When giving speeches and talking to audiences, I’ve often been struck by how few Americans, even those who are highly educated, have any idea where the energy they use in their home or business comes from. I’ve asked college students where the electric power is generated, and they shrug and then point to the electric socket in the wall. The electric currents just come magically through that plug.
For millennials, supporting green energy is cool and even virtuous. It’s a popular and costless way to save the planet — until the power doesn’t flow through the grid. Then the laptops, hairdryers, Netflix shows, computer games and iPhones run out of juice.
That may happen one of these days — and in the not-too-distant future (just ask Californians about blackouts), when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing.
Which brings me to President Joe Biden’s take-no-prisoners approach to energy. The goals: kill fossil fuels; stop the building of pipelines; enter international treaties that outlaw fossil fuel use; end drilling on federal lands; strangle the oil and gas industries with regulatory assaults. And then throw billions and perhaps trillions of tax dollars at wind and solar farms.
So, let’s go back to the question I ask students: How much of our energy needs today are met with fossil fuels — the so-called dirty energy?
The U.S. Energy Information Administration recently released a chart showing the latest official data on U.S. energy production sources from the Department of Energy. Some 80% of all our energy comes from oil, gas and coal. Less than 5% comes from wind and solar. Somehow, Biden is going to magically flip these percentages around in five or 10 years? Even the federal forecasters who support renewable energy think that is highly unlikely.
Even if Biden were able to quadruple American production of green energy over the next decade — a huge undertaking — we will be meeting about 25% of our power needs. Where will we get the other 75% of our electric power and transportation fuels? Battery-operated cars such as Teslas and Chevy Volts need electric power to recharge the massive batteries.
As we produce less oil and gas domestically, two bad things will happen. First, gas prices are going to rise rapidly — perhaps to above $4 a gallon. Prices have already started to rise at the pump to more than $2.50 a gallon in many markets. Second, we will make up for the lost domestic energy production by importing more energy from Saudi Arabia, Russia and OPEC nations.
We will reverse the energy independence achieved under former President Donald Trump to dependency on OPEC nations under Biden. This certainly isn’t good for the U.S. economy and jobs here at home. But it’s great news for the Saudi oil sheiks, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and the communists in Beijing — all of whom are going to make out like bandits. They can’t believe their good fortune.
Maybe so, my younger and more idealistic friends say. But at least we will be doing our part to save the planet. Alas, no. China and India are building more than 100 coal plants as we shut ours down. China and Russia just signed a multibillion-dollar deal to build a pipeline from oil-rich Siberia to the big cities of China. Would Beijing invest in that infrastructure if they had any intention to stop using fossil fuels? Trump was right when he said that we have the toughest environmental standards in the world. So, shifting energy production out of America only increases greenhouse gases.
Perhaps over the next several decades, wind and solar power will be cheap enough to meet most of our energy needs. But are we to starve ourselves of energy in the meantime? Are Americans willing to pay $4 or $5 a gallon to fill up the tank with Saudi oil or Russian gas?
Wouldn’t it be smarter, safer and, yes, more virtuous to get the energy we need from Texas, Oklahoma, North Dakota or even Alberta, Canada, than from countries that hate us?
Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and an economic consultant with FreedomWorks. He is the co-author of “Trumponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Revive the American Economy.” To find out more about Stephen Moore and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
Which brings me to President Joe Biden’s take-no-prisoners approach to energy. The goals: kill fossil fuels; stop the building of pipelines; enter international treaties that outlaw fossil fuel use; end drilling on federal lands; strangle the oil and gas industries with regulatory assaults.
And when other Enemies of the U.S. attack with fossil fueled aircraft, rockets, tanks, war ships will the disgraceful Biden just surrender to them??
Plus What are the farmers going to use to plant and harvest crops?
Tractors that they have to pedal?
And think of what your life will be like when there is no more oil by products to produce plastic. John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi’s faces will collapse for starters and laptop/phone production will stop dead in its tracks
It’s not Biden making the decisions, he is just the PUPPET. The puppet master is pulling his strings!
barry sotero obama!!!!
AND just 80%? IMO THEY WANT TO kill ALL of america’s energy..
All of the sheep / parakeets that voted for Biden. I wonder what these sheep / parakeets, who voted for Biden, are going to think, when there is no heat in the winter and no air conditioning in the summer, when it is 95 degrees out and there is a blackout or brownout. I hope you sheep / parakeets have warm sleeping bags, like I do as a backpacker! Cuba, here we come!
Na, they’ll just WHINE and demand EVERYONE ELSE PAY UP, to fund their heating.
If biden wants to kill energy, then all energy products (electric, gas, gasoline, diesel, solar, batteries, generators,etc) should be cut off from the white house. Let him live, work, sleep in the cold dark rooms for 3-4 weeks!
Not just the white house, but EVERY DEM CITY, too!
Apparently. the big American oil companies are being out bid by Foreign Russian, Iranian, Saudi interests in offering Joe and the Biden crime family the expected financial kickbacks and protection money. It’s probably time to limit the amount of Monopoly power and wealth of individuals like Bezos, Bill Gates and Soros and others whose individual wealth is greater than the cumulative wealth of small States like Rhode Island and Delaware. Next, they will claim they are so important and represent so much wealth and media control, that they are entitled to have their own personal Senate and house Representatives in Congress, so they no longer will have to buy low energy Biden candidates with bribes, campaign contributions and kickbacks like they do now. Unlike our former high energy self-governing President, feeding off of others, go low Joe, has to govern by pulling whatever kinds of strings by any means he can to get the same results, and still falls short.
SINCE THEY ALREADY have thousands of lobbiests in congress, THEY ALREADY have their own “personal congress critters”…
Stupid cannot be fixed it’s a genetic default that was passed on by the moronic parents of these idiots. Just like the genetic default that is controlling America. They want everyone equal which means in democrat language ” everyone will be without’. That is everyone except the politicians and those who control ie: own them.