OPINION:
The Biden administration has announced in recent weeks stringent new emissions requirements for virtually the entire U.S. transportation system.
The Environmental Protection Agency will mandate that by the year 2035, virtually every car made and sold in this country must be an electric vehicle. No more gasoline-powered cars. The New York Times comically declared that motorists don’t have to worry because this “isn’t a ban on gas cars.”
Sure it isn’t.
Today, less than 2% of cars use the electric power grid for fuel. Soon we will see 50 times as much demand for electricity from motor vehicles.
Then the EPA announced new rules for trains to go electric — even as the American Association of Railroads has declared the mandate infeasible.
And the climate change lobby is just getting started. There is a new scheme to require that the long-haul trucking industry convert to electric battery operation from diesel fuel.
This is a technological and financial nightmare for our trucking industry. A 10-ton long-haul truck will carry cargo across the country on an electric battery. Really?
Even if the technology existed to meet these mandates, the added strain on the nation’s electrical grid comes at a time when power is already in short supply. The Wall Street Journal reports that demand for power is expected to double over the next decade because of artificial intelligence and other technologies that use several times as much energy as the internet.
It also comes at a time when the left has insisted that more than a dozen coal and gas plants need to be closed down. Nuclear plants continue to get shuttered, too. Locally, greens have also started a movement to stop transmission lines and pipelines from being built.
What is the likely outcome of vastly expanding electric power demand while the Biden administration reduces supply? An energy calamity. Prices could double. California, which is at the forefront of the green energy movement, already charges its residents twice as much in utility bills as other states.
California also leads the nation in power failures. The state has averaged about 100 power disruptions and brownouts a year. This leaves schools, hospitals and millions of homes without power.
Some of the more honest green groups concede that a power shortage is coming as a result of their radical “decarbonization” agenda. Their solution is rationing energy. The government will tell you how much power you can use and when you can use it. There is also a move afoot to conserve energy by abolishing air conditioners and “nonessential” air travel — as well as natural gas stoves and power lawn mowers.
Energy is the master resource. Everything we have is derivative of cheap and reliable energy. The more energy a country uses, the richer it is. If you want to disrupt a nation’s progress, remove its energy sources.
This is usually a tactic that nations use against their enemies when they are at war. We are foolishly and self-destructively turning the lights off on ourselves.
• Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation. He is also co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity.
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