Who turned the lights out? Joe Biden

Does the radical climate change agenda know no end? Earlier this year, it was gas stoves — and then lightbulbs.

Then, a few weeks ago, President Joe Biden’s administration announced much less gas cars after 2032. Even though about half of Americans say they don’t want an electric car and only 6% of drivers are buying them.

But that was child’s play compared to the latest Biden scheme to shut down as many as half our electric power plants across the country. These are the plants that charge those Tesla batteries and cellphones. They also keep the lights on in our factories, schools, hospitals, stores, and homes and power the internet. Further, they cook our food and keep us warm at night. No, that power doesn’t just come magically from the socket in the wall.

Most of the electric power supply in America and around the world comes from fossil fuels. Coal, gas and oil power plants account for more than 60% of the electric power we use in the United States today. Only about 20% comes from wind and solar power.

Hold that thought. Because the Biden administration has announced what The Washington Post calls a plan to “drastically reduce (power plant) greenhouse gas emissions.” These cuts are so stringent that most of our gas- and coal-fired plants would be technologically incapable of complying. But here’s what’s sinister: That’s the point of these rules — to wrench fossil fuels from our energy supply altogether.

Our electric grid system is already stressed to the limits. States that have tried to switch to green energy — California comes to mind — are having to undergo dangerous blackouts and brownouts. This is what happens in Third World countries. It isn’t supposed to happen here.

Where are we going to get the electric power to charge 150 million EVs every night? From windmills? Remember, these new Environmental Protection Agency rules come just weeks after Biden announced cars would soon no longer be fueled with gas, oil or diesel. Yet now, we are going to shut down more power plants?

The Biden administration says that coal and gas plants will have to pay for carbon offsets to make up for their carbon emissions. Who’s going to pay for that? We all will with much higher utility bills.

If you want to cripple an industrial economy like that of the U.S., a good way to do so is to dismantle its energy supply. Who is the president residing in the White House these days? Joe Biden or Dr. Evil?

No country has cleaned its air more than the U.S. has over the last many decades. The Institute for Energy Research reports that our air pollution emissions — including lead, sulfur, carbon monoxide and particulates — have fallen by a combined 74% over the past 50 years. We have the cleanest air in any of our lifetimes.

Even our carbon dioxide emissions have fallen in recent years more than any other country, thanks to natural gas production. We aren’t the problem. China is, and you can be sure they’re not doing anything to slow their economy.

These new EPA regulations aren’t about breathing cleaner air or changing the temperature of the planet. They are a dangerous assault on the American free enterprise system and U.S. global leadership.

Biden thinks his legacy will be as the president who fought global warming.

Wrong. He will go down in history as the president who turned the lights out on the U.S. economy.

Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation