The term “energy transition” suggests that we are simply taking one more step in the journey that began centuries ago with the Industrial Revolution. But, whereas technology and economic advantage drove earlier transitions, public policy is now the most important factor.
Daniel Yergin (Pulitzer prize-winning energy author)
If the owners of 250 million gas-powered vehicles and 145,000 filling stations feel like they’re living with an eco-tyrant, it’s because they’re suffering under his “irreversible” plan to “do away with fossil fuels.” As if Biden cares, toggling between climate-change clairvoyant (“the number one issue facing humanity – it is going to actually bake this planet – this is not hyperbole”) and “existential crisis” crusader (“we have a moral obligation”). Joe Biden thinks he alone is the one true way to save mankind.
We English-speaking people have lived under a know-it-all tyrant before – in 1685, when King James II ensured England’s “one true church” was run by Rome; putting colleges under Catholic deans and confining Protestant bishops to the Tower of London. He made sure all laws were the King’s laws, fired judges, and dissolved parliaments; thereby alienating England’s Protestant majority. His reign did not end well.
In 1688, the Protestant majority replaced intolerable James II with tolerant William and Mary in the “Glorious Revolution” and codified forever the primacy of Parliament and religious freedom (in the Bill of Rights). This democratic tenet – a leader cannot be just that right by making the majority just that wrong – was imported to America in Thomas Payne’s 1777 pamphlet: “The greatest tyrannies are always perpetuated in the name of the noblest causes.”
Are you listening, Mr. President?
Pew Research found 78% of Americans don’t think “climate change is affecting their community a great deal.” Gallup found 73% weren’t “satisfied with the US government’s energy policies.” Reuters reports only 15% think Biden has the country heading in the right direction. He’s lost their confidence by turning a debatable climate crisis into eco-tyranny (energy malpractice with no remorse).
The constant negative of Biden’s presidency is what he’s done (and said) about petrol. After it surged from $1.87 a gallon to $5.10 in his first 18 months, he called it “an incredible transition to a world less reliant on fossil fuels.” After voters were hurt and his approval ratings tanked, he blamed “Putin’s war” and “greedy oil companies.” When it fell to $3.20, he took credit. When it rose to $3.52, he blamed “climate events.” The boasts and excuses fool no one.
Biden’s wrong on the politics, because 99 senators adopted an amendment in 2021 to prohibit laws or regulations that implement the Green New Deal. It is not a good look when members of his own party worried about forcing a green experiment on 97% of the country that own gas-powered vehicles. Truckers, who vote, now pay 115% more for diesel. Energy-users, who vote, saw US energy costs rise 24% last year (source: Bloomberg). But, it doesn’t stop there.
Because his war on US gas and oil has exposed Americans to geopolitical risk and economic hardship. He scuttled US energy independence, and Putin invaded Ukraine. Blaming “climate events” and “Putin” for inadequate oil supplies just proves his policies have made us less safe. He should have known better, because a Senate report from 2017 concluded, “energy security is central to national security.”
That senate report warned “it is wrong to ban” US oil production without stopping the ability of terror states “to sell oil and move money around,” which is part of Thomas Friedman’s First Law of Petropolitics: “There’s an inverse correlation between the prices of oil and the pace of freedom.” Duh! The poor half of the world needs cheap oil to overcome poverty and poor health. Thus, Biden’s “energy transition” views are called “insufferable” in Africa.
2.4 billion people now cook and heat by burning “wood, animal dung and crop waste” indoors, causing “6.7 million premature deaths” every year (source: WHO). Their governments know an energy transition to LP gas will end this “existential crisis.” However, when Uganda began building a gas pipeline to the Indian Ocean, the EU declared it would “adversely affect the climate, the environment, and human rights.” What about the right to life for 6.7 million?
Don’t expect Joe Biden to ride to Uganda’s rescue, because there’s no way his “energy transition” can unfold in the promised quarter-century, because his “irreversible plan” hasn’t determined, developed, deployed, or scaled up the required technologies. Previous transitions took over a century, and incumbent fuels still weren’t displaced. To wit, the world uses 300% more coal than it did in 1965, when it was supplanted by oil as the “clean energy” alternative.
The President’s goal of sustainability is noble but ignores how things really work in a $100-trillion global economy that gets 80% of its energy from carbon-based fuel. The “pillars” of modern civilization (steel, cement, plastics, and ammonia-based fertilizer) are all dependent on hydrocarbons. University of Manitoba Professor Vaclav Smil puts it simply: “It takes 5 tablespoons of petrol to get a single tomato from a farm in Spain to the dinner table in London.”
Davos attendees just heard the world will rely on gas and oil until at least 2070. JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon told them “we need oil and gas – a hundred million barrels a day that are used by the world to heat, fuel, feed people.” Elon Musk agreed; it took Tesla 20 years to roll out 1.3 million EVs, and 7,000 chargers in 1,400 locations.
To replace 1.2 billion gas-powered cars and trucks with a more-electrified world requires production of copper alone to double to hit Biden’s 2050 climate objectives (source: S&P Research). It needs exponential growth in cobalt and lithium mining, when opening a major new mine takes 16 to 25 years. When John Kerry says, “we have nine years left” before the planet is baked, isn’t he admitting Biden’s 25-year energy transition is kinda-sorta pointless?
Can they at least get on the same page? No – because there is no same page. The UN says 18 years until an “unavoidable increase” in risks. NASA says 30 to 50 years before “parts of the world are uninhabitable.” A Penn State model says “at least another 1 billion years.” Americans are right to question the timetables, resent the near-term suffering, and think less of their president.
The fact of the matter is the USA does need an energy transition, because we will run out of oil and gas in 53 years (source: API). That’s an estimate, but here’s a fact: the solution will come from a Tom (as in Edison) and not a Joe (as in Biden), which brings us to a fitting conclusion.
No leader has the right to make miserable those whose circumstances he cannot make right.
Are you listening, Joe?