For those of us who hold individual rights as
sacred, Donald Trump is a heavily mixed bag. There’s a lot to hate about his
policy agenda.
But there’s also things to support--his energy
policy, for example.
At the recent global climate summit in Poland,
dubbed COP24, the Trump Administration stood before a sneering, mocking,
elitist cabal of global climate alarmists, . . . and promoted coal and other
fossil fuels!
President Donald
Trump's top White
House adviser on energy and
climate stood before the crowd of some 200 people on Monday and tried to
burnish the image of coal, the fossil fuel that powered the industrial
revolution - and is now a major culprit behind the climate crisis world leaders
are meeting here to address.
"We strongly believe that no country should have to sacrifice
economic prosperity or energy security in pursuit of environmental
sustainability," said Wells Griffith, Trump's adviser.
Mocking laughter echoed through the conference room. A woman
yelled, "These false solutions are a joke!" And dozens of people
erupted into chants of protest.
The protest was a piece of theater, and so too was the United
States' public embrace of coal and other dirty fuels at an event otherwise
dedicated to saving the world from the catastrophic impacts of climate change.
The standoff punctuated the awkward position the American delegation finds
itself in as career bureaucrats seek to advance the Trump administration's
agenda in an international arena aimed at cutting back on fossil fuels.
Talk about guts. Note the bias in this “news”
report--terms like “climate crisis” and “dirty fuels” and coal labeled “a major
culprit”--as if the issue is settled, and there are no other views or facts to
consider. That’s why I put the word “reported” in scare quotes. Right in the
epicenter of the biggest gathering of the climate catastrophists’ witch
doctors, we get a defense of fossil fuels!
That aside, when you look beyond the hubris of
the elites, an entirely different picture emerges. As the elites laugh at
Trump, people around the world are embracing coal as they struggle to pull
themselves up from poverty. Hundreds upon hundreds of coal-fired electric power
plants are being planned
or built, while United States
coal exports hit
records as coal producers
strain to meet this worldwide demand. As Trump gets mocked, he takes the side
of the world’s poor, who want a piece of the prosperity and climate safety
enjoyed by the elites, and of the “rich,” who want to maintain their elevated
lifestyles. It looks like Trump is not the only one who doesn’t want “to
sacrifice economic prosperity or energy security in pursuit of environmental
sustainability.”
Trump was also criticized for refusing to back
the recent United Nations report that alarmingly asserted that mankind has only
until 2030 to prevent climate doom:
Monday's presentation came after a weekend in which the U.S.
delegation undercut the talks by joining with major oil producers Russia, Saudi
Arabia and Kuwait in blocking full endorsement of a critical U.N. climate
report. The report, by some of the world's leading scientists, found that the
world has barely a decade to cut carbon emissions by nearly half to avoid
catastrophic warming.
But the United States balked at a proposal to formally
"welcome" the finding, setting off a dispute that, while semantic in
nature, carried ominous portents that the United States could become an
obstacle to progress in Katowice.
To be sure, the Trump Administration is not
blind to the possibility of serious climate side effects from greenhouse gases.
It’s policy views are much more broad based than implied here. You have to read
down toward the end of the article to find this:
After dozens of activists had shouted, "Keep it in the
ground!" and "Shame on you!" for roughly 10 minutes, they
marched together from the room. In the calm that followed, administration
officials continued with their pitch for carbon-capture technologies to clean
up coal, hydraulic fracturing to unearth gas and a new generation of nuclear
energy plants.
Scientists say that a rapid migration away from fossil fuels
toward cleaner energy is essential in the quest to prevent the most
catastrophic effects of climate change. But Griffith, the White House adviser,
argued that an exclusive focus on wind and solar is misguided at a time when
the global energy supply is still dominated by carbon.
He and his colleagues touted the economic benefits of shale gas
and insisted that coal can be made much less polluting given the right
technology.
"Alarmism," Griffith said, "should not silence
realism."
Alarmism should not silence realism. Amen. Carbon-capture technologies, hydraulic fracturing to
unearth gas, and nuclear energy are all greenhouse gas-reducing energy
solutions that don’t require sacrificing economic prosperity to environmental
“sustainability” and pay due respect to the vital reliable energy our lives
depend upon. Trump is not alone in his realism. Bill Gates, who is investing
$billions of his own fortune for the cause of reducing climate-altering carbon
emissions, called the obsession with unreliable solar and wind “dangerous.” As
the Daily Caller reports:
Bill Gates offered some surprisingly critical comments about
environmental activists who believe the proliferation of renewable energy is
the only answer to climate change.
“That general impression that ‘Oh, it’s just about solar and
wind,’ that I think is as dangerous to us as the fact that in one country, the
U.S., there’s a faction that associates with ‘Hey, let’s not make any
trade-offs to go in and solve this problem,'” he said.
Gates is putting his money where his mouth is:
Gates is no
stranger to environmental
activism. The founder of Microsoft — and a man worth almost $100 billion — has
used his wealth to propel a number of climate change initiatives. He currently
leads a coalition of
billionaires who are investing in clean energy technologies. The philanthropy
organization he founded, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is focusing on
the adaptation to climate change.
Gates has also invested in the development of advanced nuclear
reactors, and a company, Carbon Engineering, that uses technology to capture
carbon right out of the sky.
Carbon capture, adaptation, nuclear power; sounds a lot like Trump’s balanced agenda. These are not “false
solutions,” as one protester screamed. They are realistic, progressive
proposals coming from people who value human well-being over Stone Age-like “sustainability”.
True to their biases, Witte and Dennis asserted
that “the idea of the United States as a leader at the international climate
talks has evaporated.” They accused Trump of “thumbing his nose at
international norms." But what Trump actually did was give us a lesson in
true leadership. Thumbing one’s nose at norms that one believes is wrong, and
offering a different approach, is what leaders do. On climate, energy, and
human prosperity, the Trump Administration has made America a leader true to
its legacy as a beacon of technological and economic advancement.
It remains to be seen if Trump’s courageous
stand signals the beginning of the end of the climate catastrophist bubble, and
the beginning of a more balanced, pro-human approach to energy and climate. To
be sure, as the article points out, unelected “deep state” American bureaucrats
are working behind the scenes at the conference to undercut the elected Trump
Administration from carrying out its agenda. Nonetheless, kudos to the Trump
Administration for standing up for a rational, realist approach that integrates
energy, climate, and economic concerns. It’s a view that desperately needs a
voice.
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1 comment:
'Alarmism'
Is that even a real concept?
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