Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Two British Political Science professors expect Republicans to resist the inevitability of our green future, at least at first, but they believe the rise of green jobs and “international momentum” will convince Republicans to back Joe Biden’s Green New Deal.
Climate change: Joe Biden could ride a wave of international momentum to break deadlock in US
November 11, 2020 3.12am AEDT
Richard Beardsworth
Professor of International Politics, University of LeedsOlaf Corry
Professor of Global Security Challenges, University of LeedsJoe Biden’s presidency is likely to be dominated by “the three Cs”: COVID-19, China and climate change. Each one of these behemoths could make or break him.
Despite wildfires and hurricanes, this was not the long-awaited climate election. Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris campaigned on the promise of a two trillion dollar investment over the next four years. This aims to put the US on course to a carbon-free electricity sector by 2035 and carbon neutrality – meaning, the country’s net carbon emissions would reach zero – by 2050. Their climate plan linked aggressive emissions reductions to social and environmental justice measures beyond compensation for workers and communities embedded in high-carbon industries like coal mining. It was forged in collaboration with the Bernie Sanders campaign and supporters of a Green New Deal.
The bad news is that Biden’s ability to implement such a transformative domestic agenda appears to be severely limited. Any big spending plans are likely to be stymied by the Senate which, even following run-off races in January, can at best end up a 50-50 partisan split, with Harris as the tiebreaker. Even “moderate” Republicans like Mitt Romney have pledged to “make sure that we conservatives keep on fighting to make sure we don’t have a Green New Deal [and] we don’t get rid of gas and coal and oil”.
But if Biden can link action on climate to economic regeneration, jobs, environmental justice, and a proactive foreign policy with both China and Europe, he could yet fulfil both his domestic and international agendas.
…
Read more: https://theconversation.com/climate-change-joe-biden-could-ride-a-wave-of-international-momentum-to-break-deadlock-in-us-149121
I think where the professors have gone wrong is they genuinely seem believe the Green New Deal is an economically viable option, which after a few trillion dollars investment will become a self sustaining economic system.
In my opinion this represents a complete denial of engineering and economic reality.
If a business is not competitive when backed with a billion dollars of government cash, how is upping the investment to a trillion dollars supposed to help?
After all the subsidies and political support renewables have received over the decades, if there was any hope for the economic viability of renewables with anything resembling current technology, they would long since have outgrown the need for special government assistance.
To put it another way, that dead horse is not going to jump up and gallop under its own steam, no matter how hard politicians flog it with taxpayer’s money.
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Leftists REALLY are clueless on how economies grow, prosper and implode…
It’s IMPOSSIBLE to create REAL jobs and a strong economy by implementing unneeded and insane CAGW energy and regulations policies which will: increase energy prices, increase debt, increase taxes, increase private sector regulation compliance costs, make products and services uncompetitive in the global market, increase interest rates, reduce capital reserves, decrease economic efficiency, misallocate land, labor, capital and natural resources, destroy and unemploy entire sectors of the economy, make prices for ALL goods and services more expensive, destroy the real estate, stock market, automotive and oil & gas industries, lower living standards, increase inflation, etc.,,,
Leftists need to read Bastiat’s Parable of the Broken Window to understand why their stupid “economic stimulus” programs and Socialism never have or ever will work.
So when do all these amazing Green Jobs(tm) finally kick in?
We have been told about the pending outbreak of Green Jobs(tm) for at least a decade now. Where are they? What is delaying them?
Oh that’s right, the Fossil Fuel Industry have been selfishly suppressing them, instead of say, Oh I don’t know, embracing them and controlling both the green and fossil industries.
Remember it is called Big Oil for a reason. Not Medium Oil, or Tiny Oil. BIG Oil.
And it got big by being successful and supplying a market, NOT because they happen to like oil.
If there was a free market for Green that honestly was worth the billions everyone is claiming then Big Oil would be making billions from Green by now.
Craig we are in the unfortunate situation of living smack bang in the middle of the Central West Renewable Energy Zone in NSW. We bought and built on a small acreage near an historic town two and a half years ago. There are coal mines not too far from here, one around 20 kilometres away. We chose to live here, these historic towns exist because of mining, some of them go back to the Gold Rush era of the 1800’s, we like the people and the community spirit.
Large scale renewables are being forced on us, thousands of hectares of agricultural land are being bulldozed, flora and fauna, countless native animals displaced and destroyed. The state politician Matt Kean, leading this madness calls himself a moderate. What a joke, two of the people on the ‘think tank’ he created are Greens! One of them is actually the leader of the Greens Party.
This politician is making regular blanket statements about all the jobs that will be created through renewable energy. According to his percentages, more then 60% of these ‘excellent’ jobs will be for construction workers.
Our local solar works, Beryl Solar, is 87mw covering 310 hectares. That project required around 150 construction workers, over around 4 months, they were backpackers, bussed in and out of town each day. Camps are built to house these workers, our towns rely on tourism so large numbers of budget accommodation are harder to come by. On completion, after around eight or nine months to build, Beryl has one full time employee, a security guard. Outside contractors cut the grass from time to time.
The nearby Wellington solar project is one of the largest in Australia at this time. This project has 560 construction workers, most are backpackers, most are in camp accommodation. They recently had 13 issues raised in regard to electricals, some of them serious. The backpackers had no clue of potential dangers.
Most of the renewables infrastructure in Australia arrives on our shores complete. The jobs associated with mining, processing and manufacture are done predominantly overseas, most cost effective.
What jobs Matt Kean? The backpackers working on your disastrous renewables projects should be spread across NSW helping our farmers pick fruit and vegetables. They are having to destroy fruit and vegetable crops which are rotting because they can’t get the workers for harvest. We are sick of lies being spouted to the media and to the general public.
Another favourite line of his and other proponents of renewables is that 80% of the general public support renewable energy. What utter garbage! They are promoting the idea of this so that the public are tricked into thinking it’s true. The general public know nothing about renewable energy, or how it comes about. If the general public knew the cradle to grave story of renewables they would never support it.
He also pretends that the regional communities are kept informed and up to date with projects in their areas, and that they are supportive of renewables. Garbage! This industry is so secretive that most people in these communities didn’t even realise renewables were happening until the construction started. It is causing division and heartbreak and it’s almost impossible to get a politician or the press to even respond to you let alone have a conversation. Believe me I have tried. Though I will say our local Federal MP has kept the lines of communication open.
No one can tell us what will happen to this infrastructure when it’s no longer useful either. Our region will have tens of millions of solar panels and large numbers of wind turbines to dispose of. Who will pay for this? It’s simply being dumped on us. All for infrastructure that’s not fit for purpose. All being subsidised by the taxpayer, from cradle to grave. Most of this money going to
overseas multinational conglomerates.
Green policies allow the elite to control and crush working class aspirations with regulation and taxes then feel really good about the damage inflicted.
Bright Green future with tailwind for thousands of wind turbines, Green jobs an mass in Spain, didn’t turn out quite so formidable and nearly bankrupt the country.
Why fix something which is not broken?
Germany struggling with the Energiewende?
Denmark’s wold’s highest number of wind turbines per capita (for a country) has made interesting electricity prices.
California suffering more and more stable energy production insufficiency, which was already becoming an issue by the turn of the century.
Why make changes?
All for it. We humans evolve, develop and pursue ever more quality of life.
Thus, “big spending” as The Conversation think is needed, is counter productive to quality of life. If a new development has proven viable, then some government issued loan guarantees may be needed to get going on a large scale, but preferably it should not be needed.
If just President Trump could have been a bit more aggressive getting the CO2 endangerment claim purged, a lot of this insanity may have been avoided.
Trump, you got North Carolina today – so get the rest of the stolen goods and ASAP kick this CO2 thingy out to the needy plants!
Some interesting viewpoints from Sky News Australia an hour ago.
Trump stands firm because ‘Democrats failed to give losers’ consent for four years’
Where also is mentioned Stockholm Syndrome and some other interesting things.
Wrong on both counts. But sadly, they will continue to spend us into bankruptcy trying to convince us that less efficient technologies are actually more efficient. And they have the stupidity to accuse me of being the anti-science person. The laws of thermodynamics don’t care, they just apply.
I have long ago given up on being astounded at how out out of touch and “low iq” professors can be.
Biden actually said, in his pre-acceptance speech, that we can “bring climate under control”.
I wonder if Joe can tell us when climate was EVER under control.
“international momentum”
Climatespeak.
Translation: A combination of peer pressure, guilt, bandwagon envy, and fear of being “othered”.
In other words, they are counting on the Republicans sans Trump, not having the cajones.
Which, let’s face it, seems to be the Republicans default state.
It will be interesting to see how the rhetoric changes after we have had lots of record-breaking cold spells such as the one out west a little while ago. I have been predicting for some time that the next ice age is coming. The little ice age of the 1600’s was the coldest the earth has been in over 6,000 years; the warmth since then is merely the well-documented so-called 1,500 year cycle (which my observation says is closer to 1,000 – 1,200 years.)
It won’t change a thing. The blame will go to CO2, and the answer will still be getting rid of fossil fuels, and government more power over the people. To Marxists, more government power is the answer to everything.
From the article: “The bad news is that Biden’s ability to implement such a transformative domestic agenda appears to be severely limited. Any big spending plans are likely to be stymied by the Senate which, even following run-off races in January, can at best end up a 50-50 partisan split, with Harris as the tiebreaker. Even “moderate” Republicans like Mitt Romney have pledged to “make sure that we conservatives keep on fighting to make sure we don’t have a Green New Deal [and] we don’t get rid of gas and coal and oil”.”
Senator Joe Machin (D-Pennsylvania) said the other day that he would vote against adding Justices to the U.S. Supreme Court and against eliminating the filibuster rule in the Senate. He didn’t say anything about the Green New Deal, but I would bet he would vote against that, too.
So Traitor Joe Biden and the radical Left won’t have it all their own way, if Biden does manage to get into Office.
Joe may manage to get into office just long enough for Nancy and Kamala to article 25 him.
Those that are sanguine because the Republicans will have the majority in the Senate need to look again. At best it will be 52-48 and among those 52 are Romney, Murkowski, and Collins. All the Demonazis have to do is buy off 2 of those and you have a 50-50 tie with Kamala Harris casting the deciding vote. Oh and for those of you who think Munchin meant what he said need to go back and look at his votes which rarely align with the Republicans despite earlier comments saying the same thing the past several years. Hey Joe, fool me once, shame on you, fool me again, shame on ME
One constant with socialists, they are always convinced that “this time, it’s going to work”.
To quote Bullwinkle: “This time for sure!!!”
Needless to say, yet another failure resulted, as it will under a Biden/Harris administration. Being able to say, “We told you so! You were warned, but you refused to listen” will be small consolation while people have to suffer through rolling blackouts and >$6/gal gasoline.