The Avatar President Arrives: Cookies for Human Props; Pure Hell for the Economy
A note to readers: this is an old post on the archive website for Promethean PAC. It was written when we were known as LaRouche PAC, before changing our name to Promethean PAC in April 2024. You can find the latest daily news and updates on www.PrometheanAction.com. Additionally, Promethean PAC has a new website at www.PrometheanPAC.com.
Less than a week into his occupation of the White House, the Avatar President, Joe Biden, has, not surprisingly, launched a head-on assault against the U.S. economy, at the behest of his imperial masters. But unlike during previous, similar wholesale looting attacks and outright robbery of the population, President Trump awakened the U.S. citizenry to their power, and they will not go back to tolerating a less than human condition.
Now is the time for organizing our fellow Americans to discover and apply the principles of the American System of Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon LaRouche, not merely to defend our economy from the global financial parasite being launched anew in Davos, Switzerland as the “Great Reset,” but to now rebuild our nation as a City upon a Hill, a beacon of hope for all mankind.
As Jill Biden handed out cookies to the National Guard troops surrounding the White House, who stood like extras in some Orwellian plot, Biden signed orders revoking President Trump’s establishment of the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission. That Commission’s purpose was to restore knowledge of America’s true historical mission to end oligarchical slavery around the globe. He also revoked President Trump’s executive order preventing the use of racist “diversity and inclusion” brainwashing sessions on federal employees, contractors, and applicable grantees.
Additional EOs, signed Wednesday through Friday, put the U.S. back in the Paris Climate Agreement, reversed reductions of vehicle emission standards, suspended new oil and gas leasing and drilling permits for lands and waters largely in the Gulf and West, placed a temporary moratorium on oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, revoked the permit for the Keystone pipeline, and reestablished the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases, which would impose a green fascist agenda on our nation.
No one who actually understands the prerequisites for an expanding economy would move to draw down energy supplies. Economic progress requires more energy, never less. Service jobs are not the same as productive jobs. Productive jobs are those that make necessary, physical changes on nature for humans. The source of this wealth, as physical economist Lyndon LaRouche developed, is the unique, God-given creative powers in each individual. That creativity is applied in fields such as industry, mining, advanced manufacturing, and agriculture. It is driven by new scientific breakthroughs that increase the power of that very labor. The proven method for creating the density of such scientific breakthroughs necessary to power us out of the present depression is to undertake mission-oriented crash programs.
Rebuilding America
Today, despite the resounding economic success of the FDR economic recovery program that began in 1933, and despite JFK’s successful Apollo program that took us to the Moon, economists and politicians now understand almost nothing about how and why crash programs work as economic drivers—or, what even qualifies as a crash program. Already in 2010, U.S. energy consumption per capita was 30% below what had been forecast by a 1962 assessment, “Civilian Nuclear Power—A Report to the President,” prepared as the request of JFK by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission under the direction of nuclear scientist Glenn Seaborg.
The attached graphs, prepared by LaRouche PAC’s science team leader Ben Deniston, show the decline in total energy consumption per capita in industry and the virtual “flat-lining” of energy consumption for other sectors. The second graph shows the decline in industrial electricity production, measured per capita. Consider, that it is increases in energy flux density and increasing potential relative population density that Lyndon LaRouche defined as the basis for measuring the “durable survival” of nation-states, and humanity at large.
Here is graphed U.S. total energy consumption over time, simply converted to kilowatt hours:
Here is a graph of U.S. electricity consumption by sector, over time:
As Ben Denniston has presented in useful detail, in particular in Parts 4 and 5 of his series on energy flux density, U.S. electricity production measured per capita, across industry, but penetrating transport, agriculture, and civil society, is now approximately 50% below a level adequate for sustained industrial growth—growth in the U.S. economy we must achieve if we are to provide for a future. Think of what is required, in increased energy consumption, to reverse de-industrialization and rebuild the United States as a “manufacturing superpower” as President Trump seeks. This requires a crash development program in energy, water, and other areas.
After 50 years, President Donald Trump has revived precisely this “Apollo spirit” in science, both to crush COVID-19 and take mankind back to the Moon and beyond. It is the method which produces vast new discoveries in basic science and new technologies because the mandate of the mission requires discovery itself for the mission to achieve success. In the Apollo program, for example, almost all of the necessary discoveries made to facilitate getting to the Moon were completely unknown at the beginning of the mission. Likewise, a crash program to begin to bring fusion energy online in the coming decade or two, to realize a required U.S. total energy consumption of 150,000 kW per capita, from current stagnant levels of approximately 100,000 kW per capita. On a global scale much more is required, and to achieve rising energy use levels the United States would become a leading capital goods exporter of modular and other nuclear and thermonuclear technologies.
One of the Mission Control flight support teams for Apollo 7, 1968.
To do this, as we did in the 1950s and into the 1960s, a healthy economy needs to have roughly 50% of the labor force employed as productive operatives, and about 5% directly employed in scientific and technological research and development, with the economy operating in a technologically progressive mode producing the technologically-improving capital and consumer goods required by the domestic population, and available for export and trade. This requires major ongoing cycles of physical capital investment, by which the economy is bootstrapped upwards. This requires massive increases in power generation. Today, less than 25% of the U.S. workforce is productively employed—that is, making the physical changes on nature required for man’s continued existence. And less than 2% of our workforce is directly employed in scientific and technological R&D.
Schemes of the Avatar’s Ventriloquists
Implementing the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” hoax is the plain intent of those now occupying the White House and environs, creating a dystopia of gig workers, impoverishment, and mass surveillance. At least six major federal Cabinet-level posts are now devoted to the imposition of this green fascist hoax on the United States, including the Secretaries of Energy, Transportation, and Interior; the EPA Administrator; and the new “Climate Czar,” John Kerry. Then there is Susan Rice, the former Obama National Security Adviser (remember those endless wars?), now to be director of the Avatar’s Domestic Policy Council. It is proclaimed that Rice “knows government inside and out and will carry through the president-elect’s vision of a newly empowered Domestic Policy Council and turbocharge the effort to build back better.” Build Back Better is the official slogan of the World Economic Forum (Davos) “Great Reset.”
Climate Change Hoax: At least five major areas of “climate policy” are being rolled out, all with propaganda similar to a retread of Jimmy Carter’s infamous 1977 “moral equivalent of war” (MEOW) speech attacking fossil fuels.
Renewable Power (De-)Generation: The Avatar’s administration intends to use mandates and subsidies to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy to achieve 80% renewable electric energy by 2050. What is the cost of increasing the renewable share of electricity generation from 18% now to 80% by 2050?
According to one 2019 estimate, from the Institute for Energy Research, the cost of new wind and solar units needed for a 100% renewables standard would be about $1.5 trillion. Adding the required battery storage would raise the cost to about $4 trillion and adding new transmission lines would increase the cost to $4.5 trillion. In addition, the United States currently has about 200,000 miles of high-voltage transmission. The report estimates that achieving 100% renewables would require doubling the transmission lines, which would add $700 billion to the total price. The cost estimate does not include additional supply chain costs that could result from the increased demand for steel, construction equipment, or other supplies, nor the stranded costs of industries that would be disrupted. An 80% carbon-free target with natural gas generation providing the other 20% would reduce new battery storage costs by 60%.
That is simply to produce roughly the same amount of electricity we are producing today! Instead, as summarized above, we need to be producing 50-100% more per capita. Note that in the above quoted estimate, the lower, 80% carbon-free target—as proposed—would only reduce battery costs, leaving an estimated overall cost at some $7-8 trillion. (This is only one estimate; but it is very, very hard to get any estimate from a “green” pro-renewable think-tank or academic source.) Another estimate foresees $285 billion in annual capital costs with the operation and maintenance costs resulting in an average annual expenditure of about $423.9 billion each year, through the year 2050. For perspective, total revenue raised in the United States from electricity sales in 2017 was $390 billion.
If households are to maintain their use of electricity as well as charge their electric vehicles, more electricity generation would be needed, perhaps another 1 billion MWh per year.
Further, the Avatar’s campaign originally proposed the 80% renewables target by 2050, but later accelerated the timeline to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2035. This is almost guaranteed to produce chaos. Is this an intent?
A steam turbine with the case opened. Such turbines produce most of the electricity used today. Electricity consumption and living standards are highly correlated. By Siemens Pressebild
Passenger Vehicles: The attack here has already begun with the Executive Order reversing reductions of vehicle emission standards. New mileage requirements will follow. Achieving a 35-miles-per-gallon (mpg) increase has been estimated to add as much as $12,000 additional cost per vehicle. An electric vehicle can now cost anywhere from 10% to more than 40% more than a similar gasoline-only model, according to Consumer Reports. Further, increasing mileage requirements on gas-powered vehicles by 35 mpg will further drive up the cost of an automobile.
Vehicle Electrification: The electrification of all, or even most, passenger vehicles and trucks could increase the national per capita demand for electric power by 21-25%. This would occur at the same time that more than 70% of the baseline supply (i.e., electricity generated from fossil fuels) would be being taken off-line while the 11% now generated by nuclear power would not be expanding. In fact, nuclear is a probable target for further closures. To put just the 25% in perspective: that is the amount of the cumulative increase in U.S. electricity generation per capita since 1979, which is a period when nuclear and natural gas generation tripled. The average electric vehicle requires approximately 30 kWh to travel 100 miles—the same amount of electricity an average American home uses each day to run appliances, computers, lights, and heating and air conditioning.
In addition, installation costs for charging stations vary greatly from site to site with a ballpark cost range of $0-$3,000 for Level 1, $600-$12,700 for Level 2, and $4,000-$51,000 for Level 3 direct current (DC) fast charging. The expense for DC charging is due to higher equipment costs and the necessity of utility company installation transformers.
Phony ‘Job Creation’: The Avatar’s hyped projections of renewables-related new employment, on the order of hundreds of thousands of jobs, would actually come at the expense of existing energy sector jobs and related jobs creation. The illusion being promoted is that subsidizing renewable energy would be analogous to hiring workers to build roads, work in high-tech manufacturing, or even construct military bases. Not so.
Assault on U.S. Energy Industries: Another Avatar effort is to hold companies financially liable for historically emitted carbon and other pollutants, with the intent to neuter the U.S. fossil fuels industry. The sector has already been hit by the collapse of the Wall Street/City of London shale oil market bubble and COVID-19 shutdown. What happens to an entire sector of the U.S. economy, and further erosion of the United States’ dwindling export capacities? Further, what will be the loss in state and federal government revenue from lost mineral royalties and leases?
What happens to the value of mineral and other assets held by private oil and gas companies and individuals? What would be the fallout? Take one example. Texas has the single largest category of proven oil reserves, reserves estimated to be worth more than $1 trillion, or about 40% of the total U.S. proven oil reserves. The states with the largest values of natural capital stocks in fossil fuels are Texas, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, New Mexico, West Virginia, and Wyoming. Killing fossil fuels will also kill the valuation of these capital assets. Private citizens own a very significant part of these assets, in part because U.S. individual landowners own the mineral rights associated with their property, not the state.
Oil and Gas – the Targeting of ‘Red’ States
American companies and citizens are already fleeing the Northeast and West Coast in favor of Idaho, Utah, Texas, Florida, and other Red states. This is a clear consequence of the implosion of Blue state “post-industrial” service-sector economies, and societal breakdown. The Avatar’s administration now targets the very productive and potentially productive sectors of the U.S. economy that exist, overwhelmingly in the so-called Red states.
On January 21, the Avatar pronounced a 60-day suspension of new oil and gas leasing and drilling permits for (largely Western and Gulf) lands and waters, as officials moved in lockstep against pro-growth energy initiatives, including those promoted by the Trump administration. The suspension, part of a “broad review” of programs at the Department of the Interior, went into effect immediately under an order signed by Acting Interior Secretary Scott de la Vega. The order also applies to coal leases and permits, and blocks the approval of new mining plans.
Under President Donald Trump, federal agencies prioritized energy development and eased environmental rules to speed up drilling permits in order to boost fossil fuel production. Trump consistently downplayed the dangers of climate change and pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement. These policies largely ended U.S. dependence on foreign oil, particularly from the volatile Middle East.
The Interior Department order did not limit oil and gas operations under existing leases. This means that activity will not come to a sudden halt on the millions of acres of lands in the West and offshore in the Gulf of Mexico where much drilling is concentrated. And its effect could be further blunted by companies that have stockpiled drilling permits. However, it can be expected that will make it harder for permit holders to extract oil and gas. “The ability to get your resources out, to get right of way, to get roads, to get supporting infrastructure, not all of that is signed and sealed right now,” Clearview Energy’s Kevin Book recently stated.
Oil and gas extracted from public lands and waters account for about one-quarter of annual U.S. production. Even though a little less than 10% of oil and gas is actually produced on Federal and Tribal Estate land, about that means parts of New Mexico, a rich part of the Permian Basin, and federal lands in Wyoming, along with the Gulf of Mexico, are facing closure. Potentially, experts say, several hundred thousand barrels a day in U.S. production would be lost, and therefore producers and potential U.S. exports hit.
Now, all the major oil and gas companies—so-battered—are moving toward renewables based on the ongoing redlining of investment championed by UN Climate Czar Mark Carney, BlackRock’s green fascist investors, and hostile environmental standards produced by the European Union and the Avatar’s U.S. administration. Due to the historic “resilience” of the oil and gas sector the industry and investors are asking, “How costly will this actually be?” Can a company roll the increased costs in; is the Avatar’s administration going to offer subsidies in one form or another? It is conservatively estimated that about 14% of the labor force in the oil and gas sector were laid off during the course of 2020. Is the Biden administration intent on “punishing” the Red states, the energy producing states of the nation?
Beginning weeks ago, on earnings calls, the CEOs and operators in the U.S. shale sector were promoting the reductions they are undertaking on flaring and methane emissions, and how they are going to be reducing their carbon dioxide footprint in 2021. Of course, British Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell—leaders as part of the British Empire’s overall green fascist “Reset”—have announced they will cut oil production by 40% worldwide by 2050.
As LaRouchePAC and this writer have warned, the Avatar known as Joe Biden would do to oil and natural gas what Obama did to coal. He would shutter entire sources of energy, to go backwards to a feudal era reliance on the wind and sun, driving up energy prices and sinking the world further into misery.
Green Fascists in a Rabid Froth
Nor will it stop here. Erich Pica called Biden’s day one commitments “incredible first steps” that “indicate a complete shift on climate and demonstrate the power of grassroots, progressive activism to push leaders to fight for a stronger and healthier environment. The Biden-Harris campaign listened to activists and transformed their climate plan into the most progressive, justice-oriented platform ever seen from a Democratic presidential nominee. Now the Biden administration must not only follow through on those commitments but go further to stop the worst of the crisis.”
“Food & Water Watch” executive director Wenonah Hauter chimed in as well: “But the Biden administration than stopping one stalled pipeline: There are fossil fuel projects planned across the country, and all of them represent decades of additional climate and air pollution. This administration must make use of all of its executive and legal authorities to stop all forms of dirty energy expansion.… We need a rapid transition to 100% renewable energy and a ban on fracking and all fossil fuel infrastructure projects. The Paris agreement represents market-friendly incrementalism, and we need a much more ambitious plan to get the country—and the world—off fossil fuels.”
Without fossil fuels, including coal and natural gas, we cannot prosper. Without fossil fuels and nuclear, we cannot feed ourselves or assume our historical role as a food exporter for the world. It is time to get our act together—fast.
LaRouche answers a question on the evils of environmentalism during a 2013 webcast.