Neighborhood Ministries

While many promote solar panels as the energy source of the future, there is strong resistance by rural people to having solar fields in their backyards. Opponents say it takes away farmland and is an eyesore that lowers property values, however they are non-polluting and create no noise. They oppose wind turbines because they are an eyesore and kill birds that get too close. There are other solutions but very few are taking advantage of them. There is roofing that produces solar energy and could practically eliminate power outages due to downed power lines,  as well as eliminate electric bills. There are also individual wind turbines which I would think every farm would jump at. They used to have windmills which pumped water and later were converted to generate electricity before power lines reached the rural areas. Anything you generate over what you need, you actually get paid for. While they are cleaner than power plants, they do have drawbacks. Texas found out the hard way when they got a big snow and big freeze. The wind turbines froze up and the solar panels got covered with snow causing a major and prolonged blackout. The goal of going totally natural electric is a pipe dream we may never be able to realize. We need conventional power plants as backup to handle when  turbines and solar panels can’t but it will help our energy crisis. It is interesting to hear the big push for electric cars while pushing to close power plants. We have had several major power outages because our electric grid is barely producing adequate electricity and any problem pushes it over the edge. Where are we going to get the energy to charge all those electric cars?

We should be concerned about the environment because God gave us the world and everything in it to manage, and we and our children have to live in it, but we should do it wisely and not recklessly. While liberal politicians push radical climate initiatives, they do it with no thought to what problems it will cause. They push their agenda regardless of whether the voters support it knowing the voters don’t pay much attention to what they are doing. The media pushes helping the environment and many voters accept it without asking for specifics. Many liberal programs are destroying the economy without producing much benefit in cleaning up the environment. While America has cleaned up about 98% of its pollution, the cost of pollution controls has driven a lot of the manufacturing overseas where they do not have the cost of pollution controls. The pollution is still pouring into the atmosphere, it is just someone else’s responsibility. Current goals to clean up our pollution will have little effect on the environment while increasing the burden on industry and driving more manufacturing overseas. The United States only produces 2% of the world’s pollution and even if we cut it in half, it will only reduce the world’s pollution by 1%. The United Nations climate initiatives, which the current administration supports, place heavy penalties on the United States to force it to clean up its environment but places no penalty on China and India who together produce over 50% of the world’s pollution. If they cut their pollution by 98%, it would reduce the world’s pollution by 49%. That would help a great deal. It would also help level the field in manufacturing by requiring them to shoulder the cost of cleaning up their environment, the same as American companies do now.

Liberals cry about oil drilling in the United States and want to shut down our oil production. That forces us to buy it from the Mid-East as if that will cause less pollution. In fact, it will make the United States dependent on the Mid-east for oil. Liberals are also taxing and increasing restrictions on manufacturing and technology in the United States so we are forced to buy more from China, as if that will cause less pollution. In fact, China’s manufacturing is highly polluting and contains none of the environmental safeguards required in America. China and India alone produce over half of all man-made pollution in the world. America, in spite of its size and industrial manufacturing, only produces about 8%. It is obvious that liberals don’t care about the environment. Apparently, they want to cripple America’s manufacturing capability so they can take control of it. Their goal is to make us more dependent on China and the Mid-east. Once we become dependent on China for manufactured goods and on the Mid-east for oil, all they have to do is shut off the flow of oil and manufactured goods to America to bring the American economy to a standstill. We got a small taste of the effects of being dependent on the Mid-east during 1974 when they cut off our oil supply and gas doubled in price overnight. Businesses collapsed all around and unemployment skyrocketed. President Trump proved that we are capable of being independent in oil production by reducing government restrictions. We have also seen the effects of being dependent on China during this pandemic as goods have been delayed, creating shortages of vital goods.

Environmentalists continually paint a dismal picture of impending disaster if we don’t stop polluting the atmosphere. They claim that every problem we face is caused by America’s pollution, and that science shows how we are destroying our planet, yet they ignore the evidence all around them. In spite of their predictions about global warming, and polar ice melting at the South Pole, certain parts of the world are experiencing increasingly colder weather. They ignore clear evidence that the earth is tilting on its axis causing a shift in the north and south poles. If pollution is the cause, it would be getting progressively worse, yet there are warmer years and colder years, and that the earth becomes warmer during periods of more intense solar flares and cooler when the flares die down. Major papers on climate research have revealed numerous instances of data being doctored to support their theories, indicating they have little respect for facts, and little interest in discovering the true causes.

President Joe Biden has returned us to the Paris Accord even though it puts a heavy burden on the U.S. but will provide almost no benefit in terms of cleaning up the environment. It will severely cripple our manufacturing industry again like it did when President Obama got us into it and before President Trump removed us from it. It assumes that global warming is caused by man and the U.S. is the primary one responsible, neither of which is supported by scientific evidence. While the United States ignored the environment for many years, it has worked hard to correct the situation and has done a good job of cleaning up the environment. Air pollution, which was once a serious problem in the United States has all but been eliminated as a problem. We still have other areas like water pollution to address but they are not covered in the Paris Accord.