(Dick Wright cartoon / caglecartoons.com)
Despite broad public skepticism, President Joe Biden continues to push for the adoption of renewable energy at the expense of traditional sources, such as petroleum and natural gas.
Biden’s ongoing hostility to the conventional energy mix is a major reason the price we pay at the pump is rapidly becoming unaffordable for many American families.
Meanwhile, the proponents of green energy cheer, perceiving any decline in fossil fuel consumption as leading to a reduction of greenhouse gasses.
It’s music to their ears. Yet while they are calling the tune, we pay the piper.
Most Americans are all for doing “something” about climate change, but they’re not willing to pay very much to do it. If it’s a problem, it is a global one the United States cannot fix by itself, let alone afford to. Every nation must participate, but many cannot afford to.
Some, countries like China, simply refuse. Its use of coal to power its industrial sector is rising so quickly that it easily eliminates the benefits of any reduction in US carbon emissions – but that’s only part of the problem.
Most Americans don’t realize how reliant on China the Biden administration’s plan for future US energy production is.
The renewable energy strategy doesn’t work if, for example, cheap Chinese solar components are not allowed into the United States. That’s why the White House moved rapidly to allow them to continue to unfairly compete with US-made products by moving to suspend tariffs on some products coming from China.
That was a move several steps in the wrong direction. First, it takes US energy resources off the board and stifles the innovations of producers working to supply Americans with cleaner, more affordable energy.
Former Rep. Harold Ford, D-Tenn., Got it right when he urged Biden to “stop vilifying U.S. energy producers, many of which are leading the development of technologies to mitigate carbon emissions and make the transition to cleaner energy.”
Second, Biden is signaling his administration is willing to turn a blind eye to human rights abuses in pursuit of the green dream. Almost 40% of the global production of polysilicon important to the manufacture of solar panels comes from China’s Xinjiang region, where, according to the State Department, genocide and slave labor are prevalent.
Nowhere do these two points come into focus more than in the US Virgin Islands, where a prime example of what one watchdog group has dubbed a “Solar Boondoggle” is about to begin. In March 2022, Virgin Islands Gov. Albert Bryan announced his intention to transition the territory’s power production completely to solar.
Andrew Smith, who heads the US territory’s power authority, WAPA, recently said the move to solar would be a boon to the island “because solar is effectively free.” You might call him amusingly naive except he might be right, especially if the Biden administration ends up sending the bill for the transition to the US taxpayers.
To have any chance of making this solar pipe dream a reality, the economics of the move require Bryan and the Virgin Islands to use cheaper Chinese components, regardless of the impact on American industry or the possibility they could be benefiting from slave labor.
Now replicate this model in cities, counties and states across America and think of the mess it will cause.
Whether we like it or not, the Democrats are moving to bring their dream of an America that runs on renewable energy to life. And they’re doing it despite the realities of the marketplace, the scientific barriers yet to be overcome, and the global challenges inherent in such an effort.
In pursuit of its green objectives, the Biden administration is ignoring why it’s wise to avoid China because it needs China to do what it wants.
Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, chairman of the congressional China Task Force, says the suspension of the tariffs amounts to giving “amnesty to products that the administration admitted are linked to genocide and slave labor.”
So, in addition to being a colossal waste of tax dollars, the Biden Solar Boondoggle is a blot on America’s record on human rights we’ll all pay for, one way or another.
– Peter Roff is a senior fellow at Frontiers of Freedom, a Newsweek contributing editor and a former US News & World Report contributing editor. Contact him at [email protected]follow him on Twitter: @PeterRoff or connect with him on Facebook. Click here for previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.
