Natural gas is an ideal source of energy; it is efficient, plentiful, and good for the environment because it burns so cleanly. So it will come as no surprise that the leftists who run New York intend to ban it:

Gas stoves will soon become toast in New York, under a controversial new handshake deal between Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul and Albany lawmakers that would make that state the first in the US to ban natural gas.

The pending budget deal mandates all new buildings under seven stories be fully electric by 2026 with larger structures following three years later.

With a straight face, we are told this will prevent the climate from continuing to fluctuate the way it always has and always will. Specifically, Hochul says banning gas stoves will protect New York from hurricanes and excessive snow. Her estimation of her constituents’ intelligence is not high.

Hochul notably has kept gas stoves in her own Buffalo home and the Executive Mansion in Albany while pushing for the gas ban in future buildings through the state budget process.

The point, as with the war on nuclear energy, is to make electricity prohibitively expensive, even while making us increasingly reliant on it by mandating inferior electric stoves, electric cars, et cetera.

This will add to the burdens already imposed by green energy efforts, including a 2022 state law signed by Hochul that will ban the sales of gas automobiles by 2035.

You have to wonder how blatantly hostile Democrats would need to be toward those they rule before people will cast off their liberal media brainwashing and start pushing back.

On tips from Chuck A and Wiggins.

Leftists’ insane commitment to inefficient means of generating energy will inevitably raise the price of electricity above people’s capacity to pay. No worries; they have a solution. Coincidentally, it is the same solution liberals have for all the problems they create — namely, socialism.

From California, which despite its abundance of natural resources has the highest electricity rates in the country thanks to moonbat rule:

Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric filed a proposal on Thursday that would install a fixed-rate electric bill system for those under the three largest power companies in the state…

Currently, utility bills are based on electricity and gas consumption. The utility companies are now proposing income-based utility billing so that higher-income earners pay for more than they use, subsidizing the rates for lower income customers.

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Marxism went so well under Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and the Castros, no doubt even Gavin Newsom can make it work.

Like most evil idiocy, the idea comes out of academia:

A 2021 report from the University of California at Berkeley recommends that the state link California’s highest-in-the-nation electricity bills to customer incomes – ie. your ability to pay.

Moonbattery hatched in California unfortunately does not stay in California.

Imagine the kooks at Berserkeley taking charge of whether the lights come on when you flip the switch. Then consider that anti-energy climate zealot Jennifer Granholm used to be a Berkeley professor. Now she is Secretary of Energy.

On a tip from R F.

For moonbats, intolerance is an end in itself. So desperate are New York City liberals to find something to be intolerant about that they demand the Mets change the name of Citi Field — because Citibank invests in the precious fossil fuels that allow the city to function.

Via Fox News:

City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams is pushing to rename the New York Mets’ home stadium, Citi Field, over climate change concerns.

Citigroup pays an estimated $20 million per year to have its name on the stadium. That money is ill-gotten, from the moonbat point of view, because some of it came from investing in energy.

Because money is only clean to a liberal if it has been confiscated and redistributed by Big Government, all stadiums should be renamed “Government Field.” That would establish equity, so that no stadium would have a more appealing name than another.

“The Public Advocate and fans will cite the bank’s role in financing polluters and profiting from climate chaos,” Williams’ office said in a statement.

“Global warming” was discarded because the climate fluctuates in both directions. “Climate change” doesn’t work either, because too many understand that the climate will always change no matter what Big Government inflicts on us. “Climate chaos” will do for now. When people continue to laugh off the imaginary crisis, progressives may have to switch to something even darker, like “climate doom.”

According to leftist ideology, generating energy by effective means causes climate chaos because it releases the essential plant nutrient carbon dioxide.

Barks Jumaane Williams:

“Citibank’s practices do not represent the values of the Mets or our city, and we must make better demands. If Citi refuses to end their toxic relationship with the fossil fuel industry, the Mets should end their partnership with Citi.”

Once the values of sports teams centered on sports. Theatrical displays of obeisance to Black Lives Matter put an end to that. Sports are no longer about sports. They are about moonbattery. In a totalitarian society, everything is about the ruling class ideology.

It isn’t just Jumaane Williams. Lucas Sanchez is co-executive director of New York Communities for Change.

“I can’t teach my kids to love the Mets if I’m also teaching them about climate change,” said Sanchez, whose kids are 7, 9 and 13. “The Mets are contributing to polluting the planet by partnering with Citi.”

Imagine the effect on the 8.8 million people who live in NYC of reducing electricity to what can be generated through green energy idiocy. Civilization would collapse. Does the stench of rotting corpses count as pollution?

Citi contributed approximately $31 billion in combined lending and underwriting to oil, gas and coal firms since 2021.

Because of such investments, when viewed from the air at night, New York City is a field of light. Moonbats would prefer that it look like the leftist utopia North Korea.

On a tip from Varla.

In accordance with their religion, leftist social engineers want us to use heat pumps. Their reasoning:

Based on the same technology as refrigerators, the air pump pulls heat out from outside air and into the house, and can be run on renewably generated electricity – making them carbon neutral.

Carbon neutral — assuming that electricity can be produced without generating CO2.

A tale of woe from the UK demonstrates how heat pumps work out in the real world:

A man who replaced his heating system with a £25,000 Government-backed ‘green’ heat pump says he has faced “crippling” electric bills – amounting to almost £3000 so far this winter. Officials are currently providing grants for up to £5,000 to home owners who remove a gas central heating and hot water system and replace it with a heat pump.

Laments Steve Mason,

“This year so far alone, my electric bill has reached £1461 after the government help and my direct debit each month is £650 – it’s crippling.”

This is despite his home being so cold that he has to wear multiple layers of clothes. He has been burning wood for heat, which as he points out, “completely defeats the object” — unless of course the objective is not really to reduce harmless CO2 emissions but only to posture emptily.

Mason wishes he could just rip out the heat pump, but…

“I have no choice but to use it as it’s my only source of heating and hot water in my house, but what we’ve found is that we don’t think the government have really thought this through.”

In contrast, Mark Mills has thought it through. He concludes that the renewable energy future moonbats rave about is “just not happening,” no matter how much money is wasted on it:

Meanwhile,

United States electricity prices are rising rapidly, up 18.1 percent over the last two years. Renewable energy advocates claim that wind and solar installations produce cheaper electricity than traditional power plants, but power prices are rising as more wind and solar is added to the grid. In fact, electricity prices are soaring in leading wind energy states.

Uncoincidentally, for the past 2 years we have been under the thumb of fanatics whose figurehead promised to abolish fossil fuels.

The same applies to Europe under moonbat rule:

In Europe, the nations with the most wind and solar capacity deployed, including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Spain, and Sweden, experience the highest residential electricity prices. Residents of Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and Romania, where few renewables are deployed, pay half as much per kilowatt-hour as the leading renewable countries. Denmark and Germany have deployed over 1,600 watts per person of wind and solar, the highest density in Europe. Electricity prices for Denmark (29 eurocents per kilowatt-hour) and Germany (32 eurocents/kW-hr) are the highest in Europe, and two and one-half times the prices in the US, where renewable penetration remains lower. In Europe, like the US, wind (and solar) deployments raise electricity prices.

Those who inflict green energy moonbattery don’t pay its high price; we do.

On tips from THOUGHTCRIMINAL2084, ABC of the ANC, and Chuck A.

PJM Interconnection is one of the largest operators of the US electric grid. It released a report recently explaining why Democrat energy policy makes large-scale blackouts inevitable:

Its top-line conclusion: Fossil-fuel power plants are retiring much faster than renewable sources are getting developed, which could lead to energy “imbalances.” That’s a delicate way of saying that you can expect shortages and blackouts.

Neighboring grids rely on PJM to provide backup power generated by fossil fuels when the wind doesn’t keep turbines turning.

That’s why it’s especially worrisome that PJM is predicting a large decline in its power reserves as coal and natural-gas plants retire. The report forecasts that 40,000 megawatts (MW) of power generation—enough to light up 30 million households—are at risk of retiring by 2030, representing about 21% of PJM’s current generation capacity.

Why would they retire fossil fuel plants that are required to keep the lights on? Moonbattery is why.

For example, the steep costs of complying with Environmental Protection Agency regulations, including a proposed “good neighbor rule” that is expected to be finalized next month, will force about 10,500 MW of fossil-fuel generation to shut down.

At the same time, utility-company ESG (environmental, social and governance) commitments are driving coal plants to close, the report notes. Illinois and New Jersey climate policies could reduce generation by 8,900 MW.

Despite the $billions that Democrats drove up inflation by shoveling at green energy boondoggles in the Orwellian Inflation Reduction Act,

the report says the “historical rate of completion for renewable projects has been approximately 5%,” in part because of permitting challenges. In an optimistic case, the report estimates 21,000 MW of wind, solar and battery storage capacity will be added to the grid by 2030—about half as much as the expected fossil-fuel retirements.

Meanwhile, Big Government has been exerting ever more pressure to force us into electric cars and even to use electric stoves, driving up demand for electricity, which cannot be provided on an affordable or reliable basis by wind or solar silliness.

Biden explicitly promised to abolish the fossil fuels that keep us alive. Fools voted for him anyway. Consequently, the cost of electricity will “necessarily skyrocket,” as possible de facto president Barack Obama put it — when electricity is available at all.

The blackouts have already begun in California, where Democrats have established single-party rule.

Energy shortages are not a bug but a feature of Democrat policy. As Covid reminded our statist ruling class, nothing serves state power like a crisis. Green energy is good for something other than laundering taxpayer money to pay off campaign donors. It can be used to engineer a pretext for a power grab that will make Covid lockdowns look reasonable by comparison.

On a tip from Varla.

East Palestine, Ohio isn’t the only ecological disaster the liberal establishment would prefer to ignore. There is also the “green energy” plant that has been burning for the past week:

A fire at a Doral, Florida waste-to-energy plant continued burning as officials announced school dismissal plans, closed parks, and urged residents to stay indoors, multiple outlets reported. …

“Out of an abundance of caution. . .we’re recommending that all residents [in the immediate area] remain indoors today,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said in a multi-agency press conference Friday. Levine Cava emphasized that people with respiratory conditions, older adults, young children, and expectant mothers should be particularly cautious.

High measures of particulates have been measured in the air.

The fire at Doral’s trash incinerator broke out on Sunday, February 12, according county officials. …

The 40-year-old Covanta Energy plant burns more than 800,000 tons of garbage annually and handles about 40% of Miami-Dade County’s garbage…

The garbage must be piling up uncontrollably. What could be more emblematic of current times?

“The key message to the community with regard to safety and keeping people well is avoidance of the smoke wherever possible,” said Jackson Memorial Hospital chief medical officer Hany Atallah…

That advice would also apply to East Palestine, where the smoke was deliberately created in a controlled burn of toxic chemicals spilled in a train derailment. State Senator Michael Rulli urges those stuck within 10 miles of the catastrophe not to drink or bathe in the water.

Meanwhile, the bumbling green fascists in charge tell us they have to micromanage our lives and fling hundreds of $billions at alternative energy boondoggles because according to their ideology it will serve the sacred environment by preventing the climate from fluctuating.

On tips from Steve T and Mr. Freemarket.

Looks like we are catching up to South Africa on the road to liberal utopia. Like California, the moonbat haven Austin is already having trouble keeping the lights on. Progressives ought to be pleased to see that someone with the proper attitude has stepped forward to take charge of energy policy:

A recent power outage in Austin, Texas, resulted in huge bills for Austin Energy customers, leaving the Austin City Council to hear criticism from upset community members at a city council meeting.

One man took advantage of the public comment portion, ironically criticizing the Austin Energy company while wearing a rainbow wig, with clown makeup and clown attire. …

“My mother told me to dress for the job that you want to have, and that’s why I’m here today, because I would like to be the CEO of Austin Energy,” the mysterious clown continued.

Austin Energy is not a private company but a department of the City of Austin, so the primary requirement for the position he seeks is ideological correctness.

As he notes, his priorities align with those of Austin. He holds the fight against climate change to be the number one priority, even noting that if we are to get to zero carbon emissions we should not be using power at all. So committed is this bold defender of the climate to saving the planet that he destroyed his own gas stove. He also has pronouns and the Ukrainian flag in his Twitter bio.

His request for a salary of $350,000–$500,000 is reasonable, considering that he has a cocaine habit and a wife with stage five testicular cancer to support.

This clinches it:

“I also took a 23 and Me test and found out that I am 3% black, so not hiring me would be a literal act of violence,” he continued.

Leftist Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm had best beware. Before long, this guy will come for her job:

On a tip from Varla.

The future moonbattery makes inevitable is coming for us all. Because the Rainbow Utopia is a few years ahead of the rest, it is hitting South Africa first:

National Disaster Management Centre head Dr Elias Sithole has classified the impact of load-shedding as a national disaster.

Droned Sh**hole:

“[I] hereby call upon organs of state to further strengthen and support existing structures established to coordinate and manage the implementation of contingency arrangements in line with the National Energy Action Plan.”

President Cyril Ramaphosa contributes more words:

“Extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary measures. The energy crisis is an existential threat to our economy and social fabric of our country,” said Ramaphosa.

“We must spare no effort, and we must allow no delay, in implementing these measures.”

Meanwhile, the lights flicker out as a formerly wealthy country circles the drain.

Every time you flip the switch and the lights still come on, be thankful that liberalism has not yet reached full flower.

On a tip from ABC of the ANC.

There is great news in the historic transition to green energy. British authorities have found a way to make wind farms profitable. Owners of the monstrosities will be paid to do what they do best: not produce electricity.

Via Scotland Against Spin:

Between 4.30pm and 6pm on Tuesday, wind farms were paid about £65,000 to stop producing enough electricity to power 50,000 homes for a day, according to data from the UK Wind Curtailment Monitor.

At the same time, households were being asked to switch off their devices to help save electricity, amid concerns from National Grid ESO, the legally separate part of the National Grid which balances supply and demand, that it would not have sufficient energy supply.

The idea is to prevent the total blackouts that will characterize Europe’s alternative energy future.

This isn’t the first time British subjects have paid the wind farms to do nothing. Whereas usually wind turbines don’t produce enough energy, sometimes they produce too much. From last summer:

[T]he UK was forced to pay £78million to wind farms in the last year alone to cover the costs of switching off wind turbines when it is too windy.

Meanwhile, replacement generators received £429million bringing the total cost up to around £500million.

Due to inadequate storage infrastructure like batteries in place, wind turbines have to be turned off in order to prevent the national Grid from being overloaded.

As has been obvious for some time now, wind is not a viable alternative to fossil fuels and nuclear energy.

A handful of scoundrels with political connections are getting rich off green energy. The rest of us are getting screwed. What we tolerate, we will get more of.

On a tip from Steve T.

Our rulers have decreed that the CO2 required for plants to live makes the weather too warm. They have called for zero emissions. Pursing this objective is difficult when it comes to air travel. At least we have aviation biofuels:

A much-hyped but yet-to-be-completed aviation biofuels refinery in southern Oregon appears to be headed for foreclosure after backers failed to make principal and interest payments on some $300 million in debt.

Red Rock Biofuels launched efforts nearly a decade ago to build the cutting-edge facility in Lakeview but repeatedly ran into obstacles, even as project skeptics questioned its feasibility.

Feasibility is not usually a prime concern when it comes to green energy. Since we cannot possibly prevent the climate from fluctuating anyway, it is the noble intentions that count.

The project has now accrued an additional $56 million in interest owed to private investors who bought bonds to fund the project…

This is why so much green energy investment is by the federal government rather than private. When the feds run low on cash because green energy is not economically viable, they can just print some more.

Not that taxpayers aren’t taking it on the chin too:

Its development was supported by a $75 million funding award from the Department of Defense; fuel purchase commitments from FedEx and Southwest Airlines; more than $2 million in infrastructure improvements funded by the town of Lakeview and Business Oregon; and about $300 million in tax-exempt economic development bonds issued in 2018 through the state of Oregon.

Some saw the disaster coming:

Skeptics have long maintained that it was a technological unicorn, relying on a fuel production process developed in the 1920s in Germany that has never been successfully deployed at scale.

Gary Hughes of Biofuelwatch weighs in:

“We don’t think it’s feasible,” he said of the Red Rock project. “Someone may come in and try and keep it going, but in our view they’d be just trying to access more public money.”

That’s the game, all right. It helps to be a Democrat donor. Those involved are advised to donate to Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), who says he supports the project because it will prevent the climate from changing.

Red Rock Biofuels [was] touted as an economic home run for the remote southern Oregon town and an environmental boon for the aviation industry, which has long sought a means to reduce its massive carbon footprint.

Anyone who thinks of green energy as economically beneficial needs to lay off the Kool-Aid.

As for the aviation industry reducing its harmless carbon footprint, I have a more practical idea. Why don’t we capture a UFO and persuade the aliens to tell us how they make their vehicles go?

On a tip from Steve T.

Despite their government having succumbed to enviromoonbattery, so that there is likely to be insufficient energy to heat homes this winter, there is no need for Germans to freeze. They are welcome to immigrate to the former German colony Namibia:

The country’s president, Hage Gottfried Geingob, welcomed Germany’s Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck to Windhoek this week, and told German officials Namibia has ample space to host as many Germans who wanted refuge from the inflation encapsulating Europe.

The inflation is driven not only by government spending but by a commitment to green ideology, as Germany continues to suppress nuclear energy despite the interruption of fossil fuel from Russia.

The African country has introduced a new visa specifically for German citizens who can now live in Namibia for up to six months, where they can work remotely and feel at home with affordable living costs as they wait for Europe’s winter of discontent to blow over.

Traditional Germans may feel more at home in this southwest African nation than in moonbat-ruled, hijrah-swamped Germany, where they can be denied jobs for being ethnically German.

The country celebrates traditional German holidays like Oktoberfest and holds typical German carnivals in the capital of Windhoek every year.

Up to 15,000 German Namibians live in the country as descendants of former settlers.

Namibian Investment Promotion and Development Board CEO Nangula Uuandja promises that Germans who work from Namibia for the winter won’t have to worry about high heating costs or blackouts.

“We always have electricity!” he claimed.

No one is expecting the same for green Germany. Demolishing a wind farm in favor of a coal mine is a nice start, but it is too late to avoid short-term hardship. The lights have already started going out.

On a tip from R F.

As a result of single-party rule by leftist Democrats, California pays more than other states for gasoline. The price is about to rise higher still; leftist demagogue Gavin Newsom wants to inflict financial penalties on energy companies, to punish them for having been forced by Democrats’ War on Energy to raise prices.

The Blaze reports:

The proposal would make it illegal for oil companies to charge “excessive” profits. Companies found to be in violation of the proposal would be fined a civil penalty by the California Energy Commission.

The point of calling this a “fine” rather than a tax is that fines are easier to impose, requiring only a simple majority in the state legislature. However, it is in effect a tax.

Gas prices in California are impacted by taxes and fees associated with environmental regulations that other states do not have, KTLA reported. In October, gas in the state was $2.60 more than the national average.

Newsom’s thuggery will drive prices higher still.

The Biden Regime has also attempted to blame energy companies for the high prices caused by Democrat policies and to punish them for it.

You can have affordable energy or you can have moonbat rule. You cannot have both.

On a tip from Mr. Freemarket.

If Democrats’ War on Energy were about the environment as they pretend, they would champion natural gas. Not only is it cheap and abundant, it burns cleanly. However, moonbats oppose it to such an extreme as to forbid the construction of new buildings that are not “all electric.”

The latest locality to attack natural gas is Ann Arbor, Michigan, which like all college towns is rife with moonbattery:

Ann Arbor is considering changes to the city’s development code to prohibit natural gas connections for new buildings starting in 2023.

The proposal recently presented to the city’s Planning Commission is aimed at meeting the city’s climate-action goals to reduce carbon emissions, and it could end the frustration city officials have with developers unwilling to voluntarily comply with the city’s aspirations for all-electric buildings.

As we are likely to see with the Dutch government buying up farmland so as to prevent agriculture, those who do not comply voluntarily will be coerced.

The global climate does not fall under the jurisdiction of Ann Arbor’s City Council. The odds of their petty tyranny affecting it are precisely zero. Nonetheless,

As proposed, the changes would require full electrification of buildings — moving away from gas appliances — and apply to all newly constructed buildings, as well as substantially renovated or expanded buildings, starting in January.

Electricity is largely generated by fuels that pollute more than natural gas, such as coal. No serious person believes that “green energy” can generate more than a small fraction of our needs — not that green energy is all that green anyway, considering the industrial requirements of producing wind turbines and solar panels.

There’s also been discussion of whether the local power grid can handle the shift to all-electric buildings.

The ideologues in charge will worry about that later.

In the meantime, other cities have already banned natural gas equipment in new buildings in moonbattery-addled states like California (e.g., Berkeley, San Francisco, San Jose, Mountain View) and Massachusetts (e.g., Brookline, Cambridge, Newton).

CNN sulks that in some states, Republicans have protected the public from pointless natural gas bans that posturing local moonbats might inflict.

At a national level, Democrats have passed a stealth tax on natural gas. Given enough political leverage, they would ban natural gas altogether, leaving many to freeze. Their sacred climate would never notice.

On a tip from Scott L.

In the interests of equal time, let’s let a moonbat make the case for her ideology:

If this young woman had her way, the result would be absolute economic collapse, resulting in mass starvation. The population is many times what could be sustained by an economy running on green energy foolishness.

People like her are in effect dictating American energy policy. This is why the price of gasoline has nearly doubled under Biden (from an average of $2.17/gallon in 2020 to $3.80/gallon yesterday), and will continue to skyrocket so long as Democrats remain in power, pulling all other prices along.

Attempting to reason with this young moonbat would obviously be futile. The same goes with Democrats. But there is something you can do to save civilization, sanity, and your standard of living from their malevolent ideology. Vote Democrats out of office today.

On a tip from Wiggins.