In an increasingly polarized political climate, media has taken clear sides. No one in Manhattan confuses the skew of the New York Times with the New York Post.
One clear example is a New York Times article, not an op-ed, blasting Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia for not obeying a President in his own party who has such poor approval ratings 64 percent of Democratic voters don't want him to even run for re-election in 2024. The two journalists work in Washington, DC, on nothing except the climate, so I get there won't be a lot new to talk about, but editorials masquerading as environmentalism help no one.
Knowing their paper is already regarded as biased toward Democrats, they nonetheless quote John Podesta, a Democratic lawyer, political consultant, and campaign manager who colluded with CNN moderator and former Democratic official Donna Brazile to get his candidate, Secretary Hillary Clinton, Town Hall Debate questions in advance during the 2016 presidential campaign.(1) That's not journalism.
They don't mention any of his controversies, of course, and even give him the fuzzy-wuzzy "left leaning" designation, when they know his group is a public relations forum for their shared political party. Using him to say what they can't say as journalists, that one Democrat "doomed humanity", is all they needed.
Even their attempts at journalism are not journalism. Their framing is more like spin. It doesn't survive basic fact checking.
The Clean Power Plan was created as a political favor, the thing presidents do on their way out of office. It was never going to be enacted and courts immediately struck it down. Then the government gave up, and for good reason. By 2017, before it ever came into force, the private sector had matched emissions more regulations wanted by 2025. That has not stopped Biden allies from claiming the Trump administration 'rolled back' protections on air. It is complete nonsense, but the usual political spin.
If you work in Washington, DC, as a journalist for one of the world's most prominent newspapers, you may not feel privileged but you are. Working people can't gush about riding their bike to work or, better, working from home writing articles using information you get from the Internet or in an email, working people are instead getting higher utility bills to subsidize the 1% in places, like Malibu.
We're not even out of the first paragraph and there are two errors in science and economics that any non-partisan expert could have pointed out.
We're not going to get out of the first paragraph without a third that is just so shocking and misinformed it can't be anything but malice.
Every poor person who can't afford a solar installation, or who lives in an apartment, or rents, is forced by law to pay so solar customers can feel good about themselves. Those programs are now so steeped in debt that California and Florida have at least tried to change the policy so poor customers only have to 'buy back' electricity from the rich at wholesale costs, rather than retail.
Objecting to that is the solar power industry. They say without making solar profitable for homeowners they are out of business.
Is solar 'ready' to replace conventional energy or not? If it is, it does not need subsidies. Natural gas companies don't get them at all. If they are lucky they get a break on taxes. And just before Russia invaded Ukraine again, Democrats told oil companies they needed to cut production "or else" and a third showing of that political theater was only canceled because the price of gas went through the roof.
Starting in the Obama administration, the world spent $3 trillion on solar and wind subsidies and the share of energy provided by conventional sources is...the same.
It is now, and always was, a gimmick. Last year, California, which closed its last nuclear plant and padded more costs onto apartment dwellers and poor people to fund solar installations on homes in Malibu, found itself suffering brownouts. The heavily regulated utility sector can't change prices without government approval, which meant they could not compete on the spot market for natural gas. When demand increased and solar was about to be exposed as an environmental placebo, the state quietly asked EPA to give California permission to run their natural gas plants without adhering to any emissions guidelines.
California asked to be exempt from pollution regulations because they were so reliant on solar and wind that every apolitical expert told them was not ready.
Yet New York Times writers think it must be ready, because Democrats say so.
NOTES:
(1) It's unclear what is more shocking, that CNN glossed it over in much the same way they glossed over TV personality Chris Cuomo's queasy efforts to help his embattled brother, former NY Governor Andrew Cuomo, or that it wasn't a bigger scandal.
