Dear American Lawmakers:
President Biden has repeatedly vowed to “end fossil fuel” in the US. His administration is fully committed to “transitioning” the US from fossil energy to “green energy.” The green energy agenda mainly means mandating expensive electric vehicles, electric heating furnaces and electric cooking appliances to consume costly electricity mandated to be wind and solar generation. US electric utilities are being required by many state governments to replace reliable, controllable fossil-fueled electric generation with unreliable, uncontrollable wind and solar electric generation, making the US electricity supply less reliable and more expensive. In 2022, Congress passed more massive subsidies for green energy (about $300 billion) to further the green agenda.
Why Lawmakers Have Resorted to Coercion
As lawmakers surely know, the average American is not demanding the green energy agenda. The demands mainly come from the climate lobby – the green energy industry and environmental activists who are lobbying lawmakers to impose green energy policies. The climate lobby also promotes green energy policies to the American public. They tell the public that lawmakers must impose mandates and subsidies to coerce sufficient compliance with the green energy policies to achieve the goal of global “carbon neutrality” or “net zero.” Many activists claim that green energy is competitive with fossil energy (while the green industry tells lawmakers the opposite).
In reality, the costs of green energy will soar as the transition to net zero electrification proceeds. Professional engineer, Ken Gregory, published a paper that calculated the capital cost of achieving net zero electrification in the US by 2050. The capital cost alone is estimated to be about $290 trillion (in 2019 dollars), or 13.5 times the US 2019 gross domestic product.[1] If accurate, that would be over $1 million for each American adult. Yet this estimate assumes the use of unproven technologies and does not include the cost of industries leaving the US to keep up with foreign companies who enjoy lower energy costs abroad or simply going out of business.
It is impossible to accurately predict the cost of the green energy agenda because that would require predicting how and when the agenda will be fully enacted. But the green agenda will certainly be extremely costly if allowed to proceed. And even if the actual cost is only half Gregory’s calculation, the cost is intolerable. Not to mention the inconvenience of EV transportation and unreliable electricity. Most Americans will resist the green agenda unless they are coerced by prohibitions, mandates and subsidies. And as we shall see, so will the rest of the world.
Why Coercion Is an Injustice
A key underlying premise is that global warming and climate change are mostly caused by global fossil fuel emissions. This premise clearly implies that the green energy agenda must be global to be effective. But global hasn’t happened. That’s because the climate lobby and US officials have totally failed to sell the green agenda to most of the other nations of the world.
The world has witnessed the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Accord and 27 UN Conferences of Principles. But even after almost three decades of disingenuous “pledges” and conferences aimed at eliciting global cooperation to reduce fossil and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the Wall Street Journal has reported that only about 10% of some 190 nations have been reducing their GHG emissions.[2] Which apparently is why GHG emissions continue to increase at the rate of about 2% annually.[3] US Climate Ambassador John Kerry explained the futility of the US net zero goal: “We could go to zero [GHG emissions] tomorrow and the problem isn’t solved.” [4]
Presidents Obama and Biden have both met with foreign leaders at international climate conferences in failed attempts to persuade foreign officials to slash their nations’ fossil fuel and other GHG in pursuit of global net zero. At the COP27 climate change conference in 2022, an apparently desperate Ambassador Kerry even offered to pay other nations to slash GHG emissions.
These facts are irrefutable. And the inescapable conclusion is that it has long been obvious that our green energy agenda has failed, despite numerous high-level attempts to save it. Can there be any doubt that the US green energy agenda has irretrievably failed?
In the absence of global cooperation to abandon fossil energy, imposing the costly, ineffective green energy agenda on Americans cannot be justified.
Dear lawmakers, do you want to visit economic hardship on your fellow Americans simply to please the climate lobby? Do you want America to arrogantly exhort billions of poor people around the world to abandon fossil fuels? People who would be thrilled to cook with propane rather than a smoky fire fueled with wood or dung? Who would love to ride a motor scooter to market instead of walking? Or to plow their farm with a tractor instead of oxen? Or refrigerate their food? Or work in a comfortable, electrified factory?
Lawmakers, you do not need to be climate scientists to understand and explain the failure, utter futility and sheer arrogance of the green energy agenda to voters.
Why the Die-hard Climate Lobby Persists in America and Fails Elsewhere
Wonder why the die-hard climate lobby persists in the face of failure? Consider the following.
The green energy industry cannot succeed without mandates and subsidies. The industry ignores the failure to sell the green agenda globally in the hope of feeding at the American pork trough for a few more years before the failure becomes as obvious to America as it is to other nations.
There are also the “Earth First” true believers. Even though human beings cannot possibly prosper, or even survive, without using natural resources, the Earth Firsters share a belief that humans are like parasites on Earth whose livelihood must be sacrificed as necessary to preserve nature as is. Their agenda goes far beyond clean air and water. Although this anti-human movement is modest in size, its religious-like fervor and activism result in considerable political influence. (Their influence helped persuade US lawmakers and regulators to effectively outlaw the expansion of nuclear and hydroelectric generation.) These Earth First tree huggers certainly do not care about the adverse impact of green energy policies on humanity. They experience no shame in claiming an impending climate catastrophe, shrilly demonizing their opposition and denying humanity the life-enhancing benefits of fossil fuels.
It is inconceivable that developing nations will ever embrace the motives of the climate lobby.
Lawmakers who have been misled by the die-hard climate lobby need not die hard with them.
Lawmakers can explain to their uninformed constituents, in simple language, that the green energy agenda, however well-intentioned, has failed. The rest of the world will not cooperate and it is time to move on to effective policies.
An Effective Response to Climate Change
As will be demonstrated below, the threat of climate change has been considerably exaggerated by the climate lobby. Draconian responses to climate change are not necessary.
Consider this example. Many people migrate from New York City to Miami, where the average temperature is 12°C warmer than New York City. That’s several times the warming that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts for Earth for the balance of the 21st century. New Yorkers certainly experience a big climate change arriving in South Florida, yet the migration to Florida continues as migrants appear to be safely adapting to the new climate. Claiming that our gradual climate change is an existential threat offends common sense.
Also, consider the past 100 years when scientists report that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 soared by over one-third. Yet the climate changes, if any, were hardly noticed. In fact, the global death rate from extreme weather during that period actually declined by 98%.[5] This conclusion is drawn from statistics recorded and collected by public health researchers for a century.
The IPCC predicts that global mean sea levels may rise by three inches (worst case) by the end of this century. Less than half an inch per decade is hardly a tsunami. Property owners are adequately forewarned to seek higher ground when they replace their aging coastal structures.
The IPCC explicitly does not predict future increases in the frequency or intensity of destructive storms like hurricanes and tornadoes. The IPPC adds that most of the warming and climate change will actually occur at night and in winter in Earth’s higher latitudes (Canada, Alaska, Scandinavia, etc.).[6] Clearly not the threat to human existence that so many alarmists claim.
Die-hard climate alarmists seldom consider or mention these facts or how well humanity has coped by safely adapting to new weather extremes. Examples of adapting to weather extremes include: prediction of extreme weather events; heating and air conditioning; improved clothing; thermal insulation; aqueducts and irrigation; stormwater control and capture projects; seawater desalination facilities; levees and dikes; improved wildfire prevention; food refrigeration; manufactured pesticides and fertilizers; etc. Earth Firsters and tree huggers, of course, abhor such adaptations as violence against Mother Nature.
Lawmakers can help protect Americans from climate change, by removing anti-humanist regulatory obstructions to allow responsible, cost-effective adaptations.
The Case for Energy Freedom
We can afford these adaptations if lawmakers reverse the coercive green energy policies that threaten our economic well-being. The energy industry is our fundamental industry. Every other industry needs energy to function. Anyone who doubts the massive benefit of energy in our lives should try to imagine how pitiful our lives would be without electricity, diesel fuel and gasoline.
Our prosperity truly depends on securing cost-effective energy. Certainly, we need low-cost energy and we want reasonably clean energy. But we also need effective energy that is plentiful, reliable, controllable, producible, transportable and storable. That means Americans need individual freedom to fully evaluate and consume the most cost-effective energy for any purpose.
Prosperity and cost-effectiveness invariably depend on individual freedom to secure the most effective energy and to foster competition to assure the lowest cost.
In Summary
The rationale for reversing green energy policies is as simple as it is compelling:
- Green energy policies cannot protect us because the world is not cooperating.
- Green energy policies can no longer be justified.
- Fortunately, adaptation has proven effective in protecting us from climate change.
That means that we need you lawmakers to protect us by (1) educating voters, (2) reversing green energy policies and (3) removing unreasonable regulatory obstructions to responsible climate adaptations and energy use.
Respectfully,
Richard Batey
To Readers of this Letter
If you find this open letter to be persuasive, consider forwarding this letter to lawmakers (and/or a link to this letter in Capitalism Magazine) to state and federal Senators and Representatives. Also consider forwarding to state governors, other politically influential individuals and even to executives of fossil energy companies and organizations.
End Notes
[1] Cost of Net Zero: https://friendsofscience.org/pdf-render.html?pdf=assets/documents/Cost-of-Net-Zero-Electrification-of-the-USAv2.pdf
[2] 10% of nations: Renewables Are Key to Cutting Emissions Over Next Decade, U.N. Panel Says – WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/emissions-cuts-in-next-decade-are-crucial-to-meet-paris-targets-u-n-panel-says-11649085009
[3] 2% Annually: Net Zero by 2050 – Analysis – IEA https://www.iea.org/reports/net-zero-by-2050
The Production Gap Executive Summary https://productiongap.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/PGR2020_ExecSum_web.pdf Published by the Stockholm Environment Institute, UN Environment Programme, and others.
[4] Ambassador Kerry: Zero emissions won’t make difference in climate change (nypost.com) https://nypost.com/2021/01/27/kerry-zero-emissions-wont-make-difference-in-climate-change/
[5] 98% Reduction: Wealth and Safety: The Decline in Deaths from Extreme Weather in an Era of Global Warming (reason.org) https://reason.org/wp-content/uploads/files/deaths_from_extreme_weather_1900_2010.pdf
[6] UN IPCC Predictions: UN IPCC 2021 Assessment Report Summary for Policy Makers https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM_final.pdf
