In the debate with President Trump, Vice President Biden told the US Oil and Gas industry that he is coming after you! You will be phased out, replaced, not needed in Vice President Joe Biden’s vision of America.
The Vice President says that he will transition away from oil and gas, which means that not only will you pay more money for taxes and substantially higher prices for gasoline and heating your home as home. Vice President Biden’s plan means all Americans will pay significantly higher fees for energy and give up efficiencies. He costs all Americans more money. He is also saying that over 11 million jobs in the oil and gas industry will be obsolete. He also said that he would reenter the Paris Climate Accord that treats China as a developing nation, giving them distinct energy and cash advantages over US energy producers and the US Economy. The Paris accord will force US Energy producers to shut down while allowing China to add more carbon emissions. The Paris Climate accord is like taking wealth from the US and redistributing it to Russia and China. So far, no one in the Paris Climate accord has lived up to its commitments, but Emmi sons have gone down more than those in the Paris accord agreement in the US.
To try to justify his position, he told a story about growing up. Biden said:
“MY Response IS THOSE PEOPLE LIVE ON WHAT WE CALL FENCE LINES. HE DOESN’T UNDERSTAND THIS. THEY LIVE NEAR CHEMICAL PLANTS AND REFINERIES THAT POLLUTE. I USED TO LIVE NEAR THAT WHEN I WAS GROWING UP IN CLAYMONT, DELAWARE. THERE ARE MORE OIL REFINERIES IN DELAWARE THAN HOUSTON AT THE TIME. MY MOTHER USED TO DRIVE ME TO SCHOOL; THERE USED TO BE AN OIL SLICK ON THE WINDOW. THAT IS WHY SO MANY PEOPLE IN MY STATE WERE DYING OF CANCER. IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT YOU ARE PAYING THEM; IT MATTERS HOW YOU KEEP THEM SAFE. Y IMPOSE — YOU IMPOSE RESTRICTIONS ON THE POLLUTANTS COMING OUT OF THE FENCE LINE.”
Yet the Vice President seems to not talk about the environmental downsides and economic risks of so-called renewable fuel. Wind and solar energy do hurt the environment. Mark Mills, a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, played out some of the issues. He states building wind turbines and solar panels to generate electricity, as well as batteries to fuel electric vehicles, requires, on average, more than ten times the quantity of materials, compared with building machines using hydrocarbons to deliver the same amount of energy to society.
A single electric car contains more cobalt than 1,000 smartphone batteries; the blades on a single wind turbine have more plastic than 5 million smartphones. A solar array that can power one data center uses more glass than 50 million phones.
Replacing hydrocarbons with green machines under current plans—never mind aspirations for far more significant expansion—will vastly increase the mining of various critical minerals worldwide. For example, a single electric car battery weighing 1,000 pounds requires extracting and processing 500,000 pounds of materials. Averaged over a battery’s life, each mile of driving an electric car “consumes” five pounds of earth. Using an internal combustion engine consumes about 0.2 pounds of liquids per mile. He also points out that oil, natural gas, and coal are needed to produce the concrete, steel, plastics, and purified minerals used to build green machines. The energy equivalent of 100 barrels of oil is used in the processes to fabricate a single battery that can store the equivalent of one barrel of oil.
By 2050, with current plans, the quantity of worn-out solar panels—much of it nonrecyclable—will constitute double the tonnage of all today’s global plastic waste, along with over 3 million tons per year of unrecyclable plastics from worn-out wind turbine blades. By 2030, more than 10 million tons per year of batteries will become garbage.
You also have to tell Americans they better get used to less reliability. Take a look at California to get an idea of short-sighted thinking about energy. Rolling blackouts, some of the highest gas and electricity prices in the nation, and they still cannot keep the lights on. The best chance we have to achieve net-zero emissions is Nuclear Power, something Joe Biden oppose.
The Vice President later clarified saying the country needs to transition off fossil fuels does not mean he will impose a ban on the oil industry. But he will cut what he calls subsidies while falsely claiming that the US does not want support for wind and solar. Joe, do you remember President Obama’s approval of a $535 million loan guarantee to Solyndra, a now-defunct solar company? Just asking, Do you remember that China was dumping solar panels into the US market?