From MANHATTAN CONTRARIAN
It’s Climate Week in New York, and you can feel the excitement. The UN General Assembly is in town, and at the same time there is the so-called “Climate Group” (“Our mission is to drive climate action. Fast.”) held about 600 (!) events to promote policies it believed would “save the planet.”
At one event yesterday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul appeared to deliver what she thought was an important policy speech. The Governor’s webpage describes the speech this way:
Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul announced New York’s participation in the US Governor’s Climate Ready Workforce Initiative to expand career paths in the climate and clean energy fields, strengthen workforce diversity, and simultaneously train 1 million new registered apprentices in Alliance countries and area by 2035. Governor Hochul announced today at the Climate Week NYC event, which also featured him Alliance Co-Chair Governor of New Mexico Michelle Lujan Grisham, founding members of the Alliance Washington Governor Jay Inslee, and White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi.
In his speech, the Gov went on to talk about how in New York the energy transition is really happening and will create millions of “green jobs”:
We’re not talking about some transition that’s going to happen in the future, we’re talking about it now, and that’s what we’re really excited about. And we open our doors to underrepresented communities. And I go to this job site all the time and I want to see more women and men of color and unions recognize this. There they do recruitment, as the industry was previously closed.
He may be “very happy,” but when our airhead governor isn’t looking the world passes. Some data points from the past few days:
- The Wall Street Journal has a front page article today, with the headline and sub-headline “America’s Ambitious Climate Plan Backfires. Global emissions are at record lows, while the shift away from fossil fuels is slowing amid high costs, rising power demand.” There’s the obligatory nod to the supposed climate crisis (this is the Journal’s news page, not the opinion section), but there’s no avoiding the facts. Example from the article: “Climate optimism is fading. Higher costs, pushback from businesses and consumers, and slow rollout of technology they are delaying the transition from fossil fuels. . . . Investments in improving the efficiency of buildings—the main driver of emissions—declined last year, the International Energy Agency said. Spending decisions that happen now could lock in emissions for decades. Multibillion-dollar liquefied natural gas terminal built in Texas and Louisiana could provide the forecasted demand boom in places such as Southeast Asia.
- How does the EV work? From Reuters, September 19: “(A) the industry. . . data (released) exists. . . showed a fourth monthly drop in EV sales, prompting the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) to demand “urgent action” to prevent further declines. . . . Sales of fully electric cars fell 43.9% in August, as the bloc’s largest EV markets Germany and France recorded declines of 68.8% and 33.1%, ACEA said. It’s a rather dramatic drop. In typical European fashion, manufacturers’ trade associations are taking consumer resistance to EV purchases as an opportunity to demand more government subsidies and mandates: “(ACEA said that) EU institutions (need) to come forward with emergency relief measures before the new CO2 targets for cars and vans take effect in 2025.”
- This is from a few weeks ago, but another project called “green hydrogen” has failed. Just two months ago I had a post about the failure of the big green hydrogen project in Australia. The latest failure, last month, came from Germany. From Hydrogen Insight, August 14: “The refusal of potential green hydrogen customers to sign binding sales agreements, as well as uncertainty about the price of the product, led to the collapse of the plan to build a renewable H2 project in the German city of Hannover. . . . (Official original) estimates the cost of around €25m.However, when the project was canceled in March this year, the cost increased fivefold to around €136m. This is only for the 17 MW facility.
Maybe one day the “underrepresented communities” that Governor Hochul spoke of will realize that what is holding them back is their reliance on government planning and handouts as a route to economic growth.
Related
