It’s been interesting to watch the so-called “green revolution” advanced by the current administration, which is largely a push to electrify everything.
Consider this NPR article that appeared in early October, innocuously titled “These 5 big purchases can save energy – and money – at home.” I clicked on it because I’m always interested in frugal suggestions.
I should have known better. This being NPR, their agenda is clear and their logic mediocre. The article begins: “Driving a car, making dinner, heating water and turning on the air conditioner – our everyday actions emit some of the greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. But sustainability experts say there are ways we can make these daily tasks more climate friendly. By using home appliances and vehicles that run on electricity, we can help reduce our carbon footprint and leave more fossil fuels in the ground.”
The article promotes a book entitled “Electrify Everything in Your Home” which, as the name suggests, wants everyone to convert to the wonders of electric everything. Forget wood. Forget propane. Forget natural gas. It’s electricity all the way, baby.
The article continues, “Making these upgrades to your home and lifestyle will cost money– and you will need to plan ahead. … So don’t feel like you have to change out your appliances overnight. Instead, buy them as your existing machines wear out. [The book’s author] offers a catchy phrase: ‘When it starts dying, get electrifying.’”
No. I refuse. I refuse to make ourselves more vulnerable.
The article touts the “dangers” of any other fuel option except electricity (even though these other fuel sources have been used anywhere from generations to millennia) and promotes such things as induction stoves and electric vehicles.
But all their persuasive arguments fail to address the one logical question, the ginormous elephant in the room the electrifiers refuse to acknowledge: What happens when (not if, but when) the electricity fails? It doesn’t even have to be a big event, but merely a winter storm or a high wind that can take down power lines and leave people unable to heat, cook, drive, see, or otherwise function in the modern world.
And make no mistake, America’s grid is frighteningly fragile. California’s grid alone is so delicate that the logistics of plugging in millions of new electric vehicles being pushed by government mandates would be enough to topple it irrevocably. Yet this logic eludes the bureaucrats.
As one reader of my blog pointed out, “In my state electricity is made with gas. So how do they think that’s ‘green’? Somehow they need to figure out where the electricity comes from!” This sentiment is echoed by another: “It is baffling that these otherwise seemingly smart people do not realize that most electricity takes coal, diesel, etc. to generate. Do they really think we are that stupid?”
Yet another reader addressed the unspoken understanding behind this electric push: “And with smart meters, all those conveniences can be shut off at some bureaucrat’s whim. Remotely. Like when your usage is judged excessive, or your politics controversial.”
The all-electric push is (in)famous for failing spectacularly. Consider just two examples:
- Biden’s electric school bus program faces a big hurdle: inadequate utility power. “President Joe Biden’s signature $5 billion program to convert the nation’s school buses to an electric fleet has collided with a formidable challenge: a lack of charging infrastructure and power generation from local utilities. ‘The [Environmental Protection Agency] may be unable to effectively manage and achieve the program mission unless local utility companies can meet increasing power supply demands for electric school buses,’ the inspector general reported candidly, blaming in part agency officials for not putting more early emphasis on school districts coordinating with their power companies.”
- Town falls back on diesel fleet after none of its electric buses work. Jackson, Wyoming, purchased eight electric buses, all of which have broken down and will no longer run. In warm weather, the buses ran all day. But in cold weather they suffered a “degradation of performance” and needed a midday charge, at which point a diesel bus will replace them.
To achieve the net-zero emissions economy by 2050, as Biden has pledged, will require three impossible accomplishments:
- Transport will have been electrified;
- Industrial and domestic heat will have been electrified;
- The electricity sector – generation, transmission, and distribution – will have been greatly expanded in order to cope with the first two projects, and will have ceased to use fossil fuels.
According to the expert who wrote the above article, to accommodate these requirements the grid in 2050 will need to be more than 60% bigger than its present size, and costs (including retrofitting existing buildings) would be anywhere from $20 trillion to $35 trillion … which America patently doesn’t have. (The article is worth reading for a full breakdown of the physical and financial impossibilities involved.)
This push to electrify everything before the infrastructure is in place to support it seems criminally blind on the part of the government. Or is it? One article observes, “It has been clear for some time that the elimination of fossil fuels before there is an adequate power supply to take its place will endanger the safety and security of Americans. It is also obvious that this has been engineered to happen this way. The people planning a lack of supply ahead of replacement electricity sources are smart. They know what they’re doing. Their policies will destroy our national security and will endanger the lives of our people. It will seriously damage our wealth as a nation.” [Emphasis added.]
It’s no wonder a recent survey on what concerns preppers isn’t a world war or climate change or anything else the government is pushing. Instead, it’s the failure of the power grid.
We ourselves are far too dependent on electricity for my comfort, even though we heat with wood, cook with propane and never use a clothes dryer. My quest is to continue to look for ways to wean ourselves further off the grid, rather than becoming more dependent on it.
So this catchy slogan (“When it starts dying, get electrifying”) makes me laugh. Nope. I refuse.
