From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

“When something is unsustainable, it eventually stops,” former Vice President Al Gore said in an op/ed published by The Wall Street Journal. Given recent events, one might think Gore was referring to the ruinously costly attempts by governments of the Western world to force an energy transition via trillions of debt-funded dollars in subsidies for unreliable, intermittent energy sources like wind, solar and green hydrogen.

It has become obvious to most in the energy business now that the stick-and-carrot approach to a forced transition implemented by the Biden administration is not just unsustainable but a colossal failure. The stick of heavy-handed regulations and mandates combined with the carrot of economically ruinous government subsidies has resulted in a massive uptick in the national debt along with a playing field littered with dozens of bankruptcies by both startups and pre-existing green energy companies alike. Collectively, their waste of federal dollars makes the Obama-era Solyndra failure look like pocket change.

As critics of the Biden Green New Deal suite of policy choices repeatedly warned, the rent-seeking industries that became the chosen clients of the Democratic Party over the last four years – wind, solar, electric vehicles and green hydrogen – cannot displace fossil fuels in any scalable sense because the laws of physics don’t allow it. Too many companies in these industries also cannot be sustained for more than short periods of time without constant new injections of additional government subsidies, all of which in the U.S. have the impact of increasing the national debt.

When the Orwellian-named Inflation Reduction Act passed on party line votes in congress in 2022, I and others warned that the Democrats in congress and the Biden White House viewed the bill as just an initial down payment on their long-term goals. A steady succession of new IRA-type debt-funded bills would be required in the coming decades to sustain the transition, and without those added tranches of trillions of dollars in additional subsidies, most startups in those non-competitive energy businesses would ultimately fail. It wasn’t hard to see this coming.

In his op/ed, Gore writes all this financial carnage off with his typical climate alarm fearmongering, saying things like “treating the transition to a sustainable economy as optional isn’t an option,” and “the cost of inaction is indefensible and unbearable.” To which the only proper response is to ask Gore to tell that to all the lower income Americans who have seen their utility bills and food prices inflate to unbearable levels as they have borne the brunt of the inevitable outcome of the policies Gore, Biden and their cronies have happily forced onto the public. It’s one of the greatest transfers of wealth from the poor to the wealthy in global history. If you want an example of unsustainability, there it is.

Most hilariously, Gore states that “in the U.S., the fossil-fuel industry, its allies and captive policymakers seek to punish companies and investors pursuing sustainability goals with frivolous lawsuits, smear campaigns and the withdrawal of state-controlled funds under management.” Holy smokes, talk about a prime example of Clintonian projection, there it is.

No industry has been subjected to a decades-long constant stream of frivolous lawsuits and smear campaigns from critics quite like the coal and oil and gas industries have sustained in modern times. Right now, today, the oil industry is spending hundreds of millions of dollars defending itself against a well-organized lawfare campaign in which left-wing law firms recruit friendly, mostly-Democrat officials in cities, counties and states around the country to file frivolous lawsuits claiming billions of dollars in unsubstantiated damages related to climate change theoretically caused by emissions coming mainly from China. That is the very definition of a frivolous smear campaign and lawfare campaign rolled into one.

But it is Gore’s complaint about the effort by the Trump administration to implement a “withdrawal of state-controlled funds under management” that really takes the cake here. Apparently, this former vice president believes that elections really don’t matter at all.

But elections do matter, policies can change and billions of dollars in funds awarded to political cronies of one president can indeed be clawed back by another. Gore can rage against these winds of change all he likes, but that is American democracy in action.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

Long-needed reforms start now.

The following is an editorialized version of a thread that originally appeared on the American Values X page. It was republished and edited with permission. Click here to read the original thread.

For the first time in over two decades, baby formula in the U.S. is getting a serious safety overhaul. On Thursday, Secretary Kennedy announced, alongside HHS and the FDA, “Operation Stork Speed,” a major initiative aimed at improving the safety and nutritional quality of infant formula.

“We’re gonna review the formulations for the first time since 1998 and do comprehensive tests to make sure this is the healthiest product that our kids can have,” Kennedy announced.

But that’s just the beginning. Kennedy is also taking on the growing concerns around cell phone use in schools—something he says is hurting kids on multiple levels.

“There are many other countries in the world that have banned cell phones in our schools.”

“Cell phones also produce electric magnetic radiation, which has been shown to do neurological damage to kids when it’s around them all day.”

“Cell phone use and social media use on the cell phone has been directly connected with depression, poor performance in schools, suicidal ideation, and with substance abuse.”

Kennedy is also tackling what he sees as one of the biggest flaws in how America approves food ingredients. He’s targeting the GRAS (“Generally Recognized As Safe”) loophole that’s allowed questionable substances to enter our food supply for years.

“We are going to get rid of the GRAS standards for new products. We’re going to go back and review all of these old ingredients to make sure that they are safe, and we’re going to encourage these companies to get rid of them as quickly as possible,” Kennedy said.

And when it comes to food safety, Kennedy says it’s time for the U.S. to catch up with the rest of the world.

“In this country, food ingredients are innocent till proven guilty.”

“In Europe and other countries they have to prove themselves safe before you add them, and we ought to have that kind of protection for American citizens.”

It’s a refreshing sight to see Secretary Kennedy take a wrecking ball to the status quo. From cracking down on harmful ingredients in baby formula to general food safety, he’s sending a clear message that the health and safety of America’s children come first.

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