Wind turbines and solar panels that can generate electricity intermittently, are themselves totally dependent on fossil fuels for all their components. Renewables offer NO energy independence, as America has never imported electricity from foreign countries. Wind and solar just generate intermittent electricity.
Further, the raw materials that are essential for building EV batteries, wind turbines, and solar panels, are increasingly dependent on the supply chain of exotic minerals and metals being mined in developing countries with miniscule labor or environmental regulations.
For those that set written policies and regulations, they seem to just follow the personal passions of leaders like that of President Biden and California Governor Newsom to rid America of fossil fuels usage.
With America representing only four percent of the world’s population, the elite leaders desire to have America’s emissions lowered to reduce its impact on the world’s climate, is like that of someone poring a bucket of hot water into the ocean and claiming that it will change the temperature of the entire ocean!
The implications of abandoning fossil fuels without a replacement are enormous for global commerce, and especially for America. Simultaneously with those continuous efforts to reduce nationwide oil production, American demands for the products and fuels manufactured from crude oil are continually increasing its dependency on foreign countries.
As Don Ritter recently discussed, the autocratic oil Producers (Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Russia, Iran, Qatar, Venezuela, and China) clearly benefit from America’s declining production, because major Consumers (India, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, and others) that buy oil, gas and petrochemicals must feed their people, fuel their vehicles, and grow their economies at reasonable cost.
Unbeknownst to President Joe Biden and California Governor Gavin Newsom, is that China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin are great War historians. As World War I and II historians, Russia, China, and OPEC know, the country that controls the minerals, crude oil, and natural gas, controls the world!
Therein lies the mystification.
- Wind turbines and solar panels can only generate intermittent electricity. They cannot manufacture any products for society.
- Crude Oil on the other hand is virtually useless, unless it’s manufactured (refineries) into oil derivatives that are the basis of more than 6,000 products in our daily lives that did not exist before the 1900’s, and the fuels to move the heavy-weight and long-range needs of more than 50,000 jets moving people and products, and more than 50,000 merchant ships for global trade flows, and the military and space program.
- The chemical derivative manufactured from crude oil are the basis of all the components of wind turbines, solar panels, and EV batteries. Ridding the world of crude oil would eliminate renewables!
China has no intentions of abandoning its economic, military, or strategic ambitions – all of which rely on fossil fuels. Asia is the region with the greatest number of future petroleum refineries. As of 2021, there were 88 new facilities in planning or under construction in Asia.
China has now abandoned the Paris Climate Accords and President Xi Jinping has reiterated that China would set its own path on the issue of emissions and not be influenced by outside factors. That alone likely makes America’s and the West’s fossil fuel sacrifices on the climate altar both painful and pointless.”
The healthy and wealthy countries of the Germany, Australia, Great Britain, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, and all the EU, and the USA representing about one of the eight billion of the world’s population could literally shut down, and cease to exist, and the opposite of what the media tells us and believes will take place.
Emissions will be exploding from those poorer developing countries, i.e., the other seven billion on this planet. Unlike the wealthy countries that have huge economies that can subsidize any delusionally obsessed idea, these poorer countries dismal economies cannot subsidize themselves out of a paper bag!
Simply put, in these healthy and wealthy countries, every person, animal, or anything that causes emissions to harmfully rise could vanish off the face of the earth, or even die off, and global emissions will still explode in the coming years and decades ahead over the population and economic growth of India, Nigeria, China, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Egypt, and Tanzania.
As Don Ritter recently pointed out, even more ironic (or insane), China dominates the world’s wind, solar and battery technologies, with their raw material supply chains and their manufacturing.
We are witnessing a geopolitical shift of historic proportions. Fossil fuel-friendly China and other autocratic oil producers will be the biggest winners; fossil fuel-repressing democratic America and the West the biggest losers.
Why are all the American military Generals that report to President Joe Biden, not asking the simple question: How will America run its military (ships, planes, and vehicles) without fuel?
While the richest billion population are intent on squandering their electricity legacy on weather -dependent so-called ‘renewables’, countries like India and China are building nuclear and coal-fired power plants at a staggering rate to provide their people with continuous uninterruptable electricity.
Autocratic China is the biggest beneficiary of all from the Western strategy of jumping out of an airplane without a parachute, i.e., abandoning fossil fuels before the West has identified a replacement for crude oil, to provide the products and fuels now demanded by its populace.
First published by CFACT.
Ronald Stein is an internationally published columnist and energy consultant, and a policy advisor for The Heartland Institute.
