Has Shifting to Renewable Energy Become 'Irreversible'?

by Jonathan H Harsch (Agri-Pulse) ... At the heart of the battle is whether it makes sense to transition from fossil fuels to renewables like biofuels, wind, and solar energy. At issue is the choice between steering new investment into renewables as the Obama administration wants - or, as GOP presidential contender Donald Trump champions, putting that investment instead into new oil and gas drilling, pipelines, and export terminals, and even into mining and burning more coal.

Echoing the White House's assertion that renewable energy has already established “irreversible momentum,” Moniz said in San Francisco that the shift to renewables “is becoming inevitable. This is the direction we're going.”

Canadian Minister of Natural Resources Jim Carr agreed on the new direction, saying, “By doubling our investment in clean and emissions-reducing energy technology, we will help meet our climate-change objectives, increase the productivity and competitiveness of Canadian firms, and create clean jobs.”

In sharp contrast to Moniz and Carr, experts at the Heritage Foundation's Fueling Freedom energy forum this week warned that it would be disastrous to continue pursuing “unreliable, expensive renewable energy sources inherently incapable of replacing the vast energy services fossil fuels provide.”

But the concerted Obama administration effort to paint the transition to renewable energy as inevitable and irreversible is not going unchallenged.

At Monday's Heritage Foundation energy forum, co-authors Kathleen Hartnett White and Stephen Moore discussed their new book, Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy. White, director of the Armstrong Center for Energy and the Environment at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and a former chairman of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, said that “We are a fossil-fueled civilization” and dismissed concerns about “so-called global warming.” Insisting that “Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, it is a gas of life,” White said the major threat today is not global warming but the Obama administration's efforts to shut down not only the coal industry but the oil and gas industry as well.

Moore, a Heritage Foundation visiting fellow and former Wall Street Journal economics writer, said “This country was built on coal . . . We should be using it.” Calling for shutting down the Department of Energy, he said that by increasing coal, oil and natural gas production, the U.S., Canada and Mexico “could be energy independent within five years.”

White charged that the American public and policymakers are “abysmally unaware” of the importance of fossil fuels and the impossibility of replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy. Moore concluded that “to be against fracking is like being against a cure for cancer.” While both see hydraulic fracturing as a great economic opportunity, neither mentioned the fact that it was the Department of Energy's research programs which first developed fracking. READ MORE