Rolling Blackouts, A Glimpse of the Future

Rolling electricity blackouts last month created great hardships all over New Mexico. When record cold temperatures caused freezing pipes to burst, carpeting was ruined as were sheet rock walls, wood floors, and other important household items. We all notice the dead cacti and palm trees all around our state. Are we still convinced the planet is suffering from man-made warming? Let’s look at the enormous cost of keeping the faith in the face of all the contradicting temperature data points.
Going hours without power and days without heat created severe health risks and untold damages. Many important electronic devices dependent on consistent power flow, failed. Do we think things might be different in the summers ahead? Don’t bet on it. We should get ready for third world conditions like those endured by countries without air conditioning. The number of elderly that may die from heat related issues can be expected to rise exponentially.

Our future does not have to be this way. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should be stopped from expanding the definition of pollutants to include CO2 (the lifeblood for plant life). If the EPA bureaucratic dictatorship is not checked, power generation is going to decline. Bureaucrats embracing the religion of radical environmentalism are now putting CO2 on the list with truly toxic substances like mercury and lead. If the radical EPA is allowed to do this without massive public outcry, it is going to lead to an epidemic of rolling blackouts. The EPA is already requiring the shutdown of three functioning coal-fired electrical generating plants in New Mexico’s Four Corners region. This action alone will put thousands of Native Americans out of work. Add to this travesty the fact that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is stonewalling the permits for all domestic new nuclear power plants and you have the makings of a perfectly horrible rolling blackout storm. In the meantime there are over 60 nuclear projects underway all around the world using American technology.

What else is looming in our near term energy future? Have you checked the prices at the gas pumps lately? How about the impact of our elected officials driving away offshore oil production in the Gulf of Mexico while our main suppliers from the Middle East are threatened by social insurrections? Or maybe we should see how the permitting processes for vast newly discovered domestic energy reserves are being systematically thwarted by those who have openly hoped for $7 a gallon gas. Perhaps a review of how a handful of extremists in the lower 48 states is denying Native American people living near the Arctic Circle the chance to produce domestic energy is in order. This is energy that could enable the Inupiat tribe to pull themselves out of an economic malaise and generate huge new tax revenues to reduce debt?

All these processes are happening right under New Mexico and America’s collective noses. Is there scrutiny of the wisdom of these practices? Not from a jobs perspective. Not from a declining standard of living perspective. Not from a tax revenue perspective. Not from a national debt perspective. Not from a common sense perspective. The only thing we can point to is some vague concept floated by dreamers. They have no answer to the dilemma that solar panels don’t produce electricity at night and wind generators that don’t produce electricity when the wind doesn’t blow sufficiently. All they can offer is some dubious assertion that while our economy and our way of life goes straight down the crapper we are “saving the planet."

There is a mountain of facts that suggest that President Obama’s idea of a “green energy economy” is not a viable. It is only an excuse to continue to commit well-intended economic suicide. At some point we have to reject economic suicide and admit that bankruptcy is not ECO-friendly. If you are in doubt about how falling living standards will affect the planet, just look at the “environment” in every third world nation and compare it to America's. All of these mindlessly reckless global warming/climate change policies are being orchestrated by a tiny sliver of the population. Complicit in this self-destruction is a socialist-oriented public education system that seems hell bent and determined to teach every successive generation of students that somehow energy production and consumption is bad……well at least for all the “other” people.

What we are doing will not help us become energy independent. What we are doing is accelerating the process of making the U.S. operate like a third world country. Rolling blackouts during the hottest days of summer are not far off in our future unless very soon, and at all levels, municipal, county, state, and federal government, we vote to completely eliminate people who are opposed to common sense energy policies. 

Finally, agreeing with the points made in this column will not be sufficient. Those who disagree with these points are better organized, better funded, and better connected politically. They are winning and America and New Mexico are losing.

Rolling Blackouts, A Glimpse of the Future