What Does China and India Know About Coal That Biden and Democrats Don’t?
By Frank Lasee
December 11, 2023
Recently at COP 28, where 80,000 people from around the world fly in on CO2-spewing jets. Stay in air-conditioning for two weeks, while eating flown in food. All provided by fossil fuels. They have the gall to tell us we should end the very fuels that made their posh annual junket in a lavish desert land possible.
Not to be left out, Climate Envoy John Kerry announced that the U.S. was joining the Powering Past Coal Alliance. Thereby ending coal.
Ending coal is something Biden is already committed too. No news there. Committed to, no matter the cost, or the blackout risks created by ditching low-cost, reliable coal that provided nearly 20% of our electricity last year. Keep the lights on, when you need it the most, electricity.
Closing our coal plants will not change the temperature in the future in any meaningful way. Kerry admits this.
Why spend trillions on something that has many negatives and small positives for regular people? Bidenomics: make everything more expensive and send trillions to communist China to buy the green fantasy.
Keeping the lights on all the time requires electricity demand be met by supply immediately. A pesky fact. If not, blackouts happen, and people die. Like hundreds did from the cold in Texas a couple Februarys ago. Coal and natural gas can match electricity demand. Wind and solar cannot be depended on.
Worldwide coal, oil and natural gas CO2 emissions hit a new record. Coal use set new records in 2022 and 2023. Even as we in the U.S. are closing our coal plants. CO2 emissions will go higher no matter what Biden, Kerry, and other Democrats do to your energy supply and cost.
China increased its record coal use to 4.5 billion tons, more than half world’s annual consumption. China is building 100s of coal plants that last 50-75 years.
India is ramping up coal use too.
They both need more electricity for their combined 2.9 billion people.
The more energy a country has, the better off its people are. More coal electricity benefits their people now, not in some unproven hypothetical world 50 or 100 years from now. A world of climate predictions and propaganda.
Per person income and GDP match energy growth closely. China and India want to make their people’s lives better and make themselves more powerful with stronger militaries. They need lots more money and energy to do it.
It seems Biden and Democrats are buying into the World Economic Forum (WEF) and UN advice. They are urging us to make climate policy choices that harm us and benefit the communist Chinese. Both organizations advocate replacing meat with bugs and going carless.
Their track record advising Sri Lanka and South Africa are horrendous. We are on a slower train wreck caused by their recommended climate energy and farming policy. We need to change directions.
South Africa has let its reliable coal plants descend into disrepair. It was attempting to make full-time power from part-time, undependable, weather dependent wind and solar. Disaster.
Without our natural gas and coal plants, we will not have any electricity when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. We will struggle like South Africa, which has half the day blackouts.
Sri Lanka, on the advice of the WEF and UN, ended their natural gas manufactured fertilizers. Fertilizers that feed 4 billion people worldwide and allow dozens of countries to turn crops into ethanol to put in cars. Sri Lanka’s agricultural base collapsed.
In one-year, harvests of food and export crops tanked by 40%. Sri Lankans were so upset they stormed their government buildings, and their elected leadership fled the country.
The West and Republicans need to learn not to take the advice of the UN and WEF. We should also learn that 50 years of climate doomster predictions are wrong. With all the failed past predictions, we shouldn’t believe their future doom predictions either.
Most wind components, solar panels, batteries and soon EVs are made in China. China gets more than 60% of all its energy from coal. China uses forced labor; some describe as slave labor. And very little environmental protection.
Cobalt comes from Chinese owned mines in Congo, mined by children as young as eight, in horrendous conditions for a few bucks a day. Not green, sustainable, or ethical. Blood cobalt.
Biden, Kerry, and other Democrats don’t care about our unprecedented $34 trillion debt or the massive interest payments. They don’t care about the energy inflation caused by their expensive climate energy policies. They don’t care that we are sending 100s of billions of dollars to China. The don’t care about social justice. They don’t care about your family making ends meet.
They care more about climate ideology than people.
Frank Lasee is a former Wisconsin state senator and former member of Governor Scott Walker’s administration. The district he represented had two nuclear power plants, a biomass plant and numerous wind towers. He has experience with energy, the environment, and the climate. You can read more energy and climate information at www.truthinenergyandclimate.com which Frank leads