Heritage Foundation President Schools The New York Times on Climate Alarmism, Clean Energy
Diana Furchtgott-Roth /
After challenging the elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, back in January, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts this week was interviewed by New York Times reporter David Gelles on climate and energy.
Roberts’ message: Environmentalists’ obsession with radical climate policies is leaving America’s workers and the global poor behind.
“The climate agenda is ending the American dream,” Roberts told Gelles. The Left’s war on affordable, reliable energy sources is an attack on the American Dream—the very foundation that lets hardworking people get ahead and build a future for their families.
The American dream is the envy of the world. Emerging economies cannot have their own dreams if they are forced—or bribed—by the West to abandon a fossil fuel economy and use renewables.
The world faces a growing energy crisis with severe economic, humanitarian, and security consequences. That’s the direct result of climate policies aimed at dismantling U.S. fossil fuel production while claiming to “save” the climate.
Inflation Reduction Act and Energy Poverty
These policies are failing and are pushing everyone—on all continents—toward energy poverty. The Inflation Reduction Act provides incentives for renewable energy and electric vehicles, which raise the prices of electricity and transportation. States with higher shares of renewables have higher electricity prices, and EVs are more expensive than other cars. As Roberts said, Americans may not be able to name the Inflation Reduction Act, “but they sure feel the effects of it.”
Environmentalists say that if America eliminated fossil fuels, the world would follow, but that hasn’t happened. While U.S. emissions have declined modestly, global emissions have risen—particularly in China, where more than 300 new coal plants are planned, and a new plant is being built every week.
All over the world, people want to move to energy-intensive goods and services, such as heating, air conditioning, washing machines, hot and high-pressure showers, and personal vehicles.
The U.S. emits just one-seventh of the world’s CO2. America’s eliminating all fossil fuels “would have an almost nonmeasurable impact” on global temperatures, as Roberts explained, because Western emissions are a small share of the total.
Americans were promised that if fossil fuels were phased out, they would be seamlessly replaced by less expensive wind and solar. But that hasn’t happened.
America added just 4 gigawatts of utility-scale battery storage last year, while a serious net-zero transition would need at least 200 gigawatts. Instead, electricity prices are rising in states with renewable-portfolio standards.
“We have taken this idea of an energy transition and accelerated it so artificially that it is harming people,” Roberts said.
At Mercy of Hostile Regimes
The North American energy platform makes America into a net energy exporter, with no need to rely on hostile foreign regimes for oil. At the same time as the Biden-Harris administration ended the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada, President Joe Biden was begging hostile regimes like those of Saudi Arabia and Venezuela for oil.
The Biden-Harris administration even paused new clean natural gas exports, purposely leaving Europe at the mercy of Russia.
While ordinary Americans are facing rising energy costs and unreliable grids due to misguided climate policies, companies such as Microsoft and Amazon are ensuring they have access to stable, affordable energy—such as nuclear power.
These corporations can make purchase agreements to safeguard their own energy needs, while funding environmental causes that advocate limited access to affordable and reliable energy sources for the rest of the country.
Roberts noted that climate danger is declining, not rising. “There has actually been a reduction in climate-related deaths over the last century by 98%,” he said.
Generators fired by fossil fuels enable the creation of sturdy home cement and steel foundations and hurricane-proof poles for power distribution cables. Fossil fuels power irrigation, air conditioning, heating, storm-warning systems, and resilient buildings, which have allowed people to better handle climate risks in better-off parts of the world.
The war on fossil fuels endangers that mastery and puts lives at risk.
Sentencing Third World to Permanent Poverty
According to UNICEF, women and girls around the world spend a mindboggling 200 million hours a day walking to collect water. That burden could be lifted with access to electricity to pump the water where it’s needed. Without electricity, that life-sustaining water is a source of danger itself. More than 500,000 people die every year from preventable diseases caused by contaminated water.
Some radical environmentalists are OK with women and girls in the Third World—like these in Mutoko, Zimbabwe—having to walk with buckets to communal sources of water because of a lack of affordable energy from fossil fuels. (Hakan Nural/Anadolu/Getty Images)
These needless deaths, nearly unheard of in the developed world, could be prevented with clean water made possible by access to electricity.
Current climate policy is hostile to fossil fuels and ignores their immense benefits. These policies catastrophize climate risks that haven’t materialized while ignoring our proven ability to adapt to climate changes.
The only rational way to handle climate challenges is through energy abundance, climate mastery, and free-market innovation. America’s real effect on global emissions will come from superior energy alternatives, such as popular non-plug-in hybrid cars—which charge the battery from the operation of the braking and engine systems, not from attacking fossil fuels.
“The free market and private citizens are the best conservationists,” Roberts declared in the interview.
Artificial Energy Scarcity
The Biden-Harris administration is not just dishonest about its climate agenda, it’s promulgating policies that will crush the middle class with hidden costs, Roberts said. Gas taxes, electric vehicle mandates, and crippling EPA regulations are driving up energy prices and creating an artificial energy scarcity.
The Biden-Harris administration’s recent EPA power plant rules, if implemented, would force most coal-fired power plants and some natural gas-fired power plants to shut down by 2032 and result in a 30% electricity shortfall by 2032.
Inflation Reduction Act subsidies are distorting the energy market, forcing traditional power plants to sit idle during the day while subsidized solar floods the grid. Subsidies for renewables discourage investments in traditional fuels, such as natural gas. Inflation Reduction Act subsidies will eliminate millions of jobs and cost every American family at least $5,000 per year. Ford, Stellantis, and GM are all laying off autoworkers.
Politics is full of surprises, but energy security should not be one of them. Energy security is national security. America can’t compete internationally if our domestic development is strangled by the “green energy” movement’s hostility to humans.
The environmentalists who want to block minerals mining projects in Minnesota needed for green energy are the same ones who demand more solar panels and electric vehicles.
No Buy-In From China
The Biden-Harris administration’s policies prevent mining in the U.S. for domestic critical minerals, leaving the U.S. at the mercy of China for essential materials to build renewable energy technologies. China is buying up mines in Africa and Latin America for those critical minerals for its electric vehicles and batteries.
China has more than 1,000 coal-fired power plants, while the U.S. has fewer than 250, and China has made clear it won’t sacrifice its economy for Western climate goals. Put simply by Roberts: “We are benefiting the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party at the expense of ordinary Americans.”
The West is hollowing out its manufacturing sector by moving energy-intensive production abroad, with an increase in global emissions, rather than a reduction.
The Inflation Reduction Act will cost Americans a trillion dollars in tax incentives and credits, propping up industries that have no chance of being internationally competitive. All these interventions neglect the best interests of American citizens.
As Roberts told The New York Times’ Gelles, “The Biden-Harris administration has made a grave mistake by imposing the will of elites on the American people.” States with more renewables have higher-priced electricity, without even including the environmental costs of mining for batteries and the devastating human toll of child and slave labor in the Third World.
False Scientific ‘Consensus’
Environmentalists also claim a false consensus among scientists on the dire effects of climate change. Contrary to their claims, Roberts said, “Government doesn’t have a monopoly on scientific knowledge.” In reality, the increase in global temperatures is lower than practically all predicted climate-change models.
Even the worst-case scenarios are not enough to justify decarbonization. The essence of the scientific spirit is skepticism. Reporters who are not skeptical are not doing their jobs.
Heritage Foundation experts have used the government’s own models to show that eliminating U.S. carbon dioxide emissions would reduce global temperatures by less than 0.23°C, an imperceptible change. Roberts said, “We are, as political conservatives, also conservationists of the environment … the United States has some of the cleanest air and water in the world.”
The American dream is powered by energy abundance. Any policy that creates energy scarcity is doomed to fail. Energy is the foundation of human flourishing—and fossil fuels have delivered it.
We must defend American energy independence and push for realistic solutions to future climate challenges. Those who advocate costly climate agendas cannot be allowed to destroy America’s future.