“Cutting funding to our Country and our gas projects will condemn us to energy poverty for the next decades. Yes, I understand that climate change is a life or death issue, but so is improving the wellbeing … of Mozambicans…. We need energy and we need it fast.” (Jocelyne Machevo, November 16, 2021)
Accessible, affordable, reliable, sustainable energy is a necessity, not a luxury as in centuries past. And nowhere is this more true than in the developing world. But will the needy get first-class or second-class energy? For the political/intellectual elite wed to climate alarmism/forced energy transformation, wind and solar and batteries are second-class all the way.
This mentality needs to be exposed, challenged, and reversed.
Paul Driessen titled his 2003 book, Eco-Imperialism: Green Power Black Death. Margit Wade’s recent Wall Street Journal piece, “The COP26 Plan to Keep Africa Poor,” began:
…As a Senegalese entrepreneur, I can tell you what’s holding Africa back: lack of affordable energy.
“… anti-hydropower interests are attempting to capitalize on a shift in political power together with emotionally charged arguments and opinions to weaken support for hydropower, while falsely promoting wind and solar technologies as environmentally benign replacements.”
“Negative [wind] impacts associated with viewsheds, decommissioning and turbine disposal, tourism, birds, wildlife, and flashing lights were at the top of the list of concerns identified by a Tri-City Regional Chamber of Commerce opinion survey.”
I recently read an interesting opinion piece by the general manager of the Benton County Public Utility District in Washington State, Rick Dunn, “Clash of Titans: Clean Energy, Conservation and NW Power Grid.” Published in Clearing Up, a Pacific Northwest energy review, the controversies of renewable energy as “clean” and “green” (which I noted back in 1997) come to the fore.…
It’s the new organization on the block, and energy is one of its top concerns and priorities. Meet Consumer Action for a Strong Economy (CASE), “the nation’s foremost non-profit, non-partisan organization devoted to the singular cause of promoting consumer interests through the advancement of free-market principles.”
Two recent policy briefs from Case are:
Here is more introduction to an exciting new group for which energy is one of 15 subject areas.
…CASE is committed to serving as the voice of American consumers and wage-earners by advocating strongly for free-markets, fiscal responsibility and reasonable consumer protections. Through these time-tested principles, CASE aims to create more prosperity and opportunity for every American.
CASE is further working to fill the void of consumer advocacy organizations who largely ignore free-market solutions and lean heavily toward more government regulation and control over our national, state and local economies.