Bill James
Four years ago, for reasons which baffle this writer, the NC legislature approved a “Clean Energy Program” that will drive our state and its people deep into the most absurd and most expensive folly of modern times. Our representatives were asleep at the switch when this monstrosity got through and landed on Governor Cooper’s desk.
“Clean Energy” is also known as the “Green New Deal,” the radical Biden program which has at its heart the “transformation” (read “destruction”) of the American economy. What is worse, the whole agenda is based on the hysterical claim, which originated among avowed Marxists determined to crush capitalism, that unless mankind ceases using fossil fuels, “climate change” will destroy human civilization and Planet Earth will soon become uninhabitable. The exact date of their endlessly predicted apocalypse has been subject to repeated revisions since the doomsday deadlines keep arriving and both our earth and our civilizations still remain. Keep in mind also that what the alarmists call “climate change” has had previous incarnations, having been known earlier as “the imminent ice age” and then “global warming.”
No, what will collapse human civilization are not fossil fuels, but the program to eliminate them and go “green.” We cannot do without those fossil resources and the day is long into the future when we might be able to shift to alternative sources of energy. We cannot generate our electricity, we cannot power our cars and trucks, we cannot roll our trains, we cannot fly our planes and we cannot sail our ships – not to mention we cannot produce a lot of fertilizer for our fields and a host of other products that are based upon coal, petroleum and natural gas.
Because of the legislature’s mandate, we are rapidly shutting down our low-cost coal-fired plants and cancelling plans for new natural gas ones. According to our leaders, we are not to worry, because the old coal burners will be replaced by nuclear. Fat chance. Does anyone seriously believe that North Carolina will be allowed to construct nuclear plants in today’s political environment? The green zealots shut down that industry fifty years ago and it is inconceivable that they have changed their minds. Just ask Jane Fonda or Little Greta Thunberg.
In the meantime we are pumping enormous subsidies (your tax dollars, in other words) into destroying woodlands and agricultural acreage in order to construct grossly expensive “solar farms.” Trees clean the air, people. Solar panels do not. Trees provide habitat for our furry friends. Solar farms destroy it. Trees provide wood for homes and many other products. Solar farms do not. And hasn’t anyone noticed that 50% of the 24-hour cycle is night? Here in North Carolina we also have a lot of cloudy and rainy days to detract even more from the weak productivity of solar. Let us dare not mention the hefty costs of building these systems, which produce piddling quantities of electric power per acre and have a service life of 15-20 years — then everything has to be replaced and rebuilt! And what do we do with all those worn out, toxic solar panels?
We will not discuss the absurdity of the wind turbines. Even the solar people laugh at their inefficiency because of the gigantic installation and maintenance costs.
So soon, unless our policies change, we will have a power grid like California’s. Ask the folks there about their electric bills and the brownouts. Their bills are huge and the brownouts are getting to be common.
More recently we have been treated to the news that the state is dumping billions of our tax dollars into manufacturing plants which will construct battery systems for electric cars. Oh boy, what a thrill it is to hear that. Please – the forced expansion of the EV industry is designed to hook millions of people into dependency upon it. Get enough workers and enough local economies dependent on those battery plants, and we will never be able to withdraw the subsidies for them. I can hear the cries now: “Don’t take away those subsidies! We will lose thousands of jobs . . . our local businesses will be ruined!” Biden’s political cronies (Al Gore’s and John Kerry’s too) are laughing all the way to bank as they play us for fools.
Not to mention the visible failures of the battery vehicle technology already. General Motors has had to recall all of its “Bolt” cars because they have an annoying tendency to burst into flame spontaneously. A whole boatload of cars, German-made, sank into the North Sea when another spontaneous fire erupted and spread uncontrollably from one EV to another, engulfing the whole ship, which was abandoned. The city of Toronto has banned parking electric bikes in enclosed areas – parking decks, the hallways of apartments – because of their alarming frequency to self-ignite. As for the owners of the Chevy Bolts, they are now suing GM because the “fix” to the fire hazard significantly reduced the already limited cruising range of the automobiles.
Half of the nation’s Buick dealers have quit handling the model rather than suffer the expenses of retooling to service autos they cannot sell. Half of Ford dealers have joined them and told the parent company not to send them any more of their battery cars. The EV’s are piling up on the lots of those dealers who are still hanging tough, but their fiscal fortunes look grim. And owners are finding out to their shocked surprise that the batteries on those things have a service life of about 5 years – then it will cost thousands upon thousands of dollars to replace them; bye-bye to all those gains you thought you got from not having to buy gas or change the oil, suckers! And what on earth (pun intended) do we do with thousands of tons of toxic, spent batteries? Eat them? Without the billions of dollars of government support the EV industry would be collapsing as fast as the Edsel line did in the late 1950’s, yet our state legislature is still pumping gobs of our tax money into this insanity.
And finally, with the capacity, reliability, and operating costs of our electric power grid already in growing jeopardy from the “green” mandates, how on earth are we supposed to generate the current to recharge these rolling disasters?
Our GOP legislature MUST get us out of this dreadful, disastrous mess, before it is too late. Stop shutting down coal plants and stop subsidizing battery manufacturers!
Bill is a retired community college history professor. He lives with his wife of nearly 58 years, Violet, in Reidsville and they have three children, three grand children and four great grand children. Active in GOP politics since the ’70’s he is presently retired from that action, too.