Executive Order 13990: “Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis.” That’s the official name for President Biden’s order canceling the Keystone XL pipeline (among other things), a move welcomed by the progressive wing of his party for the stand it supposedly takes against the dangers of fossil fuels, oil, and fracking. What many voters are now realizing, however, is the financial cost of Believing in Science, as union workers (even those supporting the President) continue to reel from the effects of the decision.
The opposition mounted by most of the Republican commentator class is misguided, however. It continues to focus on whether or not climate change is actually a man-made phenomenon, engaging in a meta-level discussion about the “realness” of climate change, hoping to muddle the conversation long enough to frustrate the path toward Green socialism. This, however, is turning out to be a losing strategy: poll after poll shows that the majority of Americans are accepting climate change as a crisis, a view that’s even embraced by Republicans.
[R]elying on our ability to rationalize with our political opponents will not save American jobs or preserve energy independence.
And even if climate change isn’t the main concern, energy independence absolutely is. Republican voters have long been wary of the Bush-era support for military interventionism to maintain access to foreign oils: almost every foreign war the U.S. has waged for the last 30 years (or, in Syria’s case, “protection”) has been, at least in some part, for that reason-the cost of which will be felt for generations to come. The push for energy independence is why there’s been so much enthusiasm for fracking, which has helped the country achieve that goal. In 2017, despite prohibitions put on the industry by the fracking-averse Obama administration, we reached close to 10 million barrels of crude oil production per day, the highest level in the nation’s history. By 2019, we became the top oil producer in the world.
Now, as the Biden administration ramps up its war on the energy industry, with officials like John Kerry outright telling workers to quit their jobs and become solar power and wind turbine technicians, it’s tempting to want to return to our old strategy of climate denialism. Regardless of how overblown the threat is, relying on our ability to rationalize with our political opponents will not save American jobs or preserve energy independence.
Instead, Republicans should move towards a wartime conservative approach: stealing the dominant frame to accomplish an American-centric agenda.
The Biden climate agenda, for the most part, is about quick and easy political wins-not saving the planet. Flashy moves like rejoining the Paris Climate Accords, halting oil, gas, and coal leases on federal lands, or canceling Keystone make sense if you’re trying to appease green globalists and coastal elites who can afford an increase in oil and energy prices. So does the President’s enthusiasm for so-called clean energy sources like wind and solar, which comes at the detriment of our existing energy infrastructure (not to mention the environment itself).
An America-first energy solution, by comparison, is one that re-asserts our energy independence and provides safe, affordable energy for all our consumer and business needs.
Nuclear power is that solution.
THE NUCLEAR OPTION
In 2019, California spent $100 billion on solar, wind, and other “renewable” energy sources, which only supplies roughly 30% of the state’s energy. Nuclear energy would have fulfilled 100% of the state’s energy demand at the same cost and would have done so with a lower carbon footprint.
The answer probably has to do with how much influence wind and solar lobbies have with the current administration.
As Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) notes in his book Firebrand, “modern nuclear power would be invaluable to our military bases, [ ] taking them off-grid makes the country’s grid far less attractive of a target to hackers.” Gaetz goes further to pose the question of why cities with docked nuclear aircraft carriers, such as San Diego and Honolulu, are not already being used to generate safe, clean power. The answer probably has to do with how much influence wind and solar lobbies have with the current administration.
While the Democrats’ enthusiasm for cleaner, greener energy is cheered on by solar and wind advocacy groups, it is nuclear energy that provides the most efficient form of generating energy, and it’s not even close. Nuclear energy is also the greenest, overcoming many of the threats posed to the climate and endangered species by mining the materials for solar panels and wind turbines.
In fact, a safe, modern, nuclear-based grid provides Americans the ability to directly clean the air surrounding traditional fossil fuel plants, solving the environmental lobby’s primary issue-carbon emissions. In a 2018 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers found that, “Nuclear power holds the potential to make a significant contribution to decarbonizing the U.S. energy system.” The report continues: “It should be a source of profound concern for all who care about climate change that, for entirely predictable and resolvable reasons, the United States appears set to virtually lose nuclear power, and thus a wedge of reliable and low-carbon energy, over the next few decades.”
Modern, meltdown-free reactors are currently in development from legacy companies such as General Electric (in association with Hitachi) and Westinghouse. Upstarts like TerraPower and NuScale are in the midst of developing even safer small modular reactors, which are self-contained and essentially the size of a pair of average cargo containers.
Americans, especially those in rural areas and small-towns can no longer afford not to go nuclear.
A recent bipartisan effort by Sens. Coons (D-DE) and Braun (R-IN) specifically advocated for small modular reactors, which the Department of Energy describes as offering many advantages and ensures we don’t, as Coons highlighted, “neglect the needs of underserved communities where too much of already stretched paychecks can be lost to energy inefficiency alongside added health risks from pollution.”
A recent report from the Netherlands found that solar and wind energy requires anywhere from 148 to 536 more land than nuclear energy, and cost four times as much. In France, nuclear power produces electricity with just 10% of the carbon emissions as renewables-heavy Germany-at half the cost.
This has massive trickle-down effects: reducing electricity costs means lower costs of production, which in turn leads to cheaper goods and increased buying power for everyday citizens.
Americans, especially those in rural areas and small-towns, who spend a disproportionately higher share of their income on energy bills (a median energy burden of 1.1% more than the national burden according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy), can no longer afford not to go nuclear.
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“The answer probably has to do with how much influence wind and solar lobbies have with the current administration.
The current corrupt puppet president bumbling Biden is under the complete influence of his handlers and puppeteers.
And his handlers are not interested in Clean Nuclear Power because they are in bed with the wind and solar companies.
In our “Socialist Democrat Party State” it matters NOT what is good for our country and our citizens.
It ONLY matters what is good for the “Socialist Democrat Party State”.
We must decide, do we want to be servants to the government or do we want the government to be servant to WE the People?
STOP voting for ANY corrupt old evil professional politicians or the Democrat radical loony Bartender type.
Anyone with half a brain would rather face the imagined environMENTAL dangers of fossil fuels, oil, and fracking, than deal with the proven dangers of nuclear power plant failures due to frozen or ruptured reactor water cooling lines. I live with a Chernobyl cancer survival of Soviet SOCIALIST government incompetency whose whole family was nuked 80 miles downwind in Kiev, a city where thyroid and Female organ cancers due to nuked and damaged DNA still run rampant, where to this day 20 square miles near the plant are declared a no-man’s land dead zone of mutated 3 headed sheep, deer, and other DNA damaged wildlife and plants. The Reactor blew during the weekend of an outdoor Ukrainian holiday celebration and the SOCIALIST government party saviors told nobody for 10 days while the dust settled within the lungs of unsuspecting Ukrainian people. They covered it up slicker than a Cuomo inspired Retirement home death march, and believe me, American Socialists will handle any Nuclear disaster in just as many coverups and death as what happened in the Ukraine. Another reason to never elect one into positions of power OVER you.
Well if we are not careful, We the U.S. will become a total
Socialist Democrat Party Communist Country.
Look what we have allowed to take control our government –
The “Socialist Democrat Party State” 🙁 🙁 🙁
The “Socialist Democrat Party State” political officers and Gestapo are just getting started.
Illumin.. HOW MANY reactors exist in the world? HOW MANY have gone boom/had issues? To my recollection, only THREE.
Three mile island, Fukishima and Chernobyl..
AND ONLY THE middle one, came cause of something WE COULDN’T control… The other two, were from HUMAN INCOMPETENCE..
Even factoring in Chernobyl, nuclear energy is by far the safest energy source ever.
And they don’t make plants like Chernobyl anymore. With the newer models, meltdown is impossible. “Chernobyl” has become a Leftist talking point, with pro-wind people warning of the plants blowing up like Hiroshima, which is also impossible.
Nuclear power follows the science. Isn’t it funny, when liberals state they are following the science, they do the opposite, so nuclear power, to the left, is “evil”. But when there is hot air, between one’s earlobes (aka liberals), what does one expect?
How do you change a country’s culture—
change it from a capitalist system to a government controlled socialistic society.
Here is the playbook and so far the Social Democrats are making progress.
1. Healthcare — Control healthcare and you control the people
2. Welfare — Take control of every aspect of their lives (Food, Housing, and Income).
3. Education — Take control of what people read and listen to — take control of what children and young people learn in schools and colleges.
4. Religion — Remove the belief in the God from the Government and schools.
5. Class Warfare — Divide the people into the wealthy and the poor. This will cause more discontent and it will be easier to take from the wealthy and give to poor.
Until there are only the poor.
6. Debt — Increase the debt to an unsustainable level.
7. Gun Control — Remove the ability for the people to defend themselves from the Government. (“Socialist Democrat Party State”)
8. Poverty — Increase the poverty level as high as possible. Poor people are easier to control and will keep socialists in power if they are providing everything for them to live.
Do these look like the tactics of the Democrat Party??
There are nuclear solutions that will not meltdown and another that uses nuclear waste as fuel. Not politically correct to talk about them. Follow the science.
With their belief in 72+ genders, the left, CONTINUALLY PROVES it’s incapable of PROPERLY following the science.. Not just THEIR made up science.
California does not get 30% of its energy from solar and wind. It sometimes gets 30% of its ELECTRICITY from solar and wind. Electricity is about 1/4 of total energy. So solar and wind provide about 7% of total energy.
The whale in the bathtub for wind and solar is storage. Numerous independent calculations have shown that to obtain firm power from solar and wind requires 400-800 watt-hours’ storage per average watt of capacity. Twelve hours, i.e., overnight, isn’t nearly enough.
The only technology that even remotely approaches physical feasibility is batteries. At today’s price and reliability, the cost would be 4-8 times TOTAL US GDP EVERY YEAR!
http://vandyke.mynetgear.com/Worse.html
And to add to that, HOW OFTEN are areas overcast, or snowy/foggy, to where those solar panels not produce?
Fortunately, nuclear power is the safest thing humanity has ever done. Three Mile Island didn’t injure anybody. Fukushima didn’t kill anybody, unless you believe a court decision that one plant worker’s lung cancer resulted from it, nothwithstanding that the UNSCEAR Fukushima report says “There is no scientific means to determine whether a particular cancer in a particular individual was or was not caused by radiation.” There is a rumor that a plant worker’s foot was burned when water contaminated with radioactive fission products got into his boot.
The Chernobyl reactor was built in a country that had neither safety culture nor licensing criteria. Nothing like it was built in an OECD country, and nothing will be. Backing out hyperventilation, it was responsible for 28 documented deaths. UNSCEAR managed to blame it for 15 excess juvenile thyroid cancer deaths — out of 6000 cases in the ensuing fifteen years.
Allowing those fifteen, 43 deaths in sixty years is an unmatched safety record.
When you look at the # of nuke plants, in over 30 nations (total 455 plants), AND ONLY Having 3 ever have issues, it CERTAINLY looks to me, like they’ve got a better track record of safety, than regular plants do..
That is better than odds than the “peaceful” ANTIFA and BLM riots.
The only significant problem for nuclear power is the stuff we mistakenly call “nuclear waste.” It’s actually valuable 5%-used fuel. The 5% that’s fission products needs custody for 300 years. The unused fuel needs custody for 300,000 years. A better solution is to consume the fuel to make electricity and fission products.
The United States has about 90,000 tonnes of spent fuel, and about 900,000 tonnes of depleted uranium, above ground, mined, milled, and refined. In fast-neutron reactors, that could power an all-electric 1,700 GWe American energy economy for 500 years.
Among fission products, only 9.26% need 300-year custody. Half the rest are innocuous before 30 years, and the rest aren’t even radioactive.
Jimmy Carter stopped reprocessing in the ignorant belief that (1) spent power plant fuel is a source for weapons materials, and (2) if the United States doesn’t reprocess it, nobody else will develop nuclear weapons. But Pakistan and North Korea didn’t get the memo.
Bill Cliton shut down development of the best way to reprocess fuel, the pyroelectric method from Argonne and Idaho National Laboratories, with help from John Kerry and Hazel O’Leary, in 1994. When told it cost more to terminate than complete, he pandered: “I know; it’s a symbol.”
http://vandyke.mynetgear.com/Nuclear.html
Absolutely. Gen 4 reactors will use “nuclear waste” as fuel and can power the world at a USA level of consumption for centuries.
In doing so, you REMOVE dangerous radioactive waste and would deplete Yucca Mountain.
If you want to stimulate the economy, make these things commercially available, and fast-track their deployment. We should have them everywhere. You might ask, what if it was in your back yard? I say bring it on. There’s a big industrial area behind my house. Put it there.
Radioactive waste, as is, does nobody any good. It’s dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years.
Reprocess it and the resulting waste is simpler, which remains radioactive for about 300 years. By the time we run out of heavy waste for fuel, much of the light waste will have become inert.
There is no downside to this.
ONLY to the leftists desire to control every facet of our lives!
The fact that almost no Greens talk seriously about nuclear tells me they’re not serious.
I can only think of one, AOC of all people. I give credit where due. This was a smart thing to push for.
The problem with nuclear (to the Lefites) is that it won’t change our lifestyle. It doesn’t punish the fat cats smoking cigars who made billions from oil. There’s no atonement for yous “sins” against Mother Earth. You simply migrate to another energy source.
Traditional Green energy is expensive, unreliable, erratic, and doesn’t provide baseline energy.
It makes you suffer for the sin of being an American, and that’s why the Left loves it.
Until we get fusion commercialized, nuclear fission is the best option all around, not even close. It’s clean, domestic, reliable, baseload, SAFE power. It has every advantage.
HENCE why they love killing AMERICAN jobs, and farming out our oil and gas, to FOREIGN nations!