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Try the Climate Quiz by CO2 Coalition

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The Great Climate Change Debate is one of the “hottest” issues before the public and policy makers today. How much do you know about the subject? Or possibly, the real question is one attributed to American humorist Will Rogers: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble, it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Find out your Climate IQ by taking our Climate Quiz: the answers may surprise you. CLICK HERE To Take the Climate Quiz Now The CO2 Coalition was established in 2015 as a 501(c)(3) for the purpose of educating thought leaders, policy makers, and the public about the important contribution made by carbon dioxide to our lives and the economy.

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Climate Dogma Killed Biden’s “Build Back Better”

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by Michael Shellenberger A half trillion dollars to subsidize renewables would have raised energy prices, worsened inflation, and undermined decarbonization. But what do we do now? The centerpiece of President Joe Biden’s legislative agenda is dead. Senator Joe Manchin today announced that he could not support Biden’s “Build Back Better” legislation which consisted of $1.7 trillion in new spending and would have added $158 billion to the national debt over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The largest component of spending, $570 billion, was for renewables, electric cars, and other climate change investments. Progressives, environmentalists, and Democrats are furious with Sen. Manchin, but it was their own climate and renewables dogmatism that doomed the legislation. Democratic Senators could have written legislation that expanded nuclear energy and natural gas, the two main drivers of decarbonization, which are strongly supported by Manchin, and Republicans, but instead investments went overwhelmingly to solar panels, wind turbines, and electric cars. It’s true that there were good things in Build Back Better, and that one of the worst climate provisions, the Clean Energy Performance Program, was already removed. Build Back Better included a tax credit for existing nuclear power plants, funding for advanced nuclear fuels, funding for fusion R&D, and financial support for communities hurt by the transition to renewables. But the money for nuclear would not have made much if any difference to the operating of nuclear plans. Nuclear plants in California, Massachusetts and New York are being shut down, despite already being profitable, for ideological reasons. Legislatures in less anti-nuclear states like Illinois, New Jersey, and Connecticult step in to save their plants when they need to. And higher electricity prices due to natural gas shortages are making nuclear plants in other states even more profitable. Of Build Back Better’s

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Energy Poverty Kills

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From Center for Industrial Progress by Alex Epstein Last week we looked at the need for a process of producing energy that is cheap, plentiful, and reliable—and we saw that solar and wind cannot produce cheap, reliable energy. How Germany embraced solar and wind and ended up in energy poverty Let’s take a look at this in practice. Germany is considered by some to be the best success story in the world of effective solar and wind use, and you’ll often hear that they get a large percentage of their energy from solar and wind. You can see here on this chart how this claim was made and why it’s not accurate. First of all, this is just a chart of electricity. Solar and wind are only producing electricity and half of Germany’s energy needs also include fuel and heating. So solar and wind never contribute half as much to Germany’s energy needs as this chart would imply. But that’s not the biggest problem. What you notice here is that there’s certain days and times where there are large spikes, but there are also periods where there’s relatively little. What that means is that you can’t rely on solar and wind ever. You always have to have an infrastructure that can produce all of your electricity independent of the solar and wind because you can always go a long period with very little solar and wind. So then why are the solar and wind necessary? Well, you could argue that they’re not and that adding them onto the grid will impose a lot of costs. In Germany, electricity prices have more than doubled since 2000 when solar and wind started receiving massive subsidies and favorable regulations, and their electricity prices are three to four times what we would pay in

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Sacrificing Good American Nuclear Jobs For Cheap Chinese Solar Panels

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by Michael Shellenberger Democrats Must Stop Sacrificing Good American Nuclear Jobs For Cheap Chinese Solar Panels China made solar panels cheap through coerced labor, not innovation. The Biden Administration is promoting the participation of Chinese President Xi Jinping in a White House climate summit at a time when Congress is considering whether or not to halt the import of solar panels from China for human rights reasons. “China’s Solar Dominance Presents Biden With an Ugly Dilemma,” read the headline of a New York Times article published yesterday. “President Biden’s vow to work with China on issues like climate change is clashing with his promise to defend human rights.” The U.S. State Department in January 2021 called the Chinese government treatment of the Uyghurs “genocide.” The State Department says one million Uyghurs have been forced into concentration camps in Xinjiang province, or forced to work in factories, including ones that make solar panels, one of the region’s largest industries. “Shinta energy, East Hope Group, and GCL Poly-Energy Holdings have all been linked to a state-run employment program that,” reported Bloomberg earlier this week, “at times amount to forced labor.” The Chinese Embassy in Washington called claims of forced labor in Xinjiang “a rumor created by a few anti-China media and organizations,” and insisted that all workers in Xinjiang freely enter into contracts without coercion. “There is no such thing as ‘forced labor,’” insisted an Embassy representative. But Secretary of State Antony Blinken doubled-down on the genocide label in a statement last week, saying that the Chinese government’s treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang constituted “an effort to commit genocide.” And the U.S., Canada, and the European Union have already already banned imports of cotton and tomatoes and, according to Bloomberg, “The substance needed for solar panels could be next.” For years, renewable

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