President Biden's climate czar John Kerry testified today before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
He said this is a historical moment to grab the opportunity to transition to clean energy and even bigger than the industrial revolution. No grandiosity there. Listen and weep: "This opportunity to transition to clean energy is without doubt the largest economic opportunity the world has seen since the industrial revolution."
Among other things, Mr. Kerry wants the U.S. to spend $100 billion for less developed countries so they can make this grandiose transition to clean energy. He wants to end gas powered cars and go 100% electric by 2035. He believes the so-called climate crisis is a threat to our national security.
He's fallen in love with the misnamed "Inflation Reduction Act," which he says has already created 100,000 jobs and he says every step he's taken is based on the best science available. Pheww! Breathtaking. I'm gasping for air! For clean air, of course.
With all this said, by our climate czar, let me add a couple of notes to his song book. First of all, he's a cabinet member who has never been confirmed by the Senate. He's got a 45-member staff. He jets all around the globe. He may well be making climate deals or climate treaties that no one knows about because it's basically a rogue operation and he is not held accountable to anybody. There's no congressional oversight and today he wouldn't talk about his operations today before the Foreign Affairs Committee.
According to the Unleash Prosperity Hotline, House Oversight Chairman James comer is hauling Kerry before his committee to explain how he can unilaterally sign the U.S. up for these pricey climate agreements. None of this is constitutional. There's been no congressional appropriation and basically nobody knows what this guy's doing.
Additionally, on the point of science, I want to again refer back to the Joe Biden's Council of Economic Advisers and his Office of Management and Budget that together just published a white paper which basically says modestly warmer temperatures like 2-4 degrees Fahrenheit has no impact on the economy.
Over the last 125 years, a 2%+ temperature jump led to estimates of a one-half of 1% level of GDP. That's not an annual loss, that's the loss in the level of output over 125 years. Think we can live with that? It is miniscule. You can't really count it. It’s just a bunch of white noise. Do you think we could live with that? Well, we've done pretty well over the last century and a quarter. Don't ya think? And going forward, using U.N. estimates of a roughly 2 degrees-plus or even maybe 4 degrees-plus warmer temperatures will again have virtually no economic impact over the next 80-100 years.
We've talked about this before. This is a CEA/OMB white paper. It is an honest effort to catalogue the science. There is no industrial revolution for climate purposes. There is no existential threat. There is no banking collapse. There is no need to shut down fossil fuels. There is a small warming trend, no denying it, but it is not the apocalyptic vision or version of Mr. Biden or Mr. Kerry, or Ms. Yellen, or the hordes of greenies inhabiting the Biden administration.
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By the way, talking about science, American technological inventions, innovations and advances are likely to produce not only declining carbon as we have seen, but also fabulous prosperity opportunities for this great country of ours. Fabulous! That is, as long as we stop the Biden command and control central planning policies to turn everything green overnight and maybe somebody like Chairman Comer or whoever will lasso John Kerry, tighten the rope and tie him up to a good sturdy fence post for the next hundred years.
We're going to talk later in the show to Manhattan Institute Economist Mark Mills about the unpopularity and impossibility of 100% electric vehicles. That's my riff.
This article is adapted from Larry Kudlow’s opening commentary on the July 13, 2023, edition of "Kudlow."
