President Obama has dispatched Secretary of State John Kerry to sign the Paris Climate Agreement today, an international deal to address climate change. The deal creates a “Green Climate Fund” to bankroll energy projects in far-flung nations, and the president intends to use billions of our tax dollars for it — without debate or permission from Congress.
Americans should be aware that this is merely a capper to the president’s aggressive, unilateral energy agenda. It has already been in the works for years here in the United States, and is making life less affordable for millions of hard-working people nationwide.
Consider several of the most expensive energy mandates to come from the Obama administration — and the effects they’ll have on America’s energy grid. The most recent is a set of devastating new power plant emissions standards, known as the Clean Power Plan. These carbon mandates require states to reduce emissions by roughly one-third, on average, by 2020. They’ll be forced to transition to costlier forms of energy, which will threaten well-paying jobs along the way.
How costly? An analysis conducted by the Institute for Energy Research found that energy sources like wind, for example, can be up to three to four times more expensive than current traditional sources. As a consequence, Energy Venture Analysis estimated that the draft version of the rule would raise the average family’s annual utility costs $680 per year by 2020. In some states, the final version of the rule contains even more draconian standards that would drive up the cost further.
Despite all this pain, the carbon mandates will bring very little gain. The Obama administration has all but conceded that the mandates will have virtually no impact on the environment or global temperatures, and are more about promoting “climate leadership.” The Environmental Protection Agency’s own climate models suggest the mandates will slow temperature rise just 0.018 degrees by the end of the century.
And that’s just the carbon mandates. The president’s other favored policy is directly subsidizing a few favored energy firms — usually those that specialize in renewable energy. These firms rely heavily on corporate welfare to prop up their business models, using government subsidies and tax credits to try to bring down the price of the energy they produce.
The results here haven’t been pretty, either. These handouts routinely fail to deliver affordable or economically viable energy. For instance, Tesla has received billions in subsidies to manufacture luxury electric cars only America’s richest can buy. The Ivanpah solar farm in California risks closure because it can’t produce enough electricity, even though it is backed by over $1 billion in taxpayer financing. Subsidizing companies like Solyndra and Abound Solar wasted billions more.
Americans end up paying for this agenda on both ends: Through their taxes to fund the corporate welfare, and through higher utility bills to pay for the costlier energy.
Signing the Paris Agreement today simply means the Obama administration is taking this failing model and using our tax dollars to help countries like China or Nigeria do the same thing. Backers of the Green Climate Fund are hoping to see it finance $100 billion in projects annually by 2020, and the U.S. is pledging $3 billion of that.
In fact, we deposited the first $500 million back in March, even though the funding was never approved by Congress. In pledging U.S. support to the GCF, the Obama administration has unilaterally committed the American people to subsidizing these foreign projects and further reshaping the global energy market according to the president’s agenda.
This agenda deserves a debate here at home before we try to export it overseas. Nearly eight years of energy policies such as the carbon mandates and energy subsidies have given us very little to show in terms of affordability or efficiency. Hard-working Americans should have more say in how their lives and businesses are powered.
In order to reclaim that say, Americans should demand their members of Congress use their power of the purse and pass measures to disapprove of President Obama’s international energy policies. That includes preventing tax dollars from being used in the “Green Climate Fund.” At a time when far too many families are still struggling, we shouldn’t have to also foot the bill for overseas energy mistakes.
Luke Hilgemann is the Chief Executive Officer of Americans for Prosperity, the nation’s foremost grassroots advocate for economic freedom. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
