The Biden Administration wants America to make emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases amount to “net zero”—that is, for emissions and removal of GHGs to be equal—by 2050. The Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA, established in 1974 under the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development following the 1973 oil crisis to ensure that oil supplies remained secure) has released a new study purporting to show how to get there.

But Dr. David Kreutzer, Senior Economist at the Institute for Energy Research, says the IEA’s Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector actually shows that the Biden-Harris plan is “a complete loser for Americans.”

Among other things that make “Net Zero by 2050” ill advised:

• it would require massive increase in mining, transporting, and refining of minerals, many of them toxic;
• because wind and solar, the primary alternatives to fossil fuels favored by advocates of “Net Zero by 2050,” require far more of those minerals per unit of energy produced, they’ll force increased costs for everything else that requires minerals;
• most of that mining and refining happens in China, Congo, and other places with poor environmental standards, often using child or slave labor;
• the pursuit of “net zero,” whether by 2050 or any other time in the foreseeable future, will make free, democratic countries of the West increasingly dependent on China and other countries with autocratic governments, posing serious threats to national security and global peace. (Take a careful look at the chart above.)

Kreutzer discussed all this and more with me on Cornwall Alliance’s From the Stacks livestream program Tuesday, July 27, 2021. If you missed it, you can see it any time on Facebook or YouTube.