The Obama-Era War Against The Economy Is About To Resume
/Incoming President Joe Biden ran on gauzy campaign themes of return to calm and normalcy, or something like that. Certainly, he was never challenged by the media in any meaningful way to commit to specifics. But as Inauguration Day approaches, the details are now coming fully into view. In simple terms, Biden plans to resume the Obama-era War Against The Economy.
“War Against The Economy” is the phrase I often used to characterize the Obama administration’s economic policy. Make that the Obama/Biden administration’s economic policy. The year 2013 was the first full year of this blog, and was also the first year of Obama/Biden’s second term. The economy was entering the fifth year of the “recovery” that had begun around the time Obama entered office in 2009, but the “recovery” was notably lethargic and sluggish. In a post in December 2013 titled “Update On The War Against The Economy,” I had a thorough review of the Obama/Biden policies that attacked productive economic activity, and that I thought deserved the lion’s share of the blame for the economic doldrums.
Here’s the short version of subsequent events: Starting in 2017, Trump undid most of the counterproductive Obama/Biden policies. Economic performance returned to normal healthy growth, at least until the pandemic hit. Biden now proposes to re-instate essentially all of the most economically destructive policies.
For today, I’ll focus on my favorite subject, the area of policy known to rational people as “energy” policy, and to hysterics as “climate” policy. In recent days, Biden’s people have let it be known that among his first actions in office will be (1) rejoining the Paris climate accord, and (2) canceling the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. Meanwhile, Biden has also announce prospective appointments to the EPA who can be counted on to resume the war against fossil fuels, beginning with coal, without regard to negative economic consequences.
My December 2013 post pre-dated the Paris climate accord, but here is what I had to say about the economic consequences of the Obama/Biden attacks on fossil fuels:
With the energy sector accounting for about 8%+ of GDP, Obama has loaded up the EPA with zealots who think they are going to “save the planet” by driving up the cost of energy, making it scarce and unavailable, and impoverishing the American people. Proposed regulations from the EPA effectively make new coal power plants illegal. Separately EPA has declared the life-giving gas CO2 to be a “dangerous pollutant” and has announced that it intends to require anyone building a major emitting source (e.g., factory, oil refinery) to beg for a permit. Thousands of coal miners have been thrown out of work. Shall we build the Keystone pipeline to bring cheap Canadian hydrocarbons into the country? Forget about it. Meanwhile over at the Department of Energy they waste billions on uneconomic, wealth-destroying “green” energy projects. The list of bankrupt recipients of federal loan guarantees is long (Solyndra, Abound Solar, Beacon Power, Fisker, etc.), but the bigger scandal is endless tax benefits to crony capitalist wind and solar energy producers.
And then came the Paris climate accord in 2015, by which the U.S. agreed to hamstring its economy by forcibly reducing CO2 emissions by some 26 to 28%, from a 2005 baseline, by 2025. Meanwhile, the big developing countries, led by China, India, Africa, and Southeast Asia, agreed to absolutely nothing as to CO2 emissions reductions on their part. The accord is totally absurd as anything that a competent U.S. government could ever possibly agree to. The right way to look at it is that a completely cynical Xi Jinping (with counterparts in other developing countries) took full advantage of the stupidest man ever to occupy the Secretary of State position in the U.S., namely John Kerry, together with a President and Vice President bent on undermining, rather than advancing, the interests of the United States.
Since Trump took office in 2017, the absurdity of the Paris accord has become more and more obvious to anyone willing to look. It happens that U.S. CO2 emissions had already been dropping materially from a peak in 2007 of 6.003 billion metric tons, reaching 5.170 billion metric tons in 2016 — a drop of about 14%. But that drop was almost entirely due to the fortuity of the fracking revolution, and the accompanying substitution of somewhat-lower-carbon natural gas for coal. Since 2016, the ongoing emissions decreases have mostly ceased. Where is the next 10 to 15% reduction in emissions needed to meet the Paris target going to come from? Biden is appointing climate zealots to EPA who are licking their chops at the opportunity to shut down cheap and functioning power sources to replace them with intermittent, useless wind and solar sources that will drive up energy costs by a multiple, enrich Democratic donor cronies with tax breaks and subsidies, undermine the reliability of the electricity supply, and likely reduce emissions little if at all.
And meanwhile, what’s going on out there in the developing world? The answer is that those countries committed to nothing in the Paris accord, and are going right on ahead building out fossil fuel power plants, mostly coal, and paying no attention whatsoever to handwringing in America and Europe over the phony “climate emergency.” Here are a couple of data points from a recent email update from the Global Warming Policy Foundation:
A new study from Oxford University on planned development of electricity infrastructure on the continent of Africa shows some 2500 generation facilities under development, the large majority of them fossil fuel-based. “A new study into Africa’s energy generation landscape uses a state-of-the-art machine-learning technique to analyse the pipeline of more than 2,500 planned power plants and their chances of successful commission. The study shows the share of non-hydro renewables in African electricity generation is likely to remain below 10% in 2030. . . . The study further suggests that a decisive move towards renewable energy in Africa would require a significant shock to the current system. This includes large-scale cancellation of fossil fuel plants currently being planned.”
Bloomberg reports on January 11 that India plans to invest some $55 billion by 2030 in coal-fired power production, as part of its plan to reach a $5 trillion economy. “India expects to invest 4 trillion rupees ($54.5 billion) in clean coal projects over the next decade as it seeks to tap domestic energy sources and curb imports, federal home minister Amit Shah said. The investment will be made in clean coal facilities, including coal gasification and coal-bed methane, Shah said at a signing ceremony to develop new mines. He said coal power will be key to achieving India’s ambition of becoming a $5 trillion economy. . . .” Good job to India for using the meaningless term “clean coal.” “Clean” in that locution has nothing to do with reducing CO2 emissions.
And this particular GWPF update does not even mention China, which has its own plans for hundreds of new coal-fired power stations.
Overall data from the International Energy Agency show that, from the signing of the Paris accord in 2015 through 2019 (latest data available), advanced economy CO2 emissions have gone down marginally from 11.7 to 11.3 gigatons annually, but that small decrease has been swamped by emissions increases in the rest of the world (developing countries) from 20.5 to 22.0 gigatons per year. Overall world emission have increased, not decreased, from 32.2 GT to 33.3 GT. Believe me, no matter what the U.S. and Europe do to shackle their economies to appease green zealots, world emissions are going to continue to increase over coming decades, and not by small amounts. Indeed, if big-population areas like India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Vietnam, and many African countries can get their acts together, world CO2 emissions could easily come close to doubling by 2050.
All of this numbers stuff is far beyond the ability of Madame Tussaud Joe to even comprehend. Somehow, his handlers have got him convinced that he is going to save the world by conducting a war on some of the most productive parts of our economy, significantly impoverishing the American people. How long can the media keep the people from figuring this out?