Commentary
Like me, you’re probably tired of hearing about climate change and the dire warnings for the planet.
I have been holding several articles in my stack of stuff to share with you at some point. A pathetic letter to the editor of the Arizona Republic by Michael Hawthorne of Phoenix, spurred me to write this today. “When you think of climate change think of all the lives we can save,” he writes.
“You don’t have to look far to see the harm that climate change is causing Arizonans, as we have experienced recent flooding and consistent heat waves so far this summer,” he wrote, referring to them as “onslaughts of severe weather catastrophes.”
Most of you are aware that the temperatures in Arizona average above 100 degrees Fahrenheit during the summer months. It’s a dry heat, people like to joke. And you may know that the state experiences annual monsoons that bring wind, dust storms and rain.
I’ve lived in Phoenix and Scottsdale over four decades. I recall the record 122-degree record temperature of June 26, 1990 as I boarded an airplane. Major rainfall and flooding have been cyclical. I recall the heavy rains that deluged the Mogollon Rim about 100 miles northeast of Phoenix in 1970, heavy rains and some street flooding in the Phoenix metropolitan area in September 1983 and again in January 1993, and September 2014.
I wonder how Mr. Hawthorne would explain Arizona’s record rainfall and flooding of 1891, when there were no cars spewing out those dastardly greenhouse emissions.
As if Mr. Hawthorne’s understanding of the weather in Arizona isn’t bad enough, he says he’s counting on our U.S. senators to “pass the infrastructure package with clean energy investments, which can create jobs here in Arizona and save us money on our electricity bills.”
That, Mr. Hawthorne, is not going to happen. There is mounting concern that energy will become more costly. In Massachusetts, there is concern over a plan to phase-out natural gas for electricity.
In Francis Menton’s piece, “A Little Arithmetic: The Costs Of A Solar-Powered Grid Without Fossil Fuel Back Up,” in Manhattan Contrarian, he writes that you will need capacity of close to 15 times peak usage in order to deal with your lowest production days of the year.
“If you assume (charitably) that the levelized cost of energy from solar panels is the same as the levelized cost of energy from a natural gas plant, then this system with 15 times the capacity is going to cost 15 times as much. Plus the cost of storage.”
With that, I’m sure he was happy to hear that President Biden will be making a pitch for an unprecedented investment of $80 billion in passenger and rail freight over five years. That will include $22 billion in grants for Amtrak, $24 billion for the Northeast Corridor, and $20 billion for intercity service, like Portland-Seattle, Richmond – Washington DC, Chicago-Milwaukee and Atlanta-Nashville. No mention of Arizona in those billions.
While White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the president will be “focused on lifting up the benefits of the bill to American people,” she was referring to the East Coast liberals.
MEANWHILE – I understand that the near 3,000-page bipartisan (not really) infrastructure bill, written pretty much in secret, contains a pilot program for a national motor vehicle per-mile user fee, considered to be a long-term plan to make it too expensive to drive a car.
The bill calls for the Secretary of Treasury (Janet Yellen), in consultation with the Secretary of Transportation (Pete Buttigieg) to estimate the amount of payment based on the type of vehicle.
Now, more than ever … may God continue to bless the United States of America.
