Within a day of former President Trump announcing “climate denier” J.D. Vance as the Republican vice presidential candidate, the climate industry complex and supporting mainstream media took action in a big way.
Some of the headlines of the past 24 hours are a sign.
New York Times: “JD Vance is an oil supporter and a skeptic of man-made climate change”
independent: JD Vance: “Climate activists alarmed by Trump’s ‘dangerous’ VP choice”
protector: “Climate advocates worry selection of J.D. Vance as VP is 'dangerous step backwards'”
Displeasure among media commentators is common. CNBC laments “Former venture capitalist although Is a Prominent critic of climate change and renewable energy [italics added]”.
British independent The newspaper reported that “[c]Campaigners are shocked that climate denier and Ohio Senator J.D. Vance has been selected as Donald Trump's vice presidential nominee. Activists warned he represented a “dangerous” voice in the United States. Mr. Vance’s “eagerness to please Donald Trump” further cemented the vice-presidential nominee’s image as an unprincipled politician seeking public office.
Cassidy DiPaola, spokesperson for climate advocacy group Fossil Free Media, asserted, “This [VP] selection indicates a potential Trump-Vance administration may double down on fossil fuel expansion At a time when we urgently need to transition to clean energy.
Steve O'Hanlon, communications director for the Sunrise Movement, a climate activist group, said: “Like Donald Trump, J.D. Vance has proven that he will make dismantling climate protections a top priority while satisfying oil and gas CEO's request.
Does Mr. Vance have a principled stance, and are his positions on climate and energy policy worthy of consideration?
climate denialism
The highly polarized debate over climate change over the past few decades has amply demonstrated that Such comments often devolve into personal attacks and name-calling.
‘Climate deniers’ is a charge often used by supporters of climate alarm Stop critical debate and de-platform climate skeptics.
Lena Moffitt, executive director of the environmental advocacy group Evergreen Action, said of Vance: “Donald Trump has chosen as his running mate a man who openly acknowledges climate change and who has used his time in Congress to vote against environmental issues. And trust fossil fuels.
If popular epithets are used to denigrate skeptics of so-called “consensus science,” the “denier” charge is one of the more pernicious. It draws comparisons to those who deny the Holocaust.
To be sure, most observers would consider questioning the accuracy and predictive power of scientific models to be as absurd as questioning the historical fact of the Jewish genocide in Europe.
What is Mr. Vance’s stance on climate?
Nicknames and news hits aside, it seems like a fair question What do politicians skeptical of climate alarmism believe? What is their policy stance on the Paris Agreement’s 2050 net-zero emissions target?
For most current governments in North America and Western Europe, this policy goal is imperative, at least in name only.
Mr. Vance, a lawyer, businessman, former Marine and author of the best-selling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” came from the humblest of working-class backgrounds and was firmly committed to the populist right-wing movement.
Now it seems that Trump is very likely to become the next president of the United States. Saturday's assassination attempt, the miraculous moment he turned his head to save him, and the iconic photo of him raising his fist seconds after being injured, with the American flag in the background, were almost irresistible.
As a result, Mr. Vance may join Donald Trump as vice president next year. The U.S. government will seek to quickly relax the various policy and regulatory restrictions imposed by the Biden administration to strangle the U.S. oil and gas industry.
Unless we stop the green energy fantasy, everything the Democrats say about “bringing back American manufacturing” is false. Solar panels cannot power a modern manufacturing economy. This is why the Chinese are building coal-fired power plants and Tim Ryan’s donors won’t let the United States do it.
— JD Vance (@JDVance) July 29, 2022
Vance also criticized the Biden administration’s “green energy fantasies,” noting “Solar panels cannot power a modern manufacturing economy” and “That's why the Chinese are building coal-fired power plants.”
He was equally critical of wind turbines. At last year's Operation Turning Point conference, he said: “They're hideously ugly. They kill all the birds. And they're mostly made in China.
The Biden administration's full support for electric vehicles has been met with the same criticism. In a radio interview in July 2022, he said: “The whole electric car thing is a scam. If you plug it into the wall, do these people think there's a Keebler elf behind it generating electricity on the wall? Of course, it comes from fossil fuels.“
If Republicans are elected, Mr. Vance’s climate skepticism will not only encourage U.S. oil and gas to once again dominate global markets (a strong theme of Trump’s first term).
He is strongly opposed to the ESG (environmental, social and governance) movement. In an interview with Breitbart in 2022, he said: “ESG is basically Massive racketeering makes Wall Street richer and Enriching the financial industry The country's, at the expense of industries that actually employ a large number of Ohio workers Work for the middle class.
The push for ESG in America’s red states and the increasingly apparent lack of success among ESG-focused companies and investment advisors illustrates: Mr. Vance may have a better finger on the pulse than his critics would like to admit.
Who is more credible?
As a climate change skeptic, Mr. Vance is in good company. For example, in a recent lecture John Clauser, the 2022 Nobel Prize winner in Physics, revealed how The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) models and analyzes do not meet basic standards of scientific inquiry.
Mr. Vance is not as skeptical of the claims of climate policy advocates as many critics claim.
IPCC models have been used by politicians and activists as “evidence” of scientific consensus to support claims of a “climate crisis”.
Another example is Richard Lindzen, an American atmospheric physicist and professor emeritus of meteorology at MIT, who published an assessment of the global warming narrative in 2022.
Professor Linzen believes that climate alarmism is “a quasi-religious movement based on absurd 'scientific' narratives.” Policies adopted on behalf of this movement have caused America’s energy system to struggle.
Whatever one's view of climate science, it is clear Mr. Vance is not as skeptical of the claims of climate policy advocates as many critics claim.
JD Vance's criticism of the subsidy-supported renewable energy and electric vehicle industries is in line with empirical evidence emerging against the current backdrop of rising inflation, rising interest rates and sharp falls in renewable energy stocks.
For example, an Associated Press report last November described the travails of the Biden administration’s ambitious offshore wind plan:
“The cancellation of two large offshore wind projects in New Jersey is the latest in a series of setbacks for the nascent U.S. offshore wind industry, jeopardizing the Biden administration's goal of powering 10 million homes with towering ocean turbines by 2030. Electricity is provided to the home and a carbon-free grid is established after five years.
The news follows earlier reports that developers had canceled three offshore wind projects in New England. They said that despite adequate subsidies, their plans were “no longer financially viable”.
Mr. Vance calls the news in the electric vehicle space a “hoax,” which is equally scary for green tech enthusiasts.
As David Blackmon, a keen observer of the renewable energy field, points out: Survey shows vast majority of U.S. car buyers won't buy electric cars even at “cheap” prices (government subsidies notwithstanding); Overall growth in private electric vehicle sales in the United States has slowed to a “trickle”, as has been the case in the United Kingdom and the European Union; and The market for used electric cars is virtually non-existent.
“Pure-play” electric car maker Fisker recently declared bankruptcy, and Rivian is facing the same fate.
U.S. automakers General Motors and Ford have turned to gasoline-powered vehicles to maintain profits Slowing global EV sales force them to delay investments in EV production lines and cut costs.
Partisans may criticize the man all they want, but the realities of thermodynamics and economics support J.D. Vance.
He may prove to be the best vice president in a Republican administration, committed to supporting the country's oil and gas industry and making America great again.
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