Rolling Blackouts, Once a Third World Problem, Loom for America as Summer Heats Up

“Extreme temperatures” could cause America’s “power grid to buckle,” the North American Electric Reliability Corporation warns, and if it does, President Biden won’t be able to shift the blame from where it belongs: environmental extremists who have cut energy production to the bone.NERC writes that millions of Americans are at risk of experiencing rolling blackouts this summer “to prevent long-term damage to the grid.” Recall that President Obama in 2009 and President Biden earlier this year spent billions of dollars for “infrastructure” with promises to create cure-alls like a “smart grid.” Where did that money go if not to ensure that we can handle the demands of running air conditioning, refrigeration, and all the other features of our First World lifestyle, so we can protect the vulnerable from heat?The answer is that it went to quixotic, left-wing corporations like Solyndra, which cashed in on promises of a green future but ended up in bankruptcy. Or take the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, which supplies electricity to 42 million people across 15 states and one Canadian providence.The Herald-Times of Indiana reports that MISO “lost about 2% of its generation capacity within the past year. Why? Fossil-fueled plants were retired to make way for new, cleaner energy sources” that have not materialized.Imagine if in Gilded Age New York City, when tons of manure flooded the streets, Tammany Hall had decided to clean up the mess by shooting all the horses and forcing citizens to develop alternative forms of transportation. Then you have some idea of the wrongheaded thinking that’s driven American energy policy.Or consider your automobile: If you didn’t want it to run on gasoline, would you cut the gas line? That’s what America’s green movement has done by canceling pipelines, which had the ancillary effect of forcing oil producers to resort to more dangerous modes of transportation, like trains and tankers.Speaking of cars, Americans are pushed to go electric, but where’s the energy for those three-hour charges going to come from if rolling blackouts become the norm like in Communist Cuba or some other banana republic? The lack of air conditioning and refrigeration to prevent food spoilage — at a time when supply chains are strained, and meat prices are through the roof — is a problem that will affect mostly the poor and elderly, not those in the air-conditioned halls of the White House and Congress, where the green lobbyists prowl.Deaths from heat can tear through industrial nations. Europe, where fewer than 5 percent of households have air-conditioning versus 90 percent in America, registers 100,000 heat-related deaths among seniors each year.Blaming those deaths on global warming is used to move the left-wing wish list for tax hikes and weather-control schemes. Inflicting pain is the far left’s governing strategy, with every bit of suffering looked upon as a boon to their agenda.The New York Times celebrated inflation in a column last week for just this reason, writing that it “has the potential to drive welcome change for the planet if Americans think differently about the way they eat,” singling out meat-eaters for scorn. Climate Depot’s Marc Morano said, “This is more evidence that economic calamity, debt, inflation, supply chain issues, and skyrocketing meat and energy costs are not the unintended consequences of the climate agenda, but the intended consequences.“Chaos conditions the public to accept more centralized control of their lives. Vladimir Lenin reportedly once said, ‘worse is better’ or ‘the worse, the better,’ to cheer on chaos and the destruction of the existing order to impose his ideology.”During one crisis after another — from his Afghanistan withdrawal to the baby formula famine and inflation — President Biden has mumbled that nobody could have foreseen the problem coming. This time, he’s on notice that the problem is looming, and the time to address it is now.The answer isn’t magic clean energy schemes that may cool our homes in 50 years, or to tell us to pay more and cut back this summer. It’s to produce electricity to meet our needs today through proven methods of power generation. Anything else is putting the cart before the horse.

Rolling Blackouts, Once a Third World Problem, Loom for America as Summer Heats Up

Rolling Blackouts, Once a Third World Problem, Loom for America as Summer Heats Up

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