The Biden administration is now rolling towards its goal of a Green New Deal. The infrastructure deal has about $140 billion worth of subsidies and government investment funds.

Subsidies for electric cars, electric charging stations. A transformation of our utility grid, handouts to certain companies, a slush fund for the energy department — all under the general grandiose goal of net-zero emissions by some date certain yet to be determined.

American car-makers are boasting that electric vehicles will be half of their sales by 2030 even though right now they’re only 3%. Mind you this whole exercise is a textbook case of central planning that is unprecedented in this country.

Instead of free markets and free choice, we’re getting guidelines that will turn into mandates, that will completely disrupt our entire transportation and energy and power systems in this country.

It is a breathtaking endeavor that is doomed to fail — a) because consumers don’t want the high prices and high costs, b) because America does not even remotely have the resources to support this net-zero emissions crusade, and c) because Americans are already waking up to the enormous national security and military risks endemic to this poorly thought out utopian plan.

There is an enormous amount to be said and discussed on this topic. We’ve already begun —and will continue — to express our opposition to the Green New Deal. But here are a few brief points:

First, raising corporate average fuel economy standards, as Mr. Biden announced today, would significantly increase the cost of cars and trucks. And significantly reduce automobile safety. These two reasons were the basis of the Trump administration’s opposition to punitive CAFE standards.

Second, the Green New Deal utopians have no idea of the cost and difficulties of creating an entire new infrastructure. Nor do they understand that a new infrastructure would generate enormous carbon emissions by itself. Nor do they understand that the minerals and materials that go into electric power and batteries and new electricity grids and so forth are simply not available to the United States at the present time.

The Biden administration is reducing access to minerals and oil and gas resources. Leases are being canceled at the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Keystone pipeline was canceled. Far-left ideologs are in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy and Interior Departments.

To generate battery driven autos and anything else, we need minerals like nickel, cobalt, lithium, and copper. Guess who has them. China. Some 95% of rare earth mining and processing is done in the communist country. They have a monopoly.

Some 45% of the world’s supply of polysilicon necessary to build solar panels is done in China. And actually in terms of these resources, China and the Congo are the biggest players. Both employ slave labor and child labor. Both lack human rights and freedoms.

These Green New Deal utopians don’t realize that they will make America dependent on communist China and its ally, the Congo. This is not something we want to do. This becomes a national security and military security issue. The recent bans by the Bidens on mining for all resources have decreased access to federal lands, and they seek to impose penalties on oil, gas and coal producers.

In short, the Biden administration has no planning for the scale of investments necessary in critical minerals and a brand new infrastructure. Their hopes for a vast emission reduction will decimate this country’s consumers, businesses, factories, jobs, and the economy.

Middle and lower income persons will suffer enormously from higher costs and lack of availability of power. You can’t have growth, without power. Under the Trump administration, power was made cheap, accessible, and plentiful as the economy boomed. With the Bidens it is exactly the reverse.

This utopian crusade is the most poorly planned effort in our history. Ironically, it is the central planners and Washington regulators who will run this operation. The planners are engaged in single entry book-keeping. On the one side they want net-zero emissions but on the other side, they have made no planning or organizing for the kind of massive investments that will be necessary.

What this country should be doing is developing a policy that would generate larger and more diverse energy sources.

We must protect America’s energy supplies. We must increase the capacity to produce rare earths and minerals. President Trump was absolutely right that we ought to purchase Greenland from the Danes (and they would be wise to sell it to us).

At the same time, we must foster an all of the above energy strategy that includes renewable power sources, developed by our vibrant and technologically advanced private companies. Not government subsidies and industrial policies. They are always doomed to failure.

In other words it is neither desirable or even possible to achieve a Green New Deal with net-zero emissions. Let me repeat. Not desirable or even possible. It is not in the interest of this country.

It is not America first, it is America dependent on our rivals and enemies.

It is America losing its moral base by relying on countries using slave-labor without an ounce of democracy and freedom and indeed countries that are our enemies. Let me repeat. The national security risk, military security risk, economic risk are so huge that they threaten our future.

_______

From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox News. Image: Rare earth mine at Bayan Obo, China. Via Google Maps.