The Super Dupers

“A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.” ― H.L. Mencken

People love authenticity and honesty. They are universally valued traits, foundational to friendships, family relationships, business dealings and even election outcomes.

The converse is also true, which partly accounts for what plagues politicians - in addition to their own ignorance of science, economics, and the real world, not to mention their ideologies.

In George H.W. Bush’s 1988 speech accepting the party’s nomination for President at the 1988 Republican National Convention he stated:

….I'm the one who will not raise taxes. My opponent now says he'll raise them as a last resort, or a third resort. But when a politician talks like that, you know that's one resort he'll be checking into. My opponent won't rule out raising taxes. But I will. And the Congress will push me to raise taxes and I'll say no. And they'll push, and I'll say no, and they'll push again, and I'll say, to them, "Read my lips: no new taxes."

Two years later the Democrat-controlled Congress was pushing hard for tax hikes to close the budget deficit. Bush tried to thread the needle and keep his pledge but in the 1990 budget compromise he ultimately agreed to increase several taxes.

We long for the days when the budget deficit was only ~$220 billion. Bush, as history notes, got crushed by a saxophone-playing guy whose authenticity factor was off the charts. Until questioned by a Grand Jury about Monica Lewinsky.

Authenticity Took A Blow | Clinton Library

Democrats are unhappy (putting it diplomatically) with their inability to push through a carbon tax or carbon “cap and trade” since 2009. As a result, they are using the administrative state to circumvent Congress and the electorate, while feigning plausible deniability.

Whether the issue is CO2 emissions and “cap and trade” or “carbon tax,” pipelines and oil and gas development, or more recent attempts like the back door banning of natural gas furnaces and stoves, Administrative Statists™ loudly protest they are not “banning” anything. But that is a dupe; they are doing exactly that – bleeding America to death by a thousand cuts, with effective bans through regulation, all while smiling and promising it’s about protecting you and the planet.

This type of subterfuge used to be more subtle and distant in time from earlier political promises. That was before the “progressive” environmental Democrats commandeered the party’s platform and its policies. Today, subtlety has been replaced by the boldness to try and dupe America to its face, and even to rub your nose in it like a bad a puppy only days after loudly denying banning anything.

Perhaps the boldest episode of The Super Dupers yet was last week’s announcement by the Biden administration of its intent to regulate tailpipe emissions from vehicles under the Clean Air Act (CAA). This is a thinly veiled electric vehicle (EV) back door mandate using the CAA as an administrative weapon under the auspices of harmful air emissions.

3 Card Mickey

As Ted Nordhaus of The Breakthrough Institute has succinctly put it:

“The idea behind making clean energy cheap was never to use subsidies as a reverse carbon price for mature technologies that simply cost too much.” 

But that’s exactly what Democrats did after cap and trade failed in 2009, and because a carbon tax has been politically impossible ever since.

The “reverse carbon price” took the form of subsidies that artificially made wind, solar, biofuels and biomass cheaper. This is a taxpayer dupe designed to overcome their failure to legislate coal, natural gas, and oil out of existence.

A carbon tax or “cap and trade” would have cost taxpayers tens of billions (rising to hundreds of billions or more) annually, but at least those costs would have been more transparent to taxpayers.

In a 2013 NPR interview, MIT economist John Reilly estimated a carbon tax would add 25 cents per gallon to the price of gas in year one, rising to about $1 per gallon by 2050. That would be roughly equal to taxing CO2 emissions at ~$25/ton rising to more than $100/ton over time.

The U.S. consumed about 129 billion gallons of gas in 2021. So assuming that the carbon tax envisioned by Reilly in 2013 was now about 30 cents per gallon, the tax would currently raise “revenue” of about $40 billion per year.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the failed 2009 cap and trade attempt by Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA), commonly known as the “Waxman-Markey” bill, would raise “revenue” of $845 billion over 10 years, or $253 billion over 5 years.  The average of those figures works out to around $55 billion annually.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, in March 2009 Jason Furman, Deputy Director of Obama’s National Economic Council told a bipartisan group of Senate staffers that he thought Waxman-Markey’s cap and trade system could eventually generate “revenue” of $1.3 - $1.9 trillion per year.  Furman’s figure was 2-3 times more than what the Obama administration’s official 2010 budget proposed. Their budget figure was $646 billion, which averages out to ~$65 billion per year.

Democrats have not been able to pass a carbon tax or cap and trade since. But a reasonable and conservative cost estimate for either would have been ~$40 - $60 billion annually and it would have been more transparent to taxpayers. Because neither happened, they spent tens of billions annually in other ways far less transparent to the average voter. A few examples help drive home the point.

A 2009 CBO report titled “Federal Expenditures on Climate Policy” noted that the rescue bill passed by Congress in 2009 (the “American Reinvestment and Recovery Act”) allocated “$35.7 billion by CBO’s estimation” for government efforts to fight climate change for one year – 2010.

Federal Subsidies for Climate Change 2010 | Source: Congressional Budget Office

U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports like this one document that federal taxpayer subsidies for renewables totaled over $15 billion annually from 2010 – 2015. Digging into the details, when the subsidies for “transmission, conservation and end use” related to wind, solar, biomass, biofuels, hydrogen, etc. are included, the annual figure is well over $20 billion.

These direct costs were not the only ones; billions more annually in indirect costs are being incurred. These include higher electricity and fuel costs as well as uncounted but very real expenses involving the electricity grid just to name a few.

In a January post we showed renewable energy subsidies from 2010, 2013 and 2015. States that heavily adopted or mandated renewable energy like California have much higher electricity prices today. In another post we showed how Democrats’ war on fossil fuels, threats to bankrupt the oil industry, and support of the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) movement reduced global oil/gas capital investment by about half from 2014 to 2020. These actions have contributed to a demonstrable upward effect on global fuel and electricity prices since 2021 by constraining new supply.

Because of the intermittent nature of renewables, traditional generation plants (like natural gas) have to turn on and off quickly as wind and solar peak and fall. The components of thermal electricity generation plants (i.e., coal, gas, fuel oil) suffer added wear as concentrations of renewables on the electric grid increase. Alternating between load shedding and quickly ramping up to accommodate renewables’ wild fluctuations versus running under constant loads throughout the day takes a toll on expensive machines.

Taxpayer funding for renewables was dramatically reduced between 2016 and 2020 for obvious reasons (code: Orange Man). But then came the Inflation Reduction Act which committed an inferno of another $369 billion of your tax dollars over the next ten years - about $37 billion/year - to additional federal action to fight climate change.

Once it became clear all of this chicanery would be tolerated by voters, progressive Democrats began deploying increasingly bold dupes to achieve their climate goals, apparently until something stops them. So far, nothing has thwarted their efforts.

In June 2022, the Biden Administration announced new “energy efficiency” rules (not bans!) targeting residential gas furnaces. They framed the scheme to consumers as a money-saving measure, but the $60 in annual savings alluded to near the bottom of the announcement is laughable and belies the real intent. Invoking the Defense Production Act to rapidly expand production of heat pumps (to replace gas furnaces) one week before the gas furnace announcement was a nice touch to signal the real goal of the new rules: we’re not taking away your gas furnaces and we’re not banning them. We’re simply creating “energy efficiency” standards so strict that they will become a de facto ban. We’re doing this to protect you. You can thank us later.

Then in January of this year, Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) Commissioner Richard Trumpka (a Biden appointee) caused an uproar about gas stoves, saying in a Bloomberg News interview (emphasis added):

This is a hidden hazard. Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”

In the best article we’ve seen yet on the supposed “hazards”, Doomberg cited the definitive study on indoor air emissions risk from gas stoves. We won’t spoil the article’s superb punchline highlighting the study’s conclusions about asthma and gas stoves. Suffice it to say, Commissioner Trumpka must have missed it.

Two days after Trumpka’s hairbrained announcement, a White House spokesperson told CNN:

“The President does not support banning gas stoves – and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is independent, is not banning gas stoves.”

All of forty-five days later Commissioner Trumpka proudly announced the CPSC’s “Request for Information (RFI) on Gas Stove Hazards and Potential Solutions.” Color us shocked when the end result of this process is not a ban, but a series of tightening standards so strict either no new gas stoves can meet them, or the few that can are cost prohibitive for all but the wealthiest 1% of Americans. (Just like gas furnaces!)

Nice Granite. Healthy Cooking. | Twitter

But the ultimate Super Dupe in this pattern of recent behavior may be Biden’s subterfuge last week introducing stricter auto tailpipe emissions standards for vehicles under the Clean Air Act. Just like gas furnace and stoves, this new “standard” technically is not outlawing internal combustion engine (ICE) cars, but it’s effectively doing exactly that through the regulatory ligature.

We’ll skip the long history of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ) standards Congress implemented in 1975 after the Arab Oil Embargo. In brief, CAFÉ dictates the average miles per gallon (MPG) vehicles sold in America must achieve across each manufacturers fleet.

Over the last 30 years the standard has tripled, with Obama imposing a 54.5 MPG requirement during his presidency.  But through adaptation, innovation (e.g., 4-cylinder twin-turbocharged engines), and model consolidation, manufacturers have kept pace, delaying a forced transition to electric vehicles (EVs) at the rate desired by regressive progressive environmentalists. This delay has angered Democrats into bolder action.

With the new vehicle tailpipe emissions standards, Democrats and the Biden administration are pushing to eliminate ICE vehicles as quickly as possible in favor of EVs. The administration estimates that the new standards could convert up to two-thirds of vehicles sold in America to EVs by 2032. As noted by the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board April 12^th (emphasis added):

“The EPA lacks the legal authority to mandate EVs, but it will do so indirectly by setting CO2 emissions standards for 2027 through 2032. The standards are so strict that auto makers must electrify their fleets to meet them.”

EPA Director Michael Regan was questioned by reporters following EPA’s announcement of the new tailpipe emissions rule. Commissioner Regan said the quiet part out loud (emphasis ours):

“We are not prescribing any mandates, and we’re not driving any particular technology out of business, so to speak.”

Super Duper Smile | EPA Director Michael Regan Wikipedia

Time to turn the lights on, call a cab and send everyone home to sober up. 65% of the new cars sold in America in 2032 will not be EVs. Whether the reasons are cost, the resource constraints we’ve written about, electric grid limitations or any of a number of other reasons, that level of adoption is not going to happen no matter what Charlaticians™ say, what laws they pass, or any Super Dupes.

In a November report by the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Lab, researchers found that all 2.1 million vehicles on U.S. roads in 2021 eliminated the use of 690 million gallons of gas. That sounds like a lot until you understand that this amount equals just 0.54% of all gas consumption that year, or about 1.8 days’ worth.

The easy part was finding a couple million early adopters who could afford the latest tech gadget and who were provided heavy taxpayer-funded incentives. Even when reduced over time, taxpayer subsidies sold most of these cars, meaning middle class workers paid for subsidies to wealthy Americans who did not need them to buy expensive EVs. But no reasonable amount of incentive is going to overcome the physical constraints, economic costs, or range issues sufficient to get to 65% of all U.S. new vehicle sales in 10 years.

Eliminating CO2 emissions from air and vehicle transport is a heavy lift, especially converting the last 50% of our ~278 million vehicles. The law of diminishing returns is going to crush promises, hopes and lies of 65% by 2032. It is no different than all the pablum you’ve heard for more than a decade promising “net zero emissions” by 2040 or 2050.

All of this is Cosplay, and it is hurting the world’s poorest the most – here in America and across the developing world. Wind, solar, biofuel and biomass barely provide 7% of global primary energy consumption, and electricity only accounts for around 20% of global CO2 emissions.

Now that Democrats have proven to themselves (and voters) they can get away with promising not to explicitly ban things under environmental premises then do so by regulating them out of practical existence, they have spawned a virus. Local ordinances have sprung up in blue states across America attempting to ban new gas hookups and gas furnaces.

But there are encouraging signs. In a Substack post this week, energy writer Robert Bryce noted:

Three federal court judges just rescued your gas stove and other gas-fired appliances from the nanny state.

Yesterday, in a unanimous opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the nation’s first ban on natural gas, put in place by the City of Berkeley in 2019, violates federal law. The three judges found that the city’s ordinance was preempted by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975, which prohibits the implementation of regulations that favor one type of fuel over another.

Absent telling them “No more,” they will not stop.

It’s Saving You. Trust Me! | iStock

Is it ignorance or is it malevolence? Ignorance alone cannot explain these actions taken by Super Duper Democrat leaders. Administrative Statism™ - using regulation to ban disfavored technologies under false pretenses at the expense of the electorate - is dishonest and will come back to bite Democrats.

We’ve written about bad bipartisan environmental and energy policy in prior posts. It troubles us to write such a partisan piece. But the Super Duper-ism we’re witnessing happens to be a highly partisan effort. This is one of those times where there is no choice but to call out Charlaticians™.

We will not solve environmental problems by deceiving electorates. Nor will we lift billions out of poverty or solve the problem of 800 million still in chronic hunger.

Administrative Statism™ is the wrong answer.