From Manhattan Contrarians
It's Climate Week in New York, and you can feel the excitement. The United Nations General Assembly was held in the city, and there was also an organization called the Climate Group (“Our mission is to drive climate action. Fast.) Some 600 (!) events were held to promote policies they believed would “save the planet”.
At one of yesterday's events, New York Governor Kathy Hochul attended and gave what she may consider an important policy speech. The governor's web page describes the speech this way:
Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul announced New York State’s participation in the U.S. Climate Alliance’s Governors’ Climate Ready Workforce Initiative to expand career paths in climate and clean energy, strengthen workforce diversity, and jointly train 1 million new registrations across Alliance states and territories apprentice. National climate adviser Ali Zaidi also attended the event.
During his speech, the governor kept talking about how New York's energy transition is really happening and will create countless “green jobs”:
We're not talking about some transformation happening in the future, we're talking about it unfolding now, and that's what we're so excited about. We are opening our doors to underrepresented communities. I go to these job sites often and I would like to see more women and people of color and unions recognize this. That's where they're recruiting because these industries have been closed to them before.
She may be “very excited,” but the world is passing her by when our goofball governor isn't looking. Some data from the past few days:
- The Wall Street Journal published a front-page article today with the headline and subtitle “America's ambitious climate plan is wavering.” Global emissions are at record highs, while the transition from fossil fuels is slowing due to high costs and surging demand for electricity. One must acknowledge the so-called climate crisis (this is the news page of the Wall Street Journal, not the opinion section), but there is no escaping the reality. Examples from the article: “Climate optimism is fading. Rising costs, business and consumer resistance and slow technology rollout Transition is being delayed from fossil fuels. . . . The International Energy Agency said investment in improving building efficiency, a key driver of emissions, fell last year. Spending decisions made now could lock in emissions for decades. billions of dollars LNG terminal Projects being built in Texas and Louisiana could feed an expected boom in demand in places like Southeast Asia.
- How is the rollout of electric vehicles progressing? Reuters daily report on September 19: “[A]auto industry. . . data [released] Thursday. . . Electric car sales fell for a fourth consecutive month, prompting the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) to call for “urgent action” to prevent further declines. . . . ACEA said that sales of pure electric vehicles fell by 43.9% in August, with Germany and France, the EU's largest electric vehicle markets, falling by 68.8% and 33.1% respectively. These are pretty dramatic declines. In typical European fashion, manufacturers' industry associations use the consumer boycott of electric vehicles as an opportunity to demand more government subsidies and mandates: “[The ACEA said that] EU institutions [need] Urgent relief measures are proposed before new CO2 emissions targets for cars and vans come into force in 2025.
- This was a few weeks ago, but another so-called “green hydrogen” project has failed. Just two months ago I published an article about the failure of Australia’s large-scale green hydrogen project. The latest such failure occurred last month and came from Germany. From Hydrogen Insight, August 14: “The refusal of potential green hydrogen customers to sign binding sales agreements and uncertainty about product prices have led to the collapse of plans to build a renewable hydrogen project in the German city of Hannover… [Officials originally] estimate[ed] The estimated cost is approximately €25 million. However, by the time the project was canceled in March this year, costs had soared fivefold to about €136 million. This only applies to 17 MW facilities.
Perhaps one day those “underrepresented communities,” as Governor Hochul calls them, will find that what's holding them back is a reliance on government programming and relief as a path to economic improvement.
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