While the climate movement achieved some victories this year, 2023 may ultimately be remembered mostly as a year of key failures and setbacks for environmentalist organizations and their favored policies promulgated by the Biden administration.
The past 12 months saw several major offshore wind projects collapse, signs of trouble in the electric vehicle (EV) market, layoffs at major environmentalist groups, a failed pressure campaign to kill a major energy project, and more. [emphasis, links added]
Environmental activists and green industrial interests largely assumed that the election of President Joe Biden would stand as a boon for their various prerogatives, but this year’s results were not stellar for those interests despite that initial enthusiasm.
Offshore Wind Flounders
The Biden administration and activists in favor of sweeping action on climate change have touted offshore wind as a green energy lynchpin of their envisioned fossil fuel-free future, with the White House expecting the technology to provide enough energy to power 10 million American homes each year by 2030.
While the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Biden’s signature climate bill, created generous subsidies designed to stimulate the industry, it is now facing serious problems that lead several energy policy experts to expect the government will have to step in again to save the industry.
Developers are facing considerable issues attributable to inflationary pressure, supply chain backups, and logistical issues.
These problems have prompted numerous firms to attempt to renegotiate their agreed-upon rates with states and utilities, pay large fines to withdraw from contracts altogether, or outright cancel their projects. …snip…
EV Dreams Show Cracks
Environmentalists and Biden administration officials are also pushing EVs as a key climate solution, with the latter spending billions of taxpayer dollars and aggressively regulating markets to reach its goal of having 50% of new vehicle sales be EVs by 2030.
Despite these efforts, the EV market appears to be faltering: consumer demand is not growing as quickly as expected, manufacturers are losing large amounts of money on their EV product lines and executives are starting to back off of near-term EV commitments.
China dominates the global supply chain for the raw materials needed to manufacture EVs, and the vehicles are considerably more expensive on average than gas-powered equivalents.
For example, the Ford F-150 Lighting, the EV version of one of America’s most popular cars, sells for about $8,000 more than the conventional F-150. …snip…
Activist Layoffs
The past year also saw considerable layoffs at prominent eco-activist organizations, such as the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and Defenders of Wildlife, according to E&E News.
After the defeat of former President Donald Trump, whose energy agenda provided a boost to enthusiasm and donations supporting the environmentalist cause, many major environmentalist organizations faced considerable budget shortfalls. …snip…
A Notable Bankruptcy
Proterra, an electric bus manufacturer, filed for bankruptcy in August. Before the bankruptcy, the Biden administration had promoted the company.
[This move] prompted blowback from elected Republicans and government watchdogs that highlighted Granholm maintained a financial interest in the firm after accepting a government job in which she would be overseeing policy that directly impacted the company’s commercial prospects.
Granholm did not sell her shares in the company until after the House Oversight Committee opened an investigation into the apparent conflict of interest earlier in May 2021.
She eventually closed her position in the firm later that month, netting capital gains amounting to about $1.6 million. …snip…
Willow Project Campaign Comes Up Short
Activists launched a broad pressure campaign to goad the Biden administration into canceling ConocoPhillips’ massive Willow Project in Alaska, which ultimately failed when the administration formally green-lit the project in March.
Many inside the climate movement were livid with the administration’s decision, characterizing it as a betrayal of a Biden campaign promise to severely crack down on oil and gas drilling on federally controlled lands.
Recently, climate activists have set their sights on the Calcasieu Pass 2 project, known as CP2, which would be a major export terminal facility for liquefied natural gas (LNG) located to the south of Lake Charles, Louisiana.
They appear poised to ratchet up pressure on the Biden administration to kill the project much like they did with the Willow Project, though time will tell whether or not such a campaign could be successful in its aims. …snip…
Trouble In The Loan Programs Office
The DOE’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) also had a tough 2023. The LPO is a key instrument in the Biden administration’s wider green energy push, designed to provide green energy companies with loans that the private sector would not offer, according to the office’s website.
The Daily Caller News Foundation reported in November that the LPO had reached a conditional commitment to provide Li-Cycle, a lithium battery recycling company, a $375 million loan at the same time that the firm was allegedly defrauding its investors.
The LPO does due diligence on its applicants before reaching a conditional commitment, according to its website, meaning that the alleged securities fraud went unnoticed by the relevant LPO officials.
Read the full post at Daily Caller
It really is gobsmacking how professional media, even politically Conservative media, have all missed the elephant in the room concerning the Climate Change croc.
We know that ALL of the CC claims are based upon no actual, factual, observable nor provable science, but are instead drawn from mere computer modelling. That in itself should be the canary in the coal mine and a monumental red flag, yet paradoxically the REAL climatologists, such as critic, Dr. Tim Ball, are the ones being vilified and persecuted. To this day Mr. Mann, the scam-ham-man, has failed to produce his data for critics and peers to appraise, yet that has always been the traditional practice of good science. Instead we see costly and unjustifiable court actions launched by vexatious litigants, using and abusing the Court system to intimidate and silence CC critics, such as Dr. Ball. Sordid enough as that is, it gets worse, however.
The elephant in the room is that governments have, at the expense of taxpayers and at great cost to businesses and the nation’s economy, implemented measures to counter an unproven, unverifiable, untested and highly spurious, unscientific prediction, based not upon any science at all, but upon computer modelling ONLY. Computer modelling can be tweaked to spit out whatever a scam ham desires, just as Mr. Mann’s groggy graffiti graph proves. Historically, governments act only upon REAL and PROVEN threats to a nation’s security, as a responsible basis for policy decisions. Never before in the history of Western democracy have nations spent billions of taxpayer funding on defeating a phantom from pulp fiction, yet that is precisely what is transpiring – according to 1,600 eminently qualified scientists, the latest now, Nobel Laureate, (Physics 2022,) Dr. John Clauser :
https://www.climatesciencenews.com/2023-08-21-scientists-professionals-there-is-no-climate-crisis.html
Consequently, a monumental damages claim launched by hundreds of qualified scientists, jointly with financially injured businesses, is overdue. The CC government quackery and incompetence would be stopped dead in its tracks by a class-action lawsuit. However it should not be brought against the sitting government, (for taxpayers would wind up footing that bill), but instead by suing the specific Government Representative Members personally, who are directly responsible for CC Legislation, together with Michael Mann, the key pulp fiction perpetrator of this diabolical perfidy.
I believe that a job opening was created for Michael Mann. More senior, experienced, qualified researchers were by-passed to get his falsified graph to the IPCC. He is like athletes such as Barry Bonds or Alex Rodriguez who won acclaim by cheating. They will cling to their “glory days” without confessing.
The American Consumer still wants the Freedom to choose and not have the Government or the UN chose it for them no matter what we see read of hear from the M.S. Media bottom Feeders