Green Energy Mandates Would Only Further Hurt Our Economy

May 14, 2020

The eco-left is so obsessed with their failed Green New Deal they are now trying to leverage response to the coronavirus pandemic to push green energy mandates. These ill-informed climate activists are blatantly ignoring the urgency of recovering our economy. Green energy mandates will only deter that process and take away millions of American energy jobs all while pushing costs onto households across the country.

American Thinker discusses the need for the fossil fuel industry during our economic recovery:

Cheap fossil fuels are what dragged the economy out of the recession in 2009, and fossil fuels are even cheaper now. Thus, the recovery will be accelerated if we take advantage of this fact. Even if enough green energy technologies existed to underpin the economy in the here and now — they don’t — pushing more expensive, less reliable green energy instead of using readily available, reliable fossil fuels would only slow the recovery, delaying significant employment growth.

From a government budgetary perspective, it would be foolish as well, because the fossil fuel industry pays a lot of taxes. Not even counting the income taxes paid on jobs refining, delivering, pumping, and selling fossil fuels, the leases, fees, and royalties paid from coal, oil, and gas produced on federal lands and offshore are the federal government’s second largest source of revenue — behind only income taxes.

Not only would all the economic benefits of the fossil fuel industry be lost by switching over to green energy technologies, the costs of these green energy programs are heavily subsidized by government. This is why Democratic leaders are trying to tack green energy programs into the next stimulus package. 

The article cites Power The Future’s study on the price tag of the GND, costs would top $49.109 trillion through 2030. Put another way, it would cost the average American household $367,000 to $681,000 over the 10-year period.

The economic costs don’t add up with the benefit, which is averting less than 0.2 degrees Celsius of global temperature rise by the end of the century. The American economy is struggling, and the unemployment rate is the highest level since the Great Depression. Now is not the time for the eco-left to put their radical political agenda over the interests of American citizens seeking relief during this time of crisis.