Any money that
is transferred will end up in the pockets of governing elites. Poor families will get little or no cash--and will be told their dreams of better lives must be limited to jobs and living standards that can be supported by solar panels on their huts and a few wind turbines near their villages.
Simply put, the Musk-Obama-Pope-Climate Crisis schemes will save humanity from exaggerated and fabricated climate disasters decades from now--by impoverishing billions and killing millions tomorrow.
For the catechism of climate cataclysm coalition, the essential thing is that we believe the hysterical assertions and computer models--and support endless renewable energy mandates and subsidies.
Musk and his Tesla and SolarCity companies have already
pocketed $4.9 billion in taxpayer-financed subsidies, and even long-elusive profitability
has not ended the handouts. Now he claims
a small "blue square" on a map represents the "very little" land required to "get rid of all fossil fuel electricity generation" in the USA and prevent a non-existent climate cataclysm. We just need rooftop solar panels linked to wall-mounted battery packs--a mere 160 million Tesla Powerwalls--to eliminate the need for all coal and natural gas electricity generation in the United States, he insists.
Hogwash (from pork barrel political pig farms). As a careful and
extensive analysis demonstrates, even without considering the monumental electricity demand required to convert America's vehicles to electric-battery versions, providing today's baseload and peak demand electricity would require 29.3 billion one-square-meter solar panels. Assuming adequate yearlong daily sunlight, that's 29,333 square kilometers of active solar panel surface area: 7.2 million acres--or nearly all of Maryland and Delaware!
Musk has a BS in physics--and obviously holds advanced BS degrees in lobbying and con-artistry about climate disasters and renewable energy solutions
The analysis is technical, beyond the ability of most voters, journalists, politicians and regulators to comprehend fully. Read it anyway, if only to understand the enormity of financing, raw materials, mining, manufacturing and electricity required to make and ship the panels (some 40 million per year), battery packs and inverters (to convert low-voltage solar electricity to 120 or 240 Volt alternating current).
We are clearly dealing with an unprecedented green mirage and con job. It will drive average retail electricity prices from the 8-9 cents per kilowatt-hour in coal and gas-reliant states, to the 15-17 cents per kWh in California, Connecticut and New York--or even the 36-40 cents in Germany and Denmark, where
unsubsidized rates are
70-80 cents per kWh! The impact of such prices on people's jobs, living standards, health and welfare would be devastating. But Musk and his "clean" energy friends ignore this.
Musk has a BS in physics--and obviously holds advanced BS degrees in lobbying and con-artistry about climate disasters and renewable energy solutions, mandated by government decrees and financed by endless billions in subsidies. He has made numerous personal visits to legislative offices in Sacramento and Washington, to promote more such schemes, and aligns his efforts with those of Eric Schmidt, Nat Simons, Tom Steyer, Al Gore and members of the
Clean Tech Syndicate: eleven secretive families with total wealth of over $60 billion, who want to get even richer off taxpayers and consumers.
They assume (demand) that bogus climate cataclysms will continue to bring them billions in climate cash payouts from Washington and state capitals, along with more
exemptions from
endangered species and
environmental cleanup laws and regulations that are applied with a vengeance to fossil fuel projects.
Google scientists finally admitted that existing and near-term renewable energy technologies simply do not work as advertised and cannot meet their political or climate promises. The technologies are all hat, no cattle. However, the Climate Crisis and Clean Tech industries are determined to push ahead--using our money, risking little of their own, and getting reimbursed by us when their investments turn sour.
Google and NRG now want a
$539-million federal grant to bail them out of $1.6 billion in taxpayer loans for the
bird-roasting Ivanpah concentrated solar power project in California, because it does not work and needs so much natural gas to keep its water hot that it doesn't meet state renewable energy standards. Other Obama "greenbacks" energy "investments" have also
drowned in red ink, leaving taxpayers to pay the tab: Solyndra, Abound Solar, Solar Trust, Ener1, Beacon Power,
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Musk is nevertheless lobbying for
SB-350, which would require that 50% of California's electricity be produced via "renewable" sources, such as wind, solar, biofuels and politicians' hot air. Meanwhile, Google Chairman
Eric Schmidt's family and corporate foundations give millions to alarmist climate scientists, the ultra-green Energy Foundation, and rabid anti-fracking groups like the World Wildlife Fund and Natural Resources Defense Council. NRDC also gets millions from EPA, to promote the agency's anti-fossil fuel agenda and place 33 of its employees on 21 EPA "advisory" committees.
Schmidt and
Warren Buffett also support the secretive far-left Tides Foundation, which has given millions to groups opposed to coal and hydraulic fracturing, the Keystone XL and Sandpiper pipeline projects, and countless other job-creating hydrocarbon programs. Canadian researcher Cory Morningstar accurately describes Tides as a "magical, money-funneling machine of epic proportions."
We often rail against Third World corruption. Our American (and European) environmental corruption is simply more subtle and sophisticated
Billionaire
Nat Simons and his Sea Change Foundation spend tens of millions annually promoting and lobbying for "renewable" energy policies, mandates and subsidies; investing in wind, solar and biofuel companies; supporting environmentalist pressure groups; and contributing to Democrat politicians who perpetuate the crony corporatist arrangements. Simons, his wife and various
Vladimir Putin cronies (via Klein, Ltd. and the shadowy Bermuda Wakefield Quin law firm) are the only contributors to Sea Change.
We often rail against Third World corruption. Our American (and European) environmental corruption is simply more subtle and sophisticated. It is legalized deception and theft--a massive wealth transfer from poor and middle class consumers and taxpayers to billionaires who are raking in still more billions, thanks to brilliantly crafted alarmist campaigns. And let's not forget
Al Gore, Mike Mann,
Tom Steyer, James Hansen and all the others who likewise profit immensely from these arrangements--and the
constant vilification of scientists who question climate catastrophe mantras.
Pressure groups and governing elites used to argue that we are running out of oil and natural gas. That ploy no longer works. While fossil fuels may eventually prove finite, fracking has given us vast new supplies of petroleum--and huge coal, oil and gas deposits have been placed off limits by government decree. We have at least a century to develop alternative energy sources that actually work--that create real jobs, actual revenues, lower energy prices and true prosperity--without the mandates, subsidies, deception, fraud and corruption that are the hallmark of "green" energy schemes.
No wonder the "clean tech" crowd is financing anti-hydrocarbon and climate chaos campaigns. But despite the Pope's belated rescue attempt, the pseudo-science of "dangerous manmade global warming" is slowly succumbing to climate reality. And any new UN climate treaty will founder once poor nations realize the promised hundreds of billions a year will not materialize.
Those still impoverished nations should not do what rich countries are doing now that they
are rich. They should do what rich countries did to
become rich.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org), author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death, and coauthor of Cracking Big Green: Saving the world from the Save-the-Earth money machine.
Tom Tamarkin is founder and CEO of USCL Corporation and of the fusion energy advocacy groups http://www.fusion4freedom.us and http://www.fuelRfuture.com. He is widely credited with inventing the utility industry smart meter and holds granted and pending patents in the field.