I am going to start out today with the complete generalization that older people are more conservative than liberal. At this point I cannot prove that to be the case, but it would seem that with experience comes wisdom, and the older one is, the more experience one has, and ergo, someone with increased age and experience would be more likely to view things as they really are (logically) and not how ideally they could be (emotionally).
Youthful individuals often think how nice it would be if we had zero pollution, but do not envision a workable plan on how to get there. They just go along … La-de-dah!
They never consider either how to actually achieve this ideal zero pollution goal, or what it would be like, if and when that is attained.
The dichotomy here is that those among us who are older will not have to deal with the discord and chaos that will occur when the pie-in-the-sky consequences of these ideal, but non obtainable, plans hit the fan.
From Issues and Insights:
While campaigning in 2019, Joe Biden guaranteed “we’re going to end fossil fuels.” What he didn’t say is that eliminating fossil fuels will create a troublesome scarcity of electricity.
Output cuts that will be required under the proposed regime “are so stringent,” says the Committee To Unleash Prosperity (CTUP) that “fossil fuel plants – which supply around 65% of America’s power – would be technologically incapable of complying.” The only way they will be able to stay open and generating power is if Americans’ utility bills are raised “dramatically.” If not, they close, and the power they produce is gone.
Similarly in California, where progressive politicians are committed to an unachievable target: As 2045 expires, all retail electricity sold in the state and used in government buildings must be produced by renewable resources, which are effectively limited to solar and wind.
The White House’s plan isn’t the same as California’s mandate, which bans the sale of new internal-combustion engine cars and trucks beginning in 2035. Biden is instead placing emissions limits on car makers that are so strict that they will have no choice but make sure that two-thirds of their sales by 2032 will be EVs.
Interesting ideas, but not achievable! However for many of us older folk … “no me importa,” (“to me, it is of no importance”) as most of us will not be around in 2032, 2035, and certainly not in 2045!
Perhaps some of us who are older, wiser, and experienced should remind the younger folk that Ida Auken, the Social Democrat member of the Danish parliament, who in a World Economic Forum essay insisted that in the future we will own nothing and be happy. The headline – “Welcome to 2030: I own nothing, have no privacy and life has never been better.”
8/22/23