Obama announced the U.S. Government would participate with a group of billionaires in a public-private partnership called the Breakthrough Energy Coalition. The ostensible purpose of the Coalition is speed up development of “clean” and “renewable” energy via a doubling of investment into research.
But first, there is the little matter of this thing called Congress. Government spending must be initiated and approved by Congress. There is no indication that the GOP-controlled Congress is in any mood to help Obama, especially on climate, or to spend even more taxpayer money chasing CO2-free energy fantasies.
Next, there is the little matter of reality. U.S. taxpayers have already spent about $200 billion over the last 20 or so years chasing the CO2-free energy fantasy. The only result has been the stark realization that, with the exception of hydropower, CO2-free energies simply cannot compete on an affordable and reliable basis with coal, oil and natural gas. “Renewable” energy is only as renewable as the government mandates and heavy taxpayer subsidies on which they rely.
Finally, there is the roster of scoundrels participating in the Coalition.
Not only is George Soros a major funder of radical left wing political causes, including global warming hysteria, he has cynically started investing in coal companies, as reported last summer in this column. Needless to say, coal is hardly a “breakthrough” form of energy.
Tom Steyer is not only a major Democrat donor, but a major funder of global warming hysteria. Steyer infamously committed to spending $100 million to campaign against Republicans on climate during the 2014 elections. I’m sure the GOP-controlled Congress will be very happy to provide taxpayer dollars so that the billionaire Steyer can make even more money. Let’s also keep in mind that the hypocrite Steyer made a lot of his fortune investing in Indonesian coal projects.
Less well known, but no less a scoundrel, is Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, a key player in the cellulosic ethanol taxpayer disaster. As exposed by the Wall Street Journal, Khosla backed ventures vacuumed up $160 million in taxpayer subsides, which along with a like sum from private sources, produced a pathetic 4 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol – a fuel already being produced via mandates and subsidies to corn farmers.
The Breakthrough Energy Coalition also includes John Doerr (Al Gore’s investment partner in the venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins Caufield and Byers), Richard Branson (billionaire green hypocrite and owner of CO2 spewing Virgin Airways), the government of Saudi Arabia (national wealth depends on oil and gas), Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook, enough said), and Bill Gates (whose once brilliant business acumen expired long ago and has been replaced with the naïve and egoistic belief that simply throwing Gates Foundation money at problems is always the solution).
The Breakthrough Energy Coalition exercise is silly. If utility scale CO2-free energy is desired, we already have nuclear power. But not only do environmentalists oppose nuclear power, President Obama himself made sure nuclear power would have no future in the U.S. when he killed development of the spent fuel storage facility at Yucca Mountain in 2009. And for the foreseeable future, nuclear fission remains a pipe dream.
Meanwhile, real energy needs across the world are being met by the old technology of coal. More than 1,000 new coal plants are on the drawing boards in Asia. As coal is cheap and readily available, those plants will go up and will operate for a long time. New and practically never-ending supplies of oil and natural gas have also been made available by hydrofracturing and other new technologies.
While it’s always possible that some other magical energy source will be discovered, it’s difficult to believe that the dubious Breakthrough Energy coalition would discover it. Indeed, the Coalition will be lucky itself to get off the ground. At best, the Coalition may only most likely serve as a vehicle for crony capitalism, the left-wing political agenda, and feel-good public relations.
Written by Nicolas Loris / @NiconomistLoris / November 30, 2015
What Did You Say? 
President Obama’s opening remarks at the Paris climate agreement were effectively an apology for industrial progress. At the kickoff of the talks, Obama remarked, “I’ve come here personally, as the leader of the world’s largest economy and the second-largest emitter, to say that the United States of America not only recognizes our role in creating this problem; we embrace our responsibility to do something about it.”
Obama should not be apologizing for the economic growth that dramatically improved Americans’ and much of the world’s quality of life. Instead, the president should apologize for pushing costly and ineffective climate policies that will make us worse off and trap the world’s poorest citizens in poverty.
The Cost of Climate Policies
At the same time, the EPA finalized a regulation capping emissions of carbon dioxide from new power plants so low as to effectively prevent any coal power plant from running without carbon capture and sequestration technology (which has yet to be proven feasible). The federal government also implemented climate regulations on vehicles, light and heavy-duty trucks, and fracking.
Heritage analysts modeled the cumulative costs of the Obama administration’s climate agenda by modeling the economic costs of a carbon tax. Taxing carbon dioxide energy incentivizes businesses and consumers to change production processes, technologies, and behavior in a manner comparable to the administration’s regulatory scheme—though neither regulations nor a tax is good policy. By 2030, Heritage economists estimate the damage would be:
The trade-off that Americans receive for higher electricity rates, unemployment, and lower levels of prosperity is not an appealing one. Even though electricity generation accounts for the single largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States, the estimated reduction is minuscule compared to global greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, even if you do believe that the Earth is heading to catastrophic warming, the warming mitigated by the president’s plan would be barely measurable—unlike the economic consequences.
Is Climate Change a Problem?
This “problem” of climate change is hardly one at all. Natural variations have altered the climate much more than man has. Proponents of global action on climate change will argue that 97 percent of the climatologists agree on climate change. There is significant agreement among climatologists, even those labeled as skeptics, that the Earth has warmed moderately over the past 60 years and that some portion of that warming may be attributed to anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. However, there is no consensus that temperatures are increasing at an accelerating rate.
In fact, the available climate data simply do not indicate that the Earth is heading toward catastrophic warming or more frequent and severe natural disasters. Quite the opposite. The earth has experienced a pause in warming since 1998, and data shows that the climate is less sensitive to increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions than the climate models predicted.
Dr. Roger Pielke, a professor at the University of Colorado’s Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, testified last year, saying:
In his remarks, Obama stressed that “[n]o nation—large or small, wealthy or poor—is immune.” Such a sentiment also holds true for climate policies. Policies that restrict the use of conventional fuels will make everyone poorer. And it’s the poorest who will suffer most.
Let’s place blame on the policies and regulations that obstruct citizens around the world from obtaining a better standard of living.