Monday, Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson opened his program with a sharp rebuke of so-called green energy policies that have wreaked havoc on the country as an Arctic blast makes its way across the United States.
Carlson focused on failures in Texas, where millions suffered power losses in the wake of the colder weather, and said more of that should be expected with the left’s energy policies.
Transcript as follows:
CARLSON: Well, the Green New Deal, has come, believe it or not to the State of Texas and now, we’re here with the report. How’s it working out so far?
Well, the good news is all that alternative energy seems to have had a remarkable effect on the climate as intended. Last night, parts of Texas got to temperatures that we see in Alaska. In fact, they were the same as they were in Alaska. So global warming is no longer a pressing concern in Houston, we’ve solved that problem.
The bad news is, they don’t have electricity. The windmills froze, so the power grid failed.
Millions of Texans woke up this morning freezing. There was no heat, no traffic lights, and no cell service. Schools closed, cars crashed. Hospitals canceled surgeries.
In Fort Worth, people had to boil their water because with no electricity, it couldn’t be purified. The ironically named Electric Reliability Council of Texas which oversees the grid had no solution to any of this. They simply told people to stop using so much power to keep warm.
So in Houston, hundreds of shivering Texans headed to the Civic Center like refugees to keep from freezing to death. Some people in Texas almost certainly did freeze to death today. That’s what happens when it gets that cold.
Later this week, we’ll learn just how many more were killed by carbon monoxide poisoning as they tried to keep warm with jerry-rigged heaters and barbecues and car exhausts. That happens every time. When the power goes out, even advanced societies become primitive and dangerous. People die.
We’ve seen it happen repeatedly in California for years now. Rolling blackouts in a purportedly first world state that is slipping steadily into chaos.
But in Texas? Who saw that coming? And not just because Texas is mostly Republican. If there’s one thing you would think, Texas would be able to do is keep the lights on. Most electricity comes from natural gas and Texas produces more of that than any place on the continent.
There are huge natural gas deposits all over Texas. Texas is an oil and gas state famously. Running out of energy in Texas is like starving to death at the grocery store. You can only do it on purpose, and Texas did.
Rather than celebrate and benefit from their state’s vast natural resources, politicians took the fashionable route and became recklessly reliant on so-called alternative energy, meaning windmills.
Fifteen years ago, there were virtually no wind farms in Texas. Last year, roughly a quarter of all electricity generated in the state came from wind. Local politicians were pleased by this. They bragged about it like there was something virtuous about destroying the landscape and degrading the power grid.
Just last week, Governor Greg Abbott proudly accepted something called the Wind Leadership Award given with gratitude by a company getting rich from green energy.
So it was all working great until the day it got cold outside, the windmills failed like the silly fashion accessories they are and people in Texas died, a lot more of them than died at the Capitol on January 6, by the way, just for reference.
Now, we are telling you all this not to beat up on the State of Texas, it is a great state, actually. But to give you some sense about what’s about to happen to you, to every state. We’re not speculating on that. Here’s the new President explaining his plan.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: In my view, we’ve already waited too long to deal with this climate crisis. We can’t wait any longer. That’s why I’m signing today an Executive Order to supercharge our administration’s ambitious plan to confront the existential threat of climate change and it is an existential threat.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: He is reading a script. Climate crisis, existential threat, ambitious plan — you hear those phrases a lot, and you’ll notice that they are all suspiciously non-precise. So what do they mean for you?
Well, they mean higher energy prices for starters. Gas is already up in case you haven’t noticed. Electricity will follow. Higher costs hurt the weakest. Inflation always does. But it’s worse than that.
Green Energy inevitably means blackouts and someday that may change as technology progresses. But as of right now, in the current state of technology, that is true. Green Energy means a less reliable power grid. Period.
It means failures like the ones we’re seeing now in Texas. That’s not a talking point. It’s not a political slogan. We’re not taking money from Exxon-Mobil to say it. Again, that is true. It’s science, so of course, they’re denying it.
Here’s our new climate czar taking a quick break from spewing carbon in his private jet to lecture the rest of us about a topic he personally knows nothing about: private-sector jobs and how more windmills are going to generate tons of them.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN KERRY, U.S. SPECIAL PRESIDENTIAL ENVOY FOR CLIMATE: The President of the United States has expressed in every comment he has made about climate the need to grow the new jobs that pay better that are cleaner that, I mean —
You know, you look at the consequences of black lung for a miner, for instance, and measure that against the fastest-growing jobs in the United States before COVID was solar power technician.
And similarly, you have the second fastest-growing job pre-COVID was wind turbine technician. This is happening.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: This is happening. So, hear us, please, America’s most mistreated working class. John Kerry has a plan for you, settle down, John Kerry is here.
Now the old plan, you’ll remember was coding. They were going to learn to code, all the guys in pickup trucks were going to run the internet after we sent their jobs to China. That was the plan — learn to code, guys in t-shirts.
In the end, of course, we just imported people from China to code. So that didn’t actually happen. But John Kerry has another idea.
High school educated rural people are going to be wind turbine technicians. So what they used to do with transmissions, whatever it is that was, they’re going to do with windmills. Put bearings in them or lube them or something. So everybody wins.
Now, it’s possible that John Kerry actually believes that, maybe he has never been within 20 feet of a wind turbine, possible. He definitely doesn’t live near one. They don’t have wind farms in Aspen or Martha’s Vineyard and they’re not getting them.
John Kerry himself once fought to keep wind farms out of sight of his summer house on Nantucket. That’s hypocritical you might say, yes, obviously. But it’s not surprising.
People who support wind farms, as a rule, live very far from wind farms. People who live near wind farms have a totally different view and why wouldn’t they? How would you like a massive power plant in your backyard humming and buzzing and chopping up birds? That’s what a wind turbine is.
If you’re ever in rural America, go see one for yourself. You’ll be shocked by how awful it is once you get up close. Your first thought may be, “This is supposed to be good for the environment?
Wind farms are one of those ideas you can only support if you don’t know too much about them, and maybe that’s why there has never been mass popular support for them.
No large group of citizens has ever demanded that some Goldman Sachs backed company destroy the natural environment with Chinese-made windmills that don’t work when it’s cold out.
Wait, more expensive and much less reliable? Ugly, inefficient, and made by people who hate us, and we can kill endangered species? I’d like some of that. In fact, make it a double.
No one anywhere has ever said that. But it doesn’t matter because green energy is the ultimate inside game. A tiny number of people profit from it from government subsidies and regulated prices, everyone else gets a moral lecture about climate change. And anyone who complains about any of it gets called a Nazi by Cory Booker. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ): There’s a lot of people now that are blowing back on the Green New Deal. They’re like, oh, it’s impractical. Oh, it’s too expensive. Oh, it’s all of this.
If we used to govern our dreams that way, we would have never gone to the moon.
And when the planet has been in peril in the past, who came forward to save Earth from the scourge of Nazi and totalitarian regimes? We came forward.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Oh, it’s impractical, mocks a guy who has literally never had a job. Accept your windmills, bigots.
You hear that a lot. You’re about to hear it a whole lot more.
The problem is the demagogues like Cory Booker have no earthly idea what a wind farm is. They don’t know how to run a power grid or anything else for that matter.
They talk, they brag, but they don’t build anything, much less fix or maintain it because they can’t. They have no skills.
And if you don’t believe that, take a look at what they have done to our cities. Not a single major American city is prettier or more functional than it was in 1950, seventy years ago.
The parks that previous generations so lovingly built are filled with vagrants and junkies. The monuments they constructed are covered with spray paint. Public transportation is a disgrace. It’s filthy. The streets are dangerous.
Are you really surprised that Cory Booker was once the Mayor of Newark, New Jersey? You shouldn’t be. Cory Booker couldn’t fix your ice maker, much less understand your wind farm. None of these people can.
It’s bad enough that they control the Sociology Department over at your local Community College, but the power grid? No way. They can’t get within a hundred yards of it.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.