President Joe Biden signs an executive order on climate change, in the State Dining Room of the White House, Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2021, in Washington. Vice President Kamala Harris looks on at left. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Let’s increase our word power. The word we’ll learn today is “twaddle.” Webster defines “twaddle” as, “trivial or foolish speech or writing, nonsense.”
We lift up the word ‘twaddle’ in the wake of President Biden’s words and actions regarding U.S. energy and environmental policy. All in the name of climate change, the president, on his first day in office, issued an executive order rescinding approval of the Keystone XL pipeline. In a stroke, he killed about a thousand existing jobs and as many as 11,000 jobs that would be otherwise coming online this year.
He has since imposed what amounts to a permanent suspension of drilling permits for U.S. lands. The American Petroleum Institute estimates that that move will cost the U.S. economy about $700 billion and upwards of a million jobs by the end of next year.
And he’s not done. Right on the website at whitehouse.gov it says:
President Biden will take swift action to tackle the climate emergency. The Biden administration will ensure we meet demands of science, while empowering American workers and businesses to lead a clean energy revolution.”
Wow. A ‘climate emergency.’ A ‘clean energy revolution.’ So much for any hope that Joe Biden will govern as a moderate. No chance. It’s more of the far-left environmental hoo-ha that Democrats and the media have been peddling for decades. In other words, the very embodiment of twaddle.
We’ve already had a ‘clean energy revolution,’ Mr. President and you missed it. It’s called natural gas and thanks to the sane energy policy of your predecessor, together with hydraulic fracturing, the U.S. has it in abundance. That abundance has made it cheap. Those low prices have enabled electric utilities to affordably switch to it. CO2 emissions have fallen accordingly. (So have home air conditioning bills.)
There is no “emergency” requiring us to cripple the oil and gas industry, raise the cost of transportation, heating & cooling and just about everything else. There is absolutely no reason – as always happens – to disproportionately impose the burden of those rising costs upon the very same low-income households for which Democrats claim to have such admirable compassion. And when the country is trying to recover from the economic devastation of the pandemic, there’s sure as hell no reason to be deliberately killing jobs.
But not to worry, said Mr. Biden on Wednesday:
When I think of climate change and the answers to it, I think of jobs. A key plank of our ‘Build Back Better’ recovery plan is building a modern, resilient, climate infrastructure, and clean energy future that will create millions of good-paying union jobs.”
Right. Never mind that none of this has ever happened with any prior grandiose liberal, big-government scheme. There were no “shovel-ready jobs” or “green jobs” requiring hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers following the 2008 financial meltdown.
Nor has a single dire prediction about pending climate disaster dating back to when I was in grade school ever come true. Not one.
Ever.
The president is talking nonsense. It’s trivial. It’s foolish.
It’s twaddle.
Excellent column Mr. Gleiser.
Biden is being predictably true to his Chi-com loyalties as being the absolute most ANTI American president EVER.
There is NO climate change issue to address. And the so-called green new deal isn’t about that at all. It’s really about totalitarian authoritarian CONTROL..
In short, the “green new deal*” is name camouflage for socialism* *i.e. socialist/communist/Marxist CONTROL via a cabal masquerading as a presidential administration looking out for the best interests of American citizens. They AREN’T!
If you love the United States of America –the AMERICA of our Founding in 1776– you must write, call, text, and raise you voice to push back against the complete rubbish and balderdash the Biden administration is propagating because.. it’s a LIE. The Biden administration is promoting policies which are COUNTER and ANATHEMA to our Constitutional Republic as founded under GOD in FREEDOM and Capitalism* *i.e. American Free Enterprise.
Pray for U.S.A..
God bless America and our 45th President Donald J.Trump.
Twaddle rolls off the tongue fairly easily. Thanks Paul.
How many of ya’ll/ us have witnessed the massive wind energy fields? They are incredibly ugly, about half of them either are out of service or not working, and they kill many migratory birds each year. I find it hard to believe this form of energy can actually pay for itself. The costs of: A. Manufacturing the parts B. Shipping the parts either by truck or rail. C. Some assembly at a plant where they are offloaded (a huge plant at the airport in Coleman, TX where one can see this process). D. The cost of road building, site preparation where they are going to be set these beasts (out west where Texas does have mountains and plateaus, this phase takes a heck of a lot of construction!). E. Transport again to the site of installation. F. Installation, and G. Repeat all the above for the supporting electrical components substations, wires, poles, etc. Lest I forget THE critical step, that is the leasing of the land and rights of way to place these monsters on subsequent supporting wires and poles. The logistics is mind bending and has to costs hundreds of millions just to create a viable field. Never mind hundreds of “viable” fields. This is only ONE component in this “Green Energy” march to ending fossil fuels. Do not forget maintenance; these wind mills must be maintained on a regular basis and they do break down.
Does it create new jobs, yes. BUT, the costs of creating these jobs can never pay for itself. Last aspect is, the ONLY way to product enough electricity from this type wind energy is to blanket the land with wind farms. Anyone really want to see that? Oh, but to save the environment, we must destroy part of it first. Nothing like a bunch of educated idiots to lead the way of twaddling!!!
As Paul alludes, the main purpose of the “Green New Deal” is the opportunity to ” Deal New Green” to campaign donors. At the same stroke of a pen, this administration is able to cripple our petroleum industry, and make us more dependent on foreign energy. How much more proof does the voter need that the Neo-Democratic Party wants to make our country subservient to countries that openly seek our demise? Sadly, we are now at the mercy of a couple of Democratic senators to prevent these radical policies from becoming law. Unless the electors behave in the manner that the founders provided, our constitutional republic cannot survive. We MUST make sure that our representatives understand that they will not be re-elected if they do not defend and protect the constitution, as they raised their hand and swore to God to do. If they do not get the message, we should see if Missouri will swap us Josh Hawley for John Cornyn; we will even throw in Al Green and Sheila Jackson Lee. What a deal !!!