Gina McCarthy is just another EPA mini-MARXIST that began with Democratic Socialist Carol Browner and her successor. Obama’s Marxists.
McCarthy is just nastier and would make a great Green Commizar under a hardcore communist dictatorship.
Nobody is arguing against the need to transition from fossil fuels, but the technology is slow to develop and perfect and the supply of fossil fuels, albeit finite, is in no danger of running out anytime soon.
The problem is politicians, especially the ones on the Left. They are attempting to push unrealistic solutions in an unrealistic timeframe without considering the potential detrimental effects of doing so.
No politician is ever rewarded by their base for delivering incremental results, so they have to speed things up and use apocalyptic rhetoric and draconian measures.
I’ll add some more:
- A lot of “green” energy components such as solar panels, lithium batteries and windmills are not only extremely environmentally and financially costly to produce, they all have a limited service life. After their relatively short service lives they are literally TOXIC WASTE. So now comes the expense of disassembling them for their components which could be recycled or the cheaper option of burying them in a landfill somewhere but did I mention this is toxic waste? Doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose of being supposedly more “green” to begin with?
- pushing energy intensive industries (metal smelting for example) to 3rd world countries with less technology and less efficient means of production and much lower environmental standards is not a net win for the environment. In fact, its a net loss for the environment since more pollution is created for the same level of consumption. It may make very shallow and ignorant virtue signalers in this country feel good about themselves for lowering carbon emissions in this country, but that’s just a shell game. The same products are being produced and consumed. Its just happening elsewhere.
- Along the same vein, why is it better for the environment to pump a barrel of oil out of the ground in Saudi Arabia or Nigeria or Venezuela all of which have dirtier processes and lower environmental standards than we do AND then ship that barrel of oil halfway around the world (burning oil to do so) rather than pumping that barrel of oil out of the ground here in the US? Its one atmosphere. Ergo a ton of carbon (if you believe its a pollutant) pumped into the atmosphere in Nigeria does every bit as much harm as that ton of carbon pumped into the atmosphere in the US. Again, this is just a virtue signaling shell game. That barrel of oil is still being consumed. Its not only more expensive, its NOT a net “win” for the environment.
- how can you possibly be serious about the whole carbon thing yet reject nuclear energy which produces zero carbon and which produces large amounts of energy reliably - unlike wind and solar? You can’t. You not serious if you do not incorporate nuclear energy into the mix.
- having done consulting work for energy companies....remember when calculating the supposed “savings” from “green” sources like wind and solar, you must include secondary costs such as having to beam that energy down expensive power lines which you are going to have to install. Remember you lose a percentage of the energy you beam down those power lines. Remember you have to have 100% backup capacity on standby at all times (that invariably means a coal fired power plant sitting there waiting to be fired up). When you include the cost to build all of this...the windmills/solar panels, the extra power lines, the entire power plant you must have on standby at all times, and the cost to recycle/dispose of these things when they wear out, you are spending a lot of extra money and you are causing a lot of environmental damage. You’d have been a lot better off on both fronts had you just used coal or natural gas or nuclear.