The Green New Deal aims to power the world via emissions-free energy sources, based on a weaponized theory of climate change.
Good evening,
The political movement known as the “Green New Deal” aims to power the world via emissions-free energy sources, based on a weaponized theory of climate change.
Unfortunately, their plan has no basis in either affordability or reality.
We can see a recent example of this in Spain. After years of aggressively “decarbonizing” its energy grid, Spain announced it achieved its “first weekday of 100% renewable power” in April of this year.
But then, after only a few days of reaching this Green New Deal pinnacle, Spain suddenly and inexplicably suffered one of the largest peacetime blackouts Europe has ever seen, losing 60% of its generation capacity in mere seconds.
Reuters reported that the economic cost of this blackout ranged between 2.25 to 4.5 billion euros.
There are a lot of inescapable realities about powering an electrical grid that Green New Deal visionaries have no answer for (and sometimes no idea of), including:
Electricity must be consumed as it is generated
Power plants are not interchangeable
The main renewable sources, solar and wind, are intermittent and unreliable
Nuclear, natural gas, and coal are reliable enough to provide baseload (ever-present demand) power
Natural gas and hydropower are readily dispatchable, quickly providing power to handle fluctuations
Natural gas, hydro, and coal provide critical, natural inertia that protects the grid from sudden disturbances, but renewables can’t
For all those reasons, powering today’s economy absolutely demands baseload and dispatchable generation.
Spain’s grid did not reflect that reality, so the consequences did.
Spain’s experience should provide a critical lesson for all North Carolinians.
With North Carolina’s goal of achieving “carbon neutrality” by 2050, and requiring the path to carbon neutrality to be least-cost, reliable, and reasonable, these goals are simply not achievable without natural gas.
Nevertheless, in a recent report, we outlined how an activist executive branch has a long history of thwarting natural gas infrastructure projects, and how an overreliance on renewable energy could lead North Carolina down the same expensive path of energy insecurity as Spain.
We must keep the focus of our state’s energy policy on affordability and reliability, including repealing the Carbon Plan or at least its interim goal. 21st-century society is far too reliant on electricity to give up affordable, reliable service for extremist political mandates.
You can read more about energy here, here, and here.
The recent riots in Los Angeles are distressingly reminiscent of the 2020 anti-police riots — and reminded us of an op-ed that Carolina Journal published in 2020
The United States was founded on the principle that government exists to protect the natural rights of the governed, which especially include the natural right to liberty
But many 20th-century progressives (including Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt) wanted the government to be freed from the restraints of the Constitution
They did not seek to overthrow or amend the Constitution, but instead pursued a “progressive theory of judicial interpretation”, where the Constitution would be interpreted as a “living document” to suit the demands of the day
Under pressure from President Roosevelt, the Supreme Court adopted a progressive legal theory as official doctrine
This led to a rough compromise between progressives and constitutionalists
This led to the development of the regulatory state, and the employment of thousands of unelected bureaucrats to create, interpret, and enforce millions upon millions of rules and regulations
However, the outcome could have been much worse…
Post-World War II, much of the free world recognized that liberal institutions, often modeled after the U.S. system, were key to peace and prosperity
But unfortunately, some of America's current governing elite seem to have forgotten the benefits of our system
A new generation of progressives claims that the American system was founded on patriarchy and white supremacism, and thus views America's founding principles as evil
These folks want America’s central institutions to undergo a radical transformation
This anti-American rhetoric, promoted by the media and politicians, has been widely internalized globally
This was evident in the widespread protests following George Floyd's death
While most Floyd protests were peaceful and could have led to police reforms, the violent protests made these reforms harder to achieve
These riots often harmed African Americans more than they helped
Many of these violent protestors hate Western Civilization, America, and our Constitution, so they want to replace it with something else
If they succeed, what will follow will be an authoritarian nightmare, and the modern progressives who have been stoking the flames of revolution will be to blame
The John Locke Foundation published a research brief in February calling for North Carolina to adopt election performance audits
The brief recommended North Carolina (1) cover procedures during a two-year period, (2) be conducted by an outside entity, and (3) include responses from the state’s chief elections officers
Independent election performance audits provide benefits that those across the state's political spectrum should support
They would verify ballot and equipment chains of custody, and that officials followed election law, so that voters can have confidence in the entire process
For example, New Hanover County violated state law during the 2024 election by not counting absentee ballots on Election Day, so they hired a law firm to review what went wrong
The firm’s report found that while election results were not altered, they identified several problems with how the election was conducted and made corrections and offered recommendations, including comprehensive, independent performance audits
Another example is Rockingham County losing some campaign finance data that it was supposed to retain
An investigator with the N.C. State Board of Elections will go to Rockingham County to investigate how decades’ worth of finance reports went missing
Regular performance of election audits can help county elections boards find and correct these kinds of problems before they become major issues
The General Assembly should implement them before the 2026 midterm elections
