The secular leftist approach to politics is to suggest policies that make them feel good and look good to others. It doesn’t matter if the policies work for people. Conservatives believe in looking at what has worked in other times and places, and doing what works. After all, a wise man learns from successes and failures of other people. We can’t try everything ourselves, we should just do what works.
Let’s start with California. California has long been at the forefront of converting their energy production to “green” sources.
Here’s an article from Forbes that talks about their results:
At the Democratic National Convention this week, presidential and vice-presidential candidates Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will make the case for spending $2 trillion, or $500 billion per year, to transition the U.S. away from fossil fuels toward renewables like solar and wind.
[…]California’s big bet on renewables, and shunning of natural gas and nuclear, is directly responsible for the state’s blackouts and high electricity prices.
“We will be forced today to ask utilities to cut off power to millions today, and tomorrow, and beyond,” said Stephen Berberich, the President and CEO of California’s Independent System Operator, CAISO, on a Monday morning conference call. “Demand will greatly exceed supply.”
The immediate cause of California’s blackouts is a mismatch between electricity supply and demand.
[…]The underlying reason blackouts are occurring is because California lacks reliable, in-state supply. And the reason for that is California has been closing both natural gas and nuclear power plants.
[…]Despite these capacity shortfalls, the state is moving ahead with plans to remove 2,200-MW of reliable electricity from the grid. That’s the amount of power produced by Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, which will be closed in stages in 2024 and 2025.
So, Green New Deal works great… if your goal is to feel good about yourself, and make emotion-driven people like you. But it isn’t very good at generating an abundance of low-cost electricity to power businesses. And it isn’t very good for poor people, who prefer to pay less for their electricity.
Well, how about Germany? They closed down their nuclear power plants in favor of wind and solar. It didn’t work.
Daily Caller explains:
Germany’s power grid almost collapsed in January due to poor performance from wind turbines and solar panels, according to data from a major trade union.
Wind and solar power plants under-performed in January, 2017, because of cloudy weather with little or no wind, setting the stage for massive blackouts.
[…]Green energy approaches failed to meet Germany’s stated energy goals, even after spending over $1.1 trillion. The country’s “Energiewende” plan to boost wind and solar production to fight global warming hasn’t significantly reduced carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and may have actually caused them to go up.
[…]Due to the inherent unreliable performance of wind power and political opposition to nuclear power plants, Germany has been forced to return to coal to generate electricity. Coal now provides 44 percent of Germany’s power, This shift caused Germany’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to actually rise by 28 million tons each year following the policy shift.
All of Germany’s subsidies and support for green energy have sharply increased power prices, with the average German paying 39 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity. The average American only spends 10.4 cents per kilowatt-hour by comparison.
So, you get less electricity produced, more emissions, and elctricity prices go up. Just like in California.
Well, third try is the charm. How about Canada? They’ve gone Green New Deal for more than a decade. How is that working for them?
The National Post reported this in 2016:
Back in 2010, deep green environmentalist Rick Smith, then head of Environmental Defence Canada, hailed Ontario’s Green Energy and Green Economy Act regime as a cost-free operation that would catapult the province into the big leagues of renewable energy. Through fat subsidies and high prices offered to wind, solar and other renewable industry players, jobs and growth would boom and Ontario would be free of its dirty coal plants. It was the End of Coal, the government said. The birth of a renewable miracle.
Now, Canadians are paying more:
The doubling of electricity prices since 2005 is big politically, but it is just the top-line item on a long list of problems, misconceptions and outright fabrications that lurk within the Liberal government’s decade-long pursuit of radical greenism.
Because they didn’t listened to engineers… they listened to their hearts:
Ontario’s Society of Professional Engineers has issued more than half a dozen critical reports on the Liberals’ tendency to let green talk and politics override sound policy. Instead of following the expert advice of engineers and people who understand the intricacies of electricity production and distribution, the government took to issuing directives right out the Premier’s office.
Now, I know some people on the secular left are going to disagree with these facts. But they don’t have facts to counter these facts. There isn’t a single country that has gone Green New Deal that has lower electricity prices and a net increase in jobs.
We have to do what works. What works is more natural gas (fracking) and more nuclear power.
