Why is it that politicians bloviate about climate change when scientists have the solution well in hand? Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is a major transgressor on the issue.
Recently, Sanders took to the floor of the Senate to harangue at the fossil fuel companies. At issue was the side deal that Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) negotiated to build a pipeline in his state as his price for supporting the so-called Inflation Reduction Act. Sanders was having none of it.
Sanders tweeted, along with a video of his floor speech, “I’m once again asking my colleagues in the Senate to look at what is happening around the world and find the courage to stand up to the fossil fuel industry.” Stopping climate change demands nothing less than the abolition of the fossil fuels industry in the view of Sanders and the other Green New Dealers.
However, even as the progressive Left inveighs against oil, gas, and coal, scientists are developing ways to recycle carbon dioxide emissions to make useful products. While a company called NET has developed a natural gas power plant that captures and stores carbon dioxide, the private sector is working on ways to make everything from liquid fuel to food from the captured gas. Even Elon Musk would like to use carbon dioxide to make rocket fuel for his private space program.
Now, according to Phys.org, a group of researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago has developed a way to turn carbon dioxide into a substance called ethylene. Just add water and electricity and the process transforms 6 tons of carbon dioxide into 1 ton of ethylene. Manufacturers use ethylene to make a variety of plastic products, antifreeze, vinyl siding, and sterilizing agents for medical instruments.
The electricity can come from any source — say, a solar array. The power can even come from the same power plant that captures the carbon dioxide if the conversion operation is located next to it.
Ethylene is currently created by a process known as cracking, which produces 1.5 tons of carbon dioxide for every ton of ethylene created. The University of Illinois Chicago process is not only carbon-neutral but carbon-negative.
Why aren’t scientists’ methods for converting carbon dioxide into useful products entered into the climate change debate? On the one side, the Green New Dealers demand an end to the fossil fuel industry lest the world suffer a climate catastrophe. But the other side points out, rightly, that such an effort is likely to deprive people of the electricity they need to heat and cool their homes and run their businesses.
It would seem that science is offering a third way. We can address the problem of climate change while also providing the energy needed to keep an advanced, technological society running. We have no need for mandates for buying electric cars, for rolling blackouts, or for forcing people to maintain their thermostats at uncomfortable levels.
One can only suspect that Sanders and the rest of the Green New Dealers have it in for the fossil fuel companies and want to ignore anything that doesn’t fit their narrative. Sanders’s webpage on the Green New Deal refers to solutions such as carbon capture and nuclear power as “false solutions.” The senator does not explain why this is the case.
If one must guess the real reason why Sanders and the Green New Dealers seek to target fossil fuel companies, it is that they represent the ultimate examples of successful capitalism. They make a lot of money and in return provide much of the energy that drives the world. Sanders describes himself as a “democratic socialist.” Therefore, in his view, the oil drillers and the coal miners must be brought down for the sake of the socialist revolution. Climate change is just the excuse, and destroying capitalism is the reason.
Mark Whittington, who writes frequently about space and politics, has published a political study of space exploration titled Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon? as well as The Moon, Mars and Beyond, and, most recently, Why is America Going Back to the Moon? He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.
