Jay Weber Show transcript 2-3-21 8:10am
I did a segment earlier about President Biden’s impossible executive order-that all federal government vehicles be electric and made in America by union workers.
This would be replacing 650-thousand federal cars and trucks with new electrics- made in America- by union workers.
Not only would it be staggeringly expensive and wasteful to scrap over half a million cars and replace them in the name of virtue signaling on the environment.
But that demand is currently an impossibility. It’s just hollow virtue signaling.
Because-right now- an electric vehicle, made in America by union workers-doesn’t exist.
Aside from the fact that the few electric vehicles being made are being made from 65 to 75 foreign parts-which means they can’t be considered ‘made in America’...
Tesla is non-union and the Nissan factory in Tennessee that makes ‘the leaf’ is non-union.
GM makes the volt. Their workers are unionized, but the car itself is only 25 percent domestic parts.
I used this as one example of the sort of Pollyannaish, impossible changes that the eco-zealots have been demanding for years, and that were ignored for years, because we used to have the leaders in two parties that were smart enough not to listen to kooks.
Sadly...democrats need to pander to the kook fringe now, and all of their eco-fantasies.
Another example I used is the longstanding insistence that we can power this country with wind and solar. It can meet all of our energy needs.
No. It cannot. And not by a long shot.
The math has been done. We could cover the continental u-s with wind mills and solar panels and not generate enough electricity to light our homes, run our factories, run our cars, and power our trains, planes, trucks, and ships-even if we could work out the technology that stores up enough solar battery power to power a huge cargo ship across the Atlantic or gets an airplane from one coast to the other.
It’s. Impossible.
It’s easy to dream up all sorts of green crackpotism, but none of it is useful in the real world.
This had a listener emailing me: we could so power the country with renewable energy. We are powering about 45 percent of it now.
Uh...no. We’re not.
I don’t know what sort of green indoctrination you’re going thru, dear listener, but we are still only getting about five to seven percent of our energy from wind and solar.
And this is just ‘electricity generated’. From power plants. This isn’t even getting into providing enough new energy with wind and solar to power all of our cars and trucks and ships and planes.
Right now-as ‘far as we’ve come’ on wind and solar. America is still only getting about five to seven percent of its power from renewable energy. Wind and solar.
And I give you the range because sources and studies vary...but not by much.
The energy information administration-is the information office of our federal department of energy. These are -government number crunchers and researchers- working for our federal energy department. It is their mission to have accurate data on these sorts of things...
And according to their 2019 estimate....America is still only getting about 3.7 percent of its energy production from wind and solar.
That’s. It.
Nuclear provides about 8.5 percent. Other sources, like steam or hydro-electric dams- another 8 percent...
And do you know what generates the other 80 percent of our power?
Fossil fuels. Natural gas-about 40 percent now. Coal and oil make up the rest.
Even after this incredible renaissance of green energy and cutting edge wind and solar technology- you humps-wind and solar aren’t contributing much at all-maybe five percent- not the 45 percent that our listener has in their head...
And fossil fuels are providing 80 percent of our energy needs and coal is only 20 percent of that now.
Thanks to fracking....it is natural gas that has assumed 41 percent of our energy production....beautiful, reliable, abundant, cheap, and clean burning-natural gas. It’s the wonder-fuel.
It really is. And so-if these environmentalists were really serious, and weren’t just left wing socialist groups looking to ruin America...they’d embrace natural gas.
Instead, eco-nuts hate it because if they admit it’s cheap, reliable, and burns cleanly-their movement would end.
If natural gas is the answer-they will never get the rest of us to ‘move on’ from fossil fuels and be forced to accept wind and solar.
And this isn’t my claim, or supposition. This is a realization that activist groups came to two decades ago.
You can go back 20 or 25 years and see that these same environmentalist groups that hated oil and coal back then- loved natural gas.
They used to list it as an alternative to oil and something we should be using more of.
This is a movement that -first-started out as an actual movement to try to protect the environment, and has since been co-opted by socialists and eco-extremists.
But I swear to you- these groups started out saying: we need to move from oil to wind, solar, natural gas and nuclear.
Well- nuclear quickly fell out of favor even though nuclear power is awesome when done safely.
But it was wind, solar, hydro, or natural gas for the longest time-that were listed as alternatives.
An as the movement grew more and more militant and detached from reality- it’s leaders made a conscious choice and did a conscious 180:we have to vilify natural gas, too, because it’s too cheap and reliable.
If we push the country to natural gas-the American people will never agree to- or be forced to-use more expensive and less reliable wind and solar.
It was a cold calculation...by the environmental groups. Because-in truth?
There is nothing wrong with natural gas. It’s a miracle fuel.
And it and fracking have led to a cleaner America and lower carbon levels, not wind and solar.
What’s the reality of what happens if we ban fracking and oil production on federal lands? And start squeezing our fossil fuel industry.
It does not lead to a reality in which we get more of our energy from wind and solar.
It doesn’t.
It just means we need to meet those -same- energy needs by importing more oil and gas from other countries, again. Often enemy countries.
What possible good does that do?
Folks-none of Joe Biden’s moves here ‘make us greener’ or get us any closer to converting over to renewable energy.
Not a thing that Biden did over his first ten days- banning the Keystone XL pipeline. Banning more drilling and mining on federal lands...
Not a thing Biden did- gets us any closer to converting over to renewable energy.
All he did was ‘take away’ from our energy mix. He didn’t ‘add’ anything to it.
How is that a good thing?
And if you are a young person who has been told that America is getting 45 percent of its energy from wind and solar.....wake up. Do some googling.
Cut yourself free from the indoctrination centers and crackpot friends who have been ‘informing’ you and choose to really get informed. This is all crackpotism- being sold as ‘doable’ new policy.
It’s not.
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