You’ll Have No Power And You Will Like It

While campaigning in 2019, Joe Biden guaranteed “we’re going to end fossil fuels.” What he didn’t say is that eliminating fossil fuels will create a troublesome scarcity of electricity. He also didn’t say that was part of the plan, even though it just might be.

Now with the power of the presidency behind him – again we ask, how could such a disastrous event happen? – Biden is just a few pages of paperwork away from forcing natural gas- and coal-fired power plants to sharply cut their greenhouse emissions. If the emission caps can’t be met, power plants will then have to adopt carbon capture technology, which is quite expensive.

Our friends at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity had an interesting response to the news.

“Ben Franklin,” they said, “is often heralded as the man who discovered the power of electricity. Joe Biden wants to be the president who abolished it.”

Output cuts that will be required under the proposed regime “are so stringent,” says the CTUP, that “fossil fuel plants – which supply around 65% of America’s power – would be technologically incapable of complying.” The only way they will be able to stay open and generating power is if Americans’ utility bills are raised “dramatically.” If not, they close, and the power they produce is gone.

The administration knows this. The administration doesn’t care. The administration, driven by the hard-left zealots that run the Democratic Party, wants the rest of us to make do with less.

It’s the much same in California, where progressive politicians are committed to an unachievable target: As 2045 expires, all retail electricity sold in the state and used in government buildings must be produced by renewable resources, which are effectively limited to solar and wind.

Actually, the objective can be met. But there won’t be enough electricity to meet demand because the natural gas and nuclear power that’s taken off line won’t be fully replaced, so California is looking at a future of blackouts, rationing and rates more punishing than they already are. Either policymakers are aware of this and it doesn’t bother them, or they are completely inept and incapable of critical thinking.

We are naturally reminded of Ida Auken, the Social Democrat member of the Danish parliament, who in a World Economic Forum essay insisted that in the future we will own nothing and be happy. The headline – “Welcome to 2030: I own nothing, have no privacy and life has never been better” – made it clear that some powerful people are trying to turn the world into a commune which they of course will run.

In the U.S., Democrats see a country of 330 million as their sandbox. In addition to the proposed power plant rules, the administration has decided, with zero input from voters and no regard for the Constitution, that we will all one day be driving electric vehicles.

The White House’s plan isn’t the same as California’s mandate, which bans the sale of new internal-combustion engine cars and trucks beginning in 2035. Biden is instead placing emissions limits on car makers that are so strict that they will have no choice but make sure that two-thirds of their sales by 2032 will be EVs.

The political left has no regard for individualism or liberty, and intends to take those away by any means possible. Authoritarianism can start with small change, but the Democrats are tired of incremental shifts and now are taking long leaps to reach their goal. They want it to be their world and we just live in to serve them.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board