An Expensive Transition

By: Chris Johnson

This time of year as I sit in my home in rural West Michigan farm country and hear the heavy farm equipment rumble by, I’m reminded of how delicately our society is balanced.

How civil would society be if the shelves this equipment keeps full were suddenly empty?

I recently had the opportunity to drive from Michigan to Pennsylvania to visit family. Every time I make this trip, I’m struck by the impressive number of semi-trucks – each one carrying who knows how many met needs, fulfilled dreams, and full bellies and each product costing considerably more to ship than they did just a few years ago.

Rising diesel prices – over six dollars a gallon in some places across the country – also deeply impact farmers, who use thousands of gallons a week or even a day. This on top of the dramatically increased prices of fertilizer and seed. Grocery shoppers have already seen substantial price increases and bare shelves, as truckers and farmers weigh whether or not it is worth the effort to plant and transport when the cost to themselves is so great.

Meanwhile, President Biden continues to paint a rosy picture of high fuel prices, saying we are ushering in green energy. Every twig on the executive branch holds a black bird crowing about it, from the energy secretary to the transportation secretary to the President himself. Jennifer Granholm, Michigan’s former governor and now Biden’s Energy Secretary literally said, “if you drive an electric car, this would not be affecting you, clearly.“

As the administration pushes EVs and car companies follow suit (Super Bowl viewers may remember how every major car company advertised their efforts in this field), experts are predicting more electricity blackouts. Not because of the massive new load from charging electric vehicles, but because of climate change, of course. Here’s this excerpt from CNN: “’The reality is the electricity system is old and a lot of the infrastructure was built before we started thinking about climate change,’ said Romany Webb, a researcher at Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. ‘It’s not designed to withstand the impacts of climate change.’”

Not only was our grid not designed for “climate change,” but it wasn’t designed to fuel the commutes of millions of Americans while simultaneously being choked at the outset by eliminating efficient energy sources like burning coal and natural gas.

This “transition” comes at a remarkably high price. We pay for it in the government programs that incentivize switching to preferred energy sources. We pay for it at the pump where we are penalized for choosing the “WRONG” energy source. And, we pay for it at the store, when the goods we purchase are made unaffordable by high transportation costs that are limited to using the “WRONG” energy source by the laws of physics.

We are enduring the consequences of our last election right now, but we have another one in November. Let’s not waste it.

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