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In this guest post, Climate Denier Roundup tackles some of the perennial deceitful material from anti-electric vehicle climate deniers/deceivers including making clear that EVs will do better than ICE vehicles in

You don’t see whether it’s a wind turbine or gas turbine that sends the electrons to your home, you just plug in your appliances. But lots of people have a very personal relationship with the internal combustion engine, in that the car remains a steadfast relic of mid-century (manly) Americana that we just can’t seem to shake.

That makes electric vehicles one of the biggest consumer-facing targets for climate disinformation, an issue that brings otherwise esoteric policy discussions home for many, particularly those in prized suburban voting blocks.

Teed up by Chuck Todd’s abysmal climate change question (about flood insurance prices) in the Virginia gubernatorial debate, Glenn Youngkin lived up to what one would expect from the Virginian Republican (Grand Oil Party) nominee for Governor: predatory delay truthiness.

In summary, Youngkin

• Avoided saying “climate change” and directly acknowledging basic reality which would risk alienating his climate-science denying base.
• Propagandistically described methane as “clean burning natural gas”.
• Misrepresented the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA).
• Failed to acknowledge the health, economic benefits, and other from moving to a clean-energy economy.
• Played Trump-ian “I’ve been told by someone” games to claim falsely that the VCEA’s achievable clean power targets are unrealistic.
• Falsely asserted that moving to a clean-power system will lower Virginia’s energy resiliency.

All of this, and more, in just 60 seconds!

The climate crisis made a brief appearance in last evening’s Virginia gubernatorial debate (see here for commentary on other portions of the debate) An oddball question from NBC’s Chuck Todd sparked strong comments from Democrat Terry McAuliffe and shallow predatory-delay, deceptive climate-truthiness from Trump-wannabe Glenn Youngkin.

In a southern state that, under Democratic Party leadership, has moved from significant trailer to a southern trailblazer on clean energy and climate policy, Todd’s question focused on — at best — a secondary issue. Rather than asking how, as Governor, the candidates would boost Virginia’s economy through clean-energy adoption or how they saw the Commonwealth government’s role in investing in and balancing climate mitigation and adaptation, Todd’s laser-like focus: flood insurance costs.

Before turning to dissecting Todd’s horrid question, something to highlight is his introduction to the question: “this is one minute to each of you as we’re getting a little low on time”. Yup, when it comes to what is (one of) the most critical issue facing humanity, let’s treat it as an ‘oh by the way’ issue less worthy of (a whopping) 90 seconds than, well, seemingly anything else.

Dissecting Todd’s horrific question

Okay, now take a look at the question:

Virginians underpay for flood insurance. But overpaying also could reduce home prices. Dealing with climate change, the state, country, entire world are dealing with this, who should be paying more when it comes to these issues of flood insurance? Should it be the government? Should it be wealthier taxpayers? Is it someone else? How do we pay for this adaptation and mitigation?

Before delving into this, a question to wonder: Does Todd have a beachfront property in Virginia Beach and is annoyed with increasing flood insurance bills or what? Seriously, why ‘this’ question over so many other others?

Now for some dissection:

• “Virginians underpay for flood insurance”
  • is pretty much true across so much of the United States.
  • Flood-risk maps aren’t keeping up with climate risks (from sea-level rise to increasing share of rainfall in severe events) and flood insurance has for far too long been subsidized by the taxpayer enabling people to live in high-risk areas in yet another privatized gain, socialized cost domain.
  • Note that Todd’s phrasing doesn’t make this point clearly: that someone else (individuals, businesses, government) is making up for those “underpaying”.
  • Now, we (as a society) are facing ever higher flood risks and can no longer afford the increasingly high bills for subsidizing high-risk property owners.
• “Overpaying …”
  • Huh, where and how is anyone indicating that properties in flood risk areas should or will be “overpaying” as opposed to starting to pay something closer to reality-based insurance premiums?
• “also could reduce home prices”.
  • Todd is implicitly stating a truth: that at-risk homes are overpriced because they are not required to pay (anything close) to risk-based insurance prices. Certainly, having to pay fair insurance prices could lead to truer market values for properties (homes) at greater flood risk.
  • Having reality-based insurance pricing could (would) also drive other things such as building with flood-risks in mind (whether not building in flood plains, building on stilts, or otherwise).
• “Dealing with climate change, the state, country, entire world are dealing with this …”
  • Putting aside Todd’s seemingly inability to form grammatically correct sentences, perhaps we can just say “yes”.
  • And, btw, what does Todd mean by “dealing with climate change”?
• “Who should be paying more when it comes to these issues of flood insurance? Should it be the government? Should it be wealthier taxpayers? Is it someone else?”
  • So, let’s be clear, dealing with “climate” is about “paying” rather than implications of not paying or about benefits from action.
  • Again, as per above, Todd’s question sidesteps the reality that (already) others are “paying more” than they should because the beneficiaries aren’t paying their fair share.
• “How do we pay for this adaptation and mitigation?”
  • And, Todd closes with a standard way that is truly horrific: in Todd’s limited weltanschauung, acting on climate is about costs and not about benefits (the benefits of reduced risks, reduced pollution, improved health, improved workforce and student productivity, improved resiliency, …) of climate action.
  • “All costs, no benefits” is one of the most egregious and damaging pundit and analytical ways to think about, analyze, discuss, and frame discussions of public policy.
  • Is this purposeful, on his part, or does Todd simply fail to realize how seriously he misrepresents the equation before us (the U.S. and us all)?

Even before the candidates got to utter a syllable, Todd provided a trash heap of mediocrity requiring dissection. Sigh, this post looks at Youngkin’s predatory-delay truthiness and McAuliffe’s strong statement in support of needed climate leadership.

When it comes to the post disaster space, a major ‘lesson’ from the 1980s and 1990s U.S. military humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations is that effectiveness (protecting lives and property, reducing future risks, efficient resource use) requires coordination across organizations and coordination across phases.

By ‘phases’, these can be summarized as the Three Rs:

• Relief: Life saving and getting minimal functions going for preserving life and reducing damage risks.
• Recovery: Help society move into a functioning stage so that people don’t need to leave and outside assistance can be reduced.
• Reconstruction: Measures to boost economic and social strength to pre-disaster levels (or, even better, better than pre-disaster).

In terms of efficiency resources use and increasing the odds for a successful outcome (which includes a lesser likelihood of having to do another relief operation tomorrow), integrating across these phases as much as (reasonably) possible is key.  If one can do something in “relief” that  contributes to “recovery” and is lays foundations for “reconstruction”, it is like getting a triple play.

For example, think housing. Tarps and tents are great for immediate shelter – fantastic for relief, marginal for recovery, and perhaps even negative for reconstruction. Having a container housing unit, like the US and allied militaries have used in places like Bosnia-i-Herzegovina and Iraq, blends from relief (quickly on site, quick to install) into recovery (housing elements that can stay around awhile). Deploying such ‘container’ units with plans and ways to incorporate into rebuilt infrastructure with (let’s say) high-wind and earthquake resistance takes that ‘shelter’ investment into a triple-whammy solution.

Now, a container is more expensive than a tent — but that is a lasting investment rather than a (hopefully very) temporary path to the problem. A less expensive option comes from leveraging disaster-focused architectural options that can put local labor to work and leverage local materials to have permanent structures up in a day with about the same amount of transported in materials and total financial cost as occurs with a tent (and far less than a container).  And, many such disaster architecture options will be less likely to suffer damage in the next disaster.

That lead to a fourth R: Resiliency: if that measure helps contributes to the potential for reducing future risks, we could hit a grand slam.

Distributed renewable energy is the blaring example of how to integrate across Disaster’s 4Rs  As the grid gets knocked down, in places around the world, the diesel generators kick in and disaster relief organizations send in even more generators. That translates into high-cost and high-pollution demand for diesel fuel — which, by the way, undermines the Three Rs through resource demands (transportation of that diesel fuel that conflicts with other demands on the logistics’ system and, of course, the cost of fuel).  With the price revolution in renewables (especially, in this context, solar photovoltaiics and associated systems), the costs of going ‘green’ in the disaster relief are lower than polluting diesel generators. The clean-energy option is price-advantaged.

And, unlike the diesel generator, it is quite straightforward to integrate a solar system across the 4Rs. Deploying distributed systems that have the ability to grid-connect become, as the grid reestablishes itself, part of the grid system – generating electricity throughout all phases and providing assurance of (at least limited) electrical services in the face of the next disaster.

And, also unlike the diesel generators, such renewable energy systems boost economic prospects in the recovery and reconstruction phases: free electrons from the sun not only save money compared to imported diesel, they also don’t contribute to transportation bottlenecks.

Hurricane Ida has seriously hit the Louisiana (especially New Orlean’s) electrical system, with a million(+) people without power. Generators and diesel fuel for generators are almost certainly a major element of early relief deliveries.  Solar panels, however, do not appear to be a major element in US government relief efforts. (There are non-profits who are doing this. For example, prior to Ida’s landfall, the Footprint Project had “four solar trailers and 60 portable battery packs staged in Nashville to respond in the aftermath of the hurricane.)

Hurricane Ida’s impact on the Gulf Coast is serious – in the New Orleans’ area, initial reporting suggest that there is not a single sector, not a single community without major (even crippling) damage. On some New Orleans’ blocks, the only lights on are private homes with solar panels and batteries. (Note, an Entergy methane gas peak power plant that was justified on the basis of being able to handle emergencies like this isn’t currently offline providing another example of how fossil fuel plants aren’t necessarily reliable amid disaster even as their pollution worsens future disaster risks.) Energy is critical to the 3Rs across all sectors. Looking at New Orlean’s electricity situation, any honest analysis would conclude (differing, of course, as to specifics designs, how much, ..) that a rapid deployment of micro-grid solar would prove a 4R grand slam.

For US disasters, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) needs to update its approaches — clean energy systems need to be an ever-growing part of the ‘fly away’ kit for helping get emergency power to communities blacked-out by disasters (like New York/New Jersey post Sandy, Puerto Rico post-Maria, fire-ravaged Western communities, Gulf Coast post Ida).  And, the US government requires an integrated approach to this so the ‘fly-away’ solar is done in a way that enables rapid creation of renewable-powered micro-grids, ready to be hooked into a reestablished grid, to address relief that facilities recovery and contributes to reconstruction.   And, the installations should proceed down a path so that the next time a climate-enhanced disaster hits the community, the solar keeps the lights on and lowers the costs/challenges of that next disaster’s 3Rs … truly a grand slam payoff.

NOTE: This post is a long-running (a 2017 version re Puerto Rico post Maria) public service message (from me and others) about the value and power of integrating clean-energy into disaster relief. This message is more truthful with every passing day due to increased availability, quality, resiliency value, and affordability of clean-energy solutions along with ever-greater clarity of climate chaos risks.

Showing great “concern” about finding paths to pay for necessary infrastructure investments, Senator Susan Collins forcefully rejects revisiting the Republican’s fiscally damaging 2017 Corporate Subsidy Program and is offering up seemingly ‘moderate’ options like placing a fee on electric vehicles so that they will “pay their fair share” since, right now, “they are abusing our roads and bridges”. Putting aside the truth that fossil fuel (diesel and gas) vehicles are abusing our lungs and planet with their emissions while not paying even a smidgin of their “fair share” of the costs from their pollution, there is a basic common sense calculation here. The Congressional Budget Office concluded that a $100 per EV fee in 2019 would have brought in a total of $150 million in fees (putting aside the costs of establishing the program and collecting the fees) which is barely 1/10th of 1 percent of the cost of even the Republican infrastructure proposal. One might suggest, looking at that, ‘Get real, Susan Collins’. The diversion to such a footnote-like financial element is a typical game played by not-serious policy players. Another calculation makes the ‘lack of seriousness’ even clearer.

Putting aside the counter-productive nature of putting extra fees (at this time) on electric vehicles (which is a market which we are seeking to spark for economic, environmental, human health, and other reasons), there is an equity and fairness issue in terms of a potential fee. Consider the numbers

• $100 per vehicle re electric vehicle (EV)
• Gas tax 18.4 cents/gallon
• Requires 543.5 gallons for tax to equal $100
• Appropriate for comparison to “average EV” might be a 40 mpg car
• The internal combustion engine (ICE) version of the average EV would have to drive 21,740 miles for its mileage to use 543.5 gallons.
• The average US vehicle is somewhere ballpark 13,500 miles/year.

Thus, the EV driver would have to put in roughly 60% more than the ‘average’ vehicle (even as EVs are driven fewer miles than average) to even be ‘break even’ in this calculation of such a punitive and counter-productive (except for fossil-foolish interests) fee.

Upfront,

• Electric School Buses (ESBs) should be deployed as rapidly as possible — they make eminent sense on financial, environmental, safety, student performance and other grounds.
• Legislation proposed to the Virginia legislature (SB1380) was fatally flawed.

Regrettably but appropriately, the last legislative vote in the Virginia House of Delegates killed SB1380 by a 41 Yea, 49 Nay (28 Republican, 21 Democratic Delegates) margin.

• Appropriate because this legislation would have enabled (even more) Dominion excess profiteering, given (far too much) power to Dominion over school bus parameters, and placed Dominion’s interests and priorities over all other benefit streams from getting off diesel.
• Regrettable because ESBs should be deployed as rapidly as possible due to the tremendous benefit streams:
  • ESBs eliminate the diesel fumes that create serious health problems for students riding buses and the general community.
  • ESBs save money as electricity is cheaper than diesel and electric vehicles require less maintenance.
  • ESBs perform better — safer, quieter, smoother, better handling.
  • ESBs make the grid work better.
  • ESB deployment is a path to accelerate the transportation part of “Electrify Everything” which is a (perhaps the) key tool to mitigate the climate crisis.

While it was appropriate for the Virginia House to refuse to green light such a flawed bill, no one should be celebratory on SB1380’s death as this portends unaffordable delay in moving forward in replacing Virginia’s over 15,000 diesel school buses with cleaner, better performing, more affordable electric school buses.

To address this, Governor Northam should put together a task force to create a compromise path forward for rapid ESB deployment. That task should include stakeholders — concerned parents, environmental organizations, Dominion, educators, EV advocates, and others — who support ESBs even as, at this time, their ‘preferred paths forward’ have some radical differences. Compromise should be possible. Compromise that strengthens the grid, improves public school finance, provides Dominion with reasonable profits while treating ratepayers fairly, boosts Virginia’s economy, strengthens the grid, reduces pollution, boost student performance, and leads to healthier and happier Virginia school students. Working together, this task force should be tasked to have a report and recommended legislation before summer 2021.

And, Governor Northam should call for a special session to move this (and other issues to be discussed elsewhere) forward. While Virginia’s “part time” legislators are seriously underpaid for their clearly far from ‘just’ part-time work, ESB deployment matters and every day’s delay matters. Having legislation passed in July 2021, rather than February 2022, is worth this extra effort.

Let’s get some facts on the table first.

• Electrification of School Buses should be fast-tracked across the United States due to huge benefit streams
  • Improved student and community health due to
  • Significant reductions in diesel and particulate pollution with
  • a wide-range set of other benefits including
    • improved student performance outcomes;
    • reducing greenhouse gas and noise pollution;
    • safer and more comfortable bus transportation;
    • lowered operational costs;
    • real benefits in terms of environmental (and economic) justice; and,
    • enabling improved energy resiliency and power grid operations.
• While a ‘no-brainer’ path forward, significant obstacles exist for mass ESB deployments including
  • financial challenges of ‘who pays’ additional upfront costs;
  • business-as-usual ‘we’ve always done diesel’ incumbency, limited school district resources for decision-making, and risk aversion making introduction of ‘new’ difficult; and,
  • poor understanding of and discussion of how ESBs are one of the strongest multi-solving opportunities for a broad swath of the United States.
• Virginia is one of the leading states with potential for mass replacement of its diesel buses but, as per below, is
  • Is pursuing a sub-optimal path that
  • Will lead to higher-cost than necessary implementation,
  • Might well be driving sub-optimal solutions due, in no small part, to how it
  • Gives too much authority for public procurement and a public good to a private corporation.

In the Virginia legislature, on its last day, there is pressure to drive through Senator Louise Lucas’ SB1380. An honest short-hand of that legislation: it is Dominion Power-written legislation that maximizes Dominion Energy profits while minimizing the role and power of public entities in decision-making about the nature of a public project.

As Ivy Main put it, Electric School Buses Would Be Good For Virginia, But It Has To Be Done Right, and SB1380 simply doesn’t do it right.

• It mandates that ESBs are “in the public interest”.
  • While, in truth, ESBs are ‘in the public interest’ in a commonly understood manner for most people, this is a powerful term in Virginia law.
  • Using this term drastically constrains the State Corporation Commission’s ability to provide oversight of a program, puts projects directly into the utility rate base, and enables program management that maximizes (well past the point of reasonableness) profits.
  • E.g., while writ large, a program very much worth purusing, declaring it “in the public interest” will make almost certainly make this a significantly more expensive program than necessary and lead to higher costs for Virginians and higher (than appropriate) guaranteed profitability for Dominion for decades to come.
• Puts public decision-making directly into a private entity’s essentially unilateral control.
  • For example, Dominion has mandated that all school buses bought through its program must have seat belts.
    • While, superficially, this might sound like a tremendous safety move, the research about real-world experiences raises significant questions about whether — due to systems-of-systems’ impacts — there are actual safety benefits.
    • And, questionable (if any) seat-belt safety benefits come at a significant financial (ballpark of $10,000 per bus which means over $900 of guaranteed profits for Dominion year-in, year-out, for every ESB) cost along with significant operational implications (seat-belts reduce bus capacity and slow operations).
    • School bus seat belts are a public-policy issue that should go through government decision-making processes, weighing the public good, and not be mandated by a private entity whose profitability will be boosted via it’s unilateral (and opaque to the public) decision-making.

There are many other challenges with this bill, such as giving Dominion essentially unilateral control over ESB batteries in a way that makes clear that grid benefits (and Dominion profitability) are given prioritization over all other benefit streams.

To be clear, ESB deployment merit massive acceleration. While ESBs might have been hard to justify even a few years ago, plunging battery prices and other advances in the industry have made the financial case a ‘no-brainer’ (while massively reducing risks of what was an uncertain and unknown technology space).

And, involving electric utilities with such projects makes a tremendous amount of sense. (And, to be clear, that includes that utilities should be able to profit reasonably from their roles in and with ESB deployment and operations–reasonable, rather than excess, profitability.) Utilities can use their financial power to address the ‘upfront cost’ challenge (which is what they do, essentially every day, with power plant and transmission line investments). And, utility close interaction with ESB deployment can enable energy grid resiliency (the importance of which were just dramatically demonstrated in Texas) while easing a path toward significant deployment of V2G (vehicle-to-grid) technologies and systems for even greater grid (and vehicle owner) benefit streams.

It is past the 11th hour in the Virginia legislature.

Simply put, SB1380 should not become law. Its problems are just too serious and costly.

However, ESBs are a critical arena for making progress due to all the real and significant benefit streams — for all stakeholders (other than, for example, oil companies, diesel distributors, and diesel-engine manufacturers). Putting off ESB decision-making for yet another year, after failures in the 2020 legislature, simply is not “in the public interest”.

Thus, with the legislative clock at 23:59 with an end at midnight, a hope that the legislature can find a last-minute compromise to mandate a private-public research team (commission) to conduct a 90-day project to develop legislation that will better balance public-private interests. And, to have materials to inform legislators for a short special session in perhaps June where this could be passed into law for Governor Northam’s signature.

Note: Clean Virginia petition calling on House to reject SB1380.

President Biden has made clear that the Federal Government should (will) move to 100 percent clean (mainly electric) vehicle acquisition (“including vehicles of the United States Postal Service”) as quickly as possible.

Postmaster General DeJoy has made clear that, well, ‘frankly my dear, he doesn’t give a damn” with today’s announcement of the Next-Generation Delivery Vehicle (NGDV):

The vehicles will be equipped with either fuel-efficient internal combustion engines or battery electric powertrains 

While the press release emphasizes “either … or …”, the winning firm ( Oshkosh) was emphasized as the “gasoline” engine option in the years of the bidding process. Oshkosh is partnered with Ford and the NGDV is based on the Ford Transit which has a ICE drive train. Ford announced an electric Transit option in late 2020 for the 2022 model year.

Some saw, in late 2020, electric start-up Workhorse as the likely winner due its proposal being all electric. That a major firm (Oshkosh Defense) partnered with a major auto manufacturer (FORD) won over a small and unprofitable (essentially start-up) firm (Workhorse) and a small U.S. presence foreign firm for a $6B vehicle contract that will have, easily, a 30-year run life shouldn’t surprise anyone.

The existing fleet of postal delivery vehicles is in desperate need for replacement. These decades-old vehicles are, literally, spontaneously exploding in flames. They are expensive to maintain, unsafe, uncomfortable, and without 30+ years of advancements in automotive technology and design. The Oshkosh NGDV, with first deliveries as early as 2023, will be a leap-ahead for the Postal Service. All of this is true.

However, the Biden Administration should have (if it didn’t) worked to have the announcement delayed for a review to make this a 100 percent electric (clean) vehicle acquisition in line with President Biden’s executive order.  Putting aside climate reality and the necessity for rapid movement, there is a simple true: even if they cost more to buy (a differential dropping every day), it costs far less to own an electric vehicle. Considering these will be on essentially every single US street six times a week for perhaps the next 30 years, there is no economic and financial justification for not going with a 100% clean (and nearly 100% electric) fleet. Every single one (and of them) delivered with an internal combustion engine will be a wasted investment.

Note:
As a quick response to the USPS announcement, I did take the time to detail how this will improve the life of the postal worker (how much a better vehicle it is) nor the myriad of benefit streams and reasons to go all-electric. As to the last, David Roberts provided an excellent discussion in A no-brainer stimulus idea: Electrify USPS mail trucks Electric vehicles for the US Postal Service would reduce noise, air, and carbon pollution in every community.

Also, something to consider. While there is a clear potential that the chosen NGDV will end up primarily being an electric-vehicle, the base model is an ICE. Modifying an ICE-based designed vehicle for an EV-variant is a sub-optimal path compared to bottom-up design and development as an electric vehicle.

UPDATE:

The Zero-Emission Transportation Alliance (ZETA) has come out with a statement: ZETA Opposes DeJoy Move to Buy Gas-Powered Vehicles.

Republicans are outraged, outraged I tell you, about President Biden’s nomination of Representative Deb Haaland‘s nomination to be Secretary of the Interior. Putting aside the tone-deaf nature of white men whining about Federal control of land to a Native American leader, the truthiness nature of attack lines is both astounding — and, sadly, not surprising. Over the weeks since the nomination leading into and in today’s Senate confirmation hearing, an interminable litany of deceit has peppered (if not been central) to Republican explanations of their opposition to this historic nomination.

In today’s hearing, alone, the number of false claims that President Biden is pursuing job-killing (rather than truthful job creation) energy paths forward are too rapid to keep track of. But false attacks on clean energy jobs aren’t the only line of attack. As another (stunning) example: Montana Republican Senator Steve Daines claimed that President Biden’s policies were already boosting pollution loads (said without any facial signs of self-reflection on hypocrisy) with a key example: the tar-sands super-polluter enabling Keystone XL pipeline permit cancellation. Yup, never mind the gigatons of tar-sands pollution, how dare President Biden lift Keystone XL’s permit since it would be “net zero by 2030” and thus cancelling Keystone, according to fossil-foolish Daines, boosts pollution. Living in alternative realities can, evidently, boost one’s campaign war chest.

In opposing Haaland, Republicans are making clear that Trump’s Biggest Lie isn’t in our past but part and parcel of today’s Republican Party. Like Trump’s frequently false assertion that the Green New Deal would cost $100 trillion based on a biased and (seriously) flawed “analysis” (that focused on inflated costs, for example, while even larger ignoring benefits), Republicans are asserting that Rep. Haaland’s co-sponsorship of the Green New Deal is grounds for opposing her nomination. A letter from 15 House Republicans (about the lead author) explicitly makes this point and, in doing so, cites the exact same deceptive source that underpinned Trump’s Biggest Lie. From that letter:

The harmful effects of the Green New Deal are well-documented, but it includes eliminating air travel, responsible petroleum development, and the use of non-electric vehicles, costing each American family $65,000 and the United States $93 trillion annually.

So much deceit in just one sentence (benefits, not harm; poorly assessed rather than well-documented; benefits rather than costs; …), but the repetition of the “$93 trillion” lie merits serious pushback. Some points:

• The Green New Deal proposals have far more than direct climate action but address social equity and resiliency (health care for all, job guarantees, and otherwise). Climate action is only a fraction of proposed Green New Deal investments.
  • And, the total Green New Deal investment requirement over 30 years would fall below $100T and, as per below, have outsized benefits. These expenditures would be investments with returns for the nation.
• For real understanding, that analysis focuses on (and inflates) costs in total isolation to other issues:
  • What would costs be without the proposed investments?
    • Just in direct health care, the Green New Deal path would lower societal economic costs $16T over a ten year period. (The $93T cost assertion includes $36T for health care but ignores that BAU (business as usual) would be $52T and thus the GND proposed path would save, again, $16T.)
  • What would benefits be beyond ‘business as usual’?
    • For example, with reduced pollution, how much would American worker productivity and student performance improve and thus boost the economy?
  • In other words, quality policy analysis does not focus just on discussing and assessing “cost” but is “cost/benefit” (better term: investment/return) analysis that helps decision-makers (and those involved in the policy discussion) have an understanding of net costs or, more accurately, net benefits to support decision-making.

The attacks on Rep. Haaland’s nomination are filled with deceit. Some of this is patently (head-slapping) obvious and some requires digging to provide truth. Just as with echoing Trump’s Biggest Lie, much (most?) of this is part and parcel of the decades-long fossil-foolish Republican Big Lie fostering predatory delay and denying climate science. To the extent that sunshine disinfects, these lies should not be allowed to propagate without challenge.

As Texans battle through serious cold with serious shortfalls in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) region (about 90% of Texas’ electricity load), fossil fuel propagandists have been out hot and heavy to distort the situation. Much like happened in 2011, cold has driven thermal power (primarily fossil gas but also coal, diesel, and nuclear) plants offline while driving up demand. Roughly 90 percent of the power sources in ERCOT’s planning for a peak winter event are thermal plants but roughly 40 percent of that capacity wasn’t online. Also as per 2011, some wind turbines have frozen but wind has continued to contribute to the grid more or less as ERCOT had in planning. And, much like happened in 2011, you can search far and wide in ‘conservative media’ and Republican commentary without finding a truthful discussion of the situation. Rather than highlight the core combination (spiking demand plus fossil fuel plants going offline), Fox News pundit after OANN pundit, Republican politician after Republican operative is out there falsely (FALSELY) blaming “windmills” and the “Green New Deal” for freezing Texans.

While many journalists and news outlets have sought to provide truth here, this has been (at best) uneven and with often deceptive framing. Some of this is due to ignorance, some sloppy both-siderism, and, as Ketan Joshi has laid out, there is a bit of click bait journalism going on.

As with all major blackout events, the fact that a range of fuel type failures contributed to this will be obscured by an excessive focus on renewables, leading to the faulty perception that renewables share all of the blame.

Whether purposeful or inadvertent, many media outlets are advancing and enabling deceit.

Here are just a few examples:

• E&E News’ Energy Wire went heavy with bothsiderism emphasizing “partisan arguments about whether to blame renewables or fossil fuels”.
• The Washington Post went out of its way to do ‘horse race’ ‘there isn’t truth’ bothersiderism journalism with a tweet that “Texas Gov. Greg Abbott blames wind turbines, Green New Deal policies for outages. Critics call that “a lie.””
• Staying with the Post, read this paragraph from columnist David von Drehle: “While demand surged, supply fell. Solar farms lost juice as snow clouds filled the skies. Wind turbines froze in the bitter cold. Icing was evidently a problem at steam-driven plants, too, whether powered by coal or natural gas.” While the material in this paragraph is true and even factual, it is absolutely not truth nor truthful. Any reader will conclude that the problem was increased demand along with failing renewables and that, maybe, there were some ‘oh by the way’ problems with fossil fuel systems.
• Bloomberg Green tweeted out “Researchers at an Arctic test site in Sweden are learning how to keep wind turbines generating through the harshest winter weather. That knowledge would have come in handy in Texas this week” as if cold-weather packages don’t exist that keep wind turbines operating without problems in cold weather in North Dakota, Iowa, Canada, and else.
• Staying with Bloomberg Green, how about this tweet which seemed to put everything on an equal playing field for ‘fault’: “As temperatures continued to fall, gas pipelines began to seize up, wind turbines started to freeze, and oil wells shut in — just as homes and businesses raised demand for heating to record levels.”
  • NOTE: Bloomberg Green has done some excellent reporting even as their have been tweets and parts of articles that falsely frame the situation in Texas.
• Recharge News tweets out: “As millions of Texans endure frozen blackouts, a furious row erupts over the role of #windpower.”
• CNN’s headline on Texas started “Frozen wind turbines …”

This is a pervasive problem not just isolated to a few outlets and a few tweets. Even outlets with reasonable stories do things like illustrate with wind turbines (remembering that a picture is worth 1,000 words …)

The Texas situation is complicated (with many details to come out in the months to come) and it is an emergency (with people dying and millions at risk) but it is not a situation where wind turbines are at fault nor are they core to the crisis. Any reporting that suggests otherwise, even if paragraph seven provides excellent and accurate analysis and details, is deceptive and damaging to the public interest.

Think about fossil fuel interest objectives — to practice predatory delay and maximize their profiteering for as long as possible by delaying climate action. As per Genevieve Gunther, key to this to make people believe climate action will hurt and that they need fossil fuels. Falsely blaming wind turbines for freezing Texans is doing exactly that. Journalists and media outlets who facilitate (knowlingly or otherwise) that false messaging are complicit in enabling that fossil foolish predatory delay.