Gaggles of treehugging liberals were skipping in the streets yesterday, singing the praises of a Democratic presidential debate where all candidates acknowledged the dangers of climate change.
Big claims about renewable energy were made, too.
Former Free State Governor Martin O’Malley pledged to move the nation to 100% renewable electricity by 2050 – a goal that is very aggressive, and highly improbable.
If you’re a regular reader of these pages, you know there are few folks more bullish on renewable energy than me, and there’s no way the U.S. will generate 100% of its electricity from renewable energy by 2050.
Then there was this laughable quote from Hillary Clinton …
I have been on the forefront of fighting climate change, starting in 2009, when President Obama and I crashed a meeting on the Chinese and got them to sign up for the first international agreement to combat climate change that they’d ever joined. We marched up [to them], we broke in, we said, ‘we’ve been looking all over for you, let’s sit down and talk about what we need to do,’ and we did come up with the first international agreement China has signed.
Ugh, the folksy charm of Hillary Clinton is so forced, I can’t stomach it.
And by the way, getting the Chinese to sign the “first international agreement on climate change” is meaningless. It’s an illusion of cooperation and progress. Nothing more.
Until any of these “pro-environment” politicians start driving around in electric cars and powering their homes with solar, I’m calling bullshit.
Bernie Sanders was probably the only one on Tuesday with even an ounce of credibility. Sadly, his solutions to environmental problems are too heavily weighted in more government interference. In order to solve our environmental problems, we need the exact opposite.
But that’s a theme for another day.
Today, however, let’s look at this from the perspective of investors.
Nothing can stop this juggernaut
I have no idea how this next presidential election is going to pan out.
A few months ago, I would’ve told you that Bernie Sanders had no shot of even disrupting the Clinton campaign, and guys like Ben Carson and Donald Trump are simply too insane to get any traction. Boy was I wrong!
Truth is, when it comes to politics, I’m not the most well-informed person in the room. This is probably because I can rarely get beyond the fact that I think nearly every person that runs for office is an egomaniacal sewer rat worthy of little more than a proper tarring and feathering.
But here’s what I do know …
For the first time ever, it doesn’t matter if a jack ass or an elephant ends up squatting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Renewable energy is now such a vital part of the U.S. energy mix, that not even a holier-than-thou douche bag like Ted Cruz – who, by the way, has advocated for penalizing homeowners for installing solar panels – can stop this juggernaut.
As a renewable energy investor, and just a person who thinks we’re better off by not treating the planet like a giant toilet, I couldn’t be happier to know that nothing – not dirt cheap natural gas, not fossil fuel lobbyists, and not even the false prophets of neoconservatism can stop it.
Here’s the bottom line …
Want to protect the planet? Don’t rely on politicians, rely on the market. Invest in renewable energy, invest in organic agriculture, drive an electric car, put some solar panels up on your roof. There are dozens of solutions to today’s environmental problems that don’t require the permission or approval of a politician. These are the ones environmentalists should embrace.
