Biden’s Hypocrisy on Climate Change Is Painfully Obvious

According to Diana Furchtgott-Roth, President Joe Biden has repeatedly called climate change an “existential threat,” including in his debate with President Donald Trump on Thursday night. She wrote in The Daily Caller:

If Biden truly thought that climate change was an existential threat, he would try to lower global emissions through greater U.S. exports of natural gas. This would enable other countries to reduce emissions by substituting natural gas for coal, just as America has reduced carbon emissions by 1,000 million metric tons over the past 16 years.

In addition, Biden would try to expand emissions-free nuclear power if he thought climate change was a threat. He would make uranium mining easier, because uranium is a critical ingredient for nuclear power. Yet he has taken swaths of land off the table for uranium development and made no attempt to solve the problem of nuclear waste.

Instead, Biden blocks a new liquid natural gas export terminal in Louisiana, which results in greater worldwide use of coal, increasing global carbon dioxide emissions. Europe has already been turning to coal to deal with energy shortages in the aftermath of Russia’s cutoff of natural gas.

Yet, Biden’s green energy mandates result in a greater U.S. demand for wind turbines, solar panels, and electric batteries from China, made by coal-fired power plants, increasing the very emissions that Biden criticizes at home.

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Our Coming Energy Famine

Mario Loyola, in his latest article for National Review, describes how surging electricity demand, combined with the aggressive curtailment of fossil fuels and an anemic rollout of renewable replacements, is propelling the nation toward an unprecedented energy shortfall.

States in the Midwest are likely to be among the hardest hit. In a February report, Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), a high-voltage transmission system that provides power to 15 states in the central U.S., warned of “urgent and complex challenges to electric system reliability,” citing a “hyper-complex risk environment.” NERC, which oversees electricity supply across North America, expects MISO to face a staggering capacity shortfall of 4.7 gigawatts (GW) — equivalent to above five average-size nuclear-power plants—by 2028…

Realistically, the only way that America could make up the shortfall in electrical capacity would be through a massive increase in the number of coal and natural-gas power plants. Alas, those are primary targets of the Environmental Protection Agency’s new power-plant rule, published in May…

Making matters worse, federal subsidies for wind and solar are poisoning the economics for “baseload” generators. Those are the large coal, natural-gas, and nuclear plants on which America depends for sufficient and reliable electricity. Such plants are finding it increasingly difficult to recoup operating costs; at various times of the day, many utilities can get electricity free from solar and wind, which forces baseload generators to go offline.

Read the full article here.

Denmark to Tax Cattle Burps and Flatulence

The Danish government believes that taxing methane that stems from cow burps and flatulate will improve the lives of its citizens by lowering global temperatures. Beginning in 2030, Danish livestock farmers will be taxed 300 kroner ($43) per ton of carbon dioxide-equivalent that livestock emits—increasing to 750 kroner ($108) by 2035.

This means that each cow will cost farmers an additional $116 per head of cattle, given that the average cow emits the CO2 equivalent of about 2.7 tons per year in methane. This tax would reach about $291 per head of cattle by 2035. The tax will only harm farmers and raise the cost of local beef for consumers and will have no effect on global temperatures.

In fact, all 1.5 million cows in Denmark account for about 0.1 percent of the European Union’s annual 3.6 billion tons of greenhouse emissions. Even if the entire European Union halted all emissions (including livestock) the global temperatures would only be reduced by 0.12 degrees Celsius by the year 2100, even assuming the highest climate sensitivity to carbon.

According to William Happer, professor in the Department of Physics at Princeton University, while methane is more potent than carbon dioxide, it only contributes 10 percent of the total warming that CO2 does. Taxing the methane from livestock burps and flatulence will only force small ranchers out of business and make meat unaffordable for low-income Danes.