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Biden signs suicidal ‘No Coal’ pact, while rest of world builds 1,000 new plants

Published

9 months ago

6 minute read

From Heartland Daily News

By  James Taylor James Taylor

Since 2000, the United States has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions more than any other country in the world. U.S. emissions are down 21 percent, while the rest of the world has increased its emissions by 47 percent. Clearly, America “showing leadership” reducing carbon dioxide emissions is leading to nothing other than the rest of the world free license to jack up their own emissions.

The Biden administration has just signed an economic suicide pact that would require the United States and six other Western democracies to shut down its coal power plants by 2035, while China, India and the rest of the world currently have more than 1,000 new coal power plants in the planning or construction phase. The no-coal pact allows all nations but the Suicidal Seven to continue using as much affordable coal power as they like.

Climate activists often point to China as a climate role model, noting that China manufactures more wind and solar power equipment than any other nation. China, however, isn’t stupid enough to use much of that equipment. Realizing that conventional energy – and especially coal power – is more affordable and reliable than wind and solar power, China manufactures wind and solar equipment, sells the equipment to America and Western Europe, and then powers its own economy primarily with coal power.

In America, government intervention has already caused the shutdown of many coal power plants and the construction of expensive wind and solar projects. In more than half the states, renewable power mandates require a certain percentage of electricity in the state to come from wind or solar. Federal laws and regulations punish coal power at nearly every step of coal mining and utilization. Massive subsidies for wind and solar allow wind and solar providers to charge substantially reduced prices for their product at taxpayers’ expense.

Even with government tipping the scale so heavily in favor of wind and solar power, the so-called green transition is coming with an enormous price tag. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, there was a 21 percent increase in wind and solar power since Joe Biden took office in January 2021 through the end of 2023. At the same time, electricity prices also rose by 21 percent. Prior to Biden taking office, the long-term electricity price trend was an increase of approximately 1 percent per year. The green transition has increased the pace of electricity price inflation by 700 percent. And that doesn’t account for all the wind and solar subsidies that are hidden in our tax bills.

There is little reason to believe we are on the verge of a climate crisis. A good resource documenting this good news is ClimateRealism.com. Yet, even if a climate crisis were imminent, unilateral coal disarmament is a foolish way for America to approach carbon dioxide emissions.

Since 2000, the United States has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions more than any other country in the world. U.S. emissions are down 21 percent, while the rest of the world has increased its emissions by 47 percent. Clearly, America “showing leadership” reducing carbon dioxide emissions is leading to nothing other than the rest of the world free license to jack up their own emissions. Even if the United States and the rest of the Suicidal Seven could somehow eliminate all of their emissions, it would have little impact on the global trend.

Ultimately, Biden’s pact to eliminate American coal use will further ramp up inflation. After all, energy is an important cost component in almost every product bought and sold in the economy. In addition to the inflation impact, Biden’s pact will force American businesses into a major competitive disadvantage versus businesses in China, India, and the rest of the world, which will be paying substantially lower energy costs than American businesses.

Under Biden’s plan, we will end up sinking vast economic resources into eliminating coal power and as much carbon dioxide as possible from the American economy. Even then, we will still be looking at global emissions continuing to rise. At that point, Biden’s plan is for America to assume the lion’s share of global “climate reparations” and financial bribes to induce China, India, and the rest of the world to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. After sabotaging our own economy with higher energy prices, we will literally borrow money from China in order to then bribe China to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions.

It would be hard to think of a crazier domestic energy policy.

James Taylor ([email protected]) is president of The Heartland Institute.

Originally published by The Center Square. Republished with permission.

For more on the U.S. electric power system, click here.

For more on coal, click here.

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Business

Worst kept secret—red tape strangling Canada’s economy

Published on February 22, 2025

By

From the Fraser Institute

By Matthew Lau

In the past nine years, business investment in Canada has fallen while increasing more than 30 per cent in the U.S. on a real per-person basis. Workers in Canada now receive barely half as much new capital per worker than in the U.S.

According to a new Statistics Canada report, government regulation has grown over the years and it’s hurting Canada’s economy. The report, which uses a regulatory burden measure devised by KPMG and Transport Canada, shows government regulatory requirements increased 2.1 per cent annually from 2006 to 2021, with the effect of reducing the business sector’s GDP, employment, labour productivity and investment.

Specifically, the growth in regulation over these years cut business-sector investment by an estimated nine per cent and “reduced business start-ups and business dynamism,” cut GDP in the business sector by 1.7 percentage points, cut employment growth by 1.3 percentage points, and labour productivity by 0.4 percentage points.

While the report only covered regulatory growth through 2021, in the past four years an avalanche of new regulations has made the already existing problem of overregulation worse.

The Trudeau government in particular has intensified its regulatory assault on the extraction sector with a greenhouse gas emissions cap, new fuel regulations and new methane emissions regulations. In the last few years, federal diktats and expansions of bureaucratic control have swept the auto industry, child care, supermarkets and many other sectors.

Again, the negative results are evident. Over the past nine years, Canada’s cumulative real growth in per-person GDP (an indicator of incomes and living standards) has been a paltry 1.7 per cent and trending downward, compared to 18.6 per cent and trending upward in the United States. Put differently, if the Canadian economy had tracked with the U.S. economy over the past nine years, average incomes in Canada would be much higher today.

Also in the past nine years, business investment in Canada has fallen while increasing more than 30 per cent in the U.S. on a real per-person basis. Workers in Canada now receive barely half as much new capital per worker than in the U.S., and only about two-thirds as much new capital (on average) as workers in other developed countries.

Consequently, Canada is mired in an economic growth crisis—a fact that even the Trudeau government does not deny. “We have more work to do,” said Anita Anand, then-president of the Treasury Board, last August, “to examine the causes of low productivity levels.” The Statistics Canada report, if nothing else, confirms what economists and the business community already knew—the regulatory burden is much of the problem.

Of course, regulation is not the only factor hurting Canada’s economy. Higher federal carbon taxes, higher payroll taxes and higher top marginal income tax rates are also weakening Canada’s productivity, GDP, business investment and entrepreneurship.

Finally, while the Statistics Canada report shows significant economic costs of regulation, the authors note that their estimate of the effect of regulatory accumulation on GDP is “much smaller” than the effect estimated in an American study published several years ago in the Review of Economic Dynamics. In other words, the negative effects of regulation in Canada may be even higher than StatsCan suggests.

Whether Statistics Canada has underestimated the economic costs of regulation or not, one thing is clear: reducing regulation and reversing the policy course of recent years would help get Canada out of its current economic rut. The country is effectively in a recession even if, as a result of rapid population growth fuelled by record levels of immigration, the GDP statistics do not meet the technical definition of a recession.

With dismal GDP and business investment numbers, a turnaround—both in policy and outcomes—can’t come quickly enough for Canadians.

Matthew Lau

Adjunct Scholar, Fraser Institute
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Business

‘Out and out fraud’: DOGE questions $2 billion Biden grant to left-wing ‘green energy’ nonprofit`

Published on February 22, 2025

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

The EPA under the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a ‘green energy’ group that appears to have been little more than a means to enrich left-wing activists.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a “green energy” nonprofit that appears to have been little more than a means to enrich left-wing activists such as former Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams.

Founded in 2023 as a coalition of nonprofits, corporations, unions, municipalities, and other groups, Power Forward Communities (PFC) bills itself as “the first national program to finance home energy efficiency upgrades at scale, saving Americans thousands of dollars on their utility bills every year.” It says it “will help homeowners, developers, and renters swap outdated, inefficient appliances with more efficient and modernized options, saving money for years ahead and ensuring our kids can grow up with cleaner, pollutant-free air.”

The organization’s website boasts more than 300 member organizations across 46 states but does not detail actual activities. It does have job postings for three open positions and a form for people to sign up for more information.

The Washington Free Beacon reported that the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, along with new EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, are raising questions about the $2 billion grant PFC received from the Biden EPA’s National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF), ostensibly for the “affordable decarbonization of homes and apartments throughout the country, with a particular focus on low-income and disadvantaged communities.”

PFC’s announcement of the grant is the organization’s only press release to date and is alarming given that the organization had somehow reported only $100 in revenue at the end of 2023.

“I made a commitment to members of Congress and to the American people to be a good steward of tax dollars and I’ve wasted no time in keeping my word,” Zeldin said. “When we learned about the Biden administration’s scheme to quickly park $20 billion outside the agency, we suspected that some organizations were created out of thin air just to take advantage of this.” Zeldin previously announced the Biden EPA had deposited the $20 billion in a Citibank account, apparently to make it harder for the next administration to retrieve and review it.

“As we continue to learn more about where some of this money went, it is even more apparent how far-reaching and widely accepted this waste and abuse has been,” he added. “It’s extremely concerning that an organization that reported just $100 in revenue in 2023 was chosen to receive $2 billion. That’s 20 million times the organization’s reported revenue.”

Daniel Turner, executive director of energy advocacy group Power the Future, told the Beacon that in his opinion “for an organization that has no experience in this, that was literally just established, and had $100 in the bank to receive a $2 billion grant — it doesn’t just fly in the face of common sense, it’s out and out fraud.”

Prominent among PFC’s insiders is Abrams, the former Georgia House minority leader best known for persistent false claims about having the state’s gubernatorial election stolen from her in 2018. Abrams founded two of PFC’s partner organizations (Southern Economic Advancement Project and Fair Count) and serves as lead counsel for a third group (Rewiring America) in the coalition. A longtime advocate of left-wing environmental policies, Abrams is also a member of the national advisory board for advocacy group Climate Power.

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