wind and solar do not hold their own in the energy marketplace. They need a leg up in the form of subsidization. That's because they are intermittent, whereas fossil fuels are dense, readily available, and comparatively inexpensive.

But here's the problem with Project 2025: It's way too bound up with Trump. And that's unavoidable, because energy-policy experts with their heads on straight and free-market proponents who were understandably eager to serve in federal-government positions from 2017 to 2020 were going to have to serve in an administration with his name on it.

The Politico piece features a photograph of Trump announcing US withdrawal from the Paris climate accord.

Again, a great move, but let's not kid ourselves for a second that Trump actually gave a diddly about why. His handlers told him it would make him look great, and that's all he needed to know.

The overwhelming presence of Trump in the Republican Party provides the opportunity for "journalists" like Waldman to conflate sound and much-needed moves on the energy front with the most unfit president in the nation's history.

I saw all this coming when Trump's cult began forming in 2015. The uninformed masses were going to associate actual conservatism with Squirrel Hair's incoherent mishmash.

Clarity is called for regarding climate hooey, but the drool-besotted leg-humpers have made achieving it damn difficult. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The stupid party - today's edition

 How's this for announcing to the world that turf battles are more important to you than principles?

A band of House conservatives mounted an extraordinary rebellion against their own party leaders on Tuesday, venting their angst over the recent debt limit fight with a surprise protest that derailed the chamber floor.

Republican leaders spent nearly an hour working to resolve the standoff with their right flank, which disrupted the party’s plans to pass legislation protecting gas stoves from potential government bans. But ultimately, roughly a dozen conservatives — most of them members of the Trump-aligned House Freedom Caucus — voted against moving forward on a bill they support.

The move was entirely unexpected by senior Republicans, according to two people close to leadership. And some GOP lawmakers feared it might be just the beginning of a conservative drive to undercut Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s team unless, as some of Tuesday’s rebels put it, McCarthy keeps to promises he made in order to win the House’s top gavel in January.

A few points need to be made:

• The cutting-off-nose-to-spite-face cliche is glaringly apt here. This was a major opportunity for House Pubs to show that they knew just what the Left's agenda is here: using climate alarmism as a tool for tyranny. It was absolutely juicy. It would have made for just the kind of news stories and pundit-world conversations sorely needed at this moment. 
• I'm no fan of Kevin McCarthy. I lost any modicum of respect for him when he made the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago mere weeks after his screaming-match phone conversation  with the Very Stable Genius from the House floor on the afternoon of January 6. But he exercised some deft leadership - within the context of what passes for leadership these days - when he cobbled together the votes to get the debt-ceiling agreement passed.
• Per my phrase "what passes for leadership these days," yes, I'm aware it's a brand-aid, and we'll be right back at this juncture in January 2025. And everybody, even those who are kidding themselves otherwise, knows exactly why: Social Security and Medicare are awash in unfunded liabilities. 
• This emboldens the yay-hoo flank of the Republican Party. Those folks salivate for the moment at which Trump stomps all challengers into the dust and strides victorious onto the nominee's podium at the Pub convention next year. 
• These Freedom Caucus people are not conservatives, and not just  because they sabotaged some very good legislation. They aren't capable of the coherence required to form a conservative vision of any depth or viability. 

There's. whole lot of infantilism to go around in post-America. I guess it's too much to expect one of our two major parties to mount a countervailing force.