Louisiana Republican Legislature Betrays Citzens, Goes All-In for the Inexperienced New Deal
Visitor publish by J. Christopher Alexander
Louisiana Act 443 is, sadly, now the regulation in Louisiana. Co-authored by Representatives Jerome Zeringue and Joseph Orgeron, the measure acquired closing passage within the Republican-dominated Louisiana Senate with little fanfare in a unanimous 33-0 vote. Repeat: In a Republican-dominated Senate. There is no such thing as a proof that the lunacy of the regulation was significantly challenged by its proponents. This truth, in fact, doesn’t make it any much less monstrous. Act 443 is a large inexperienced power boondoggle and an imminent environmental and financial disaster for the state of Louisiana.
In passing this laws with out asking and demanding solutions to crucial questions, the Louisiana Legislature dedicated legislative malpractice and profoundly betrayed the pursuits of Louisiana residents. There ought to be outrage, and there ought to be a reckoning. In selling this regulation with out difficult it in any significant approach, Louisiana Republicans knelt in homage and kissed the posterior portion of Failed Inexperienced Power. The ten Home Republicans who opposed the laws ought to likewise be recommended: Seabaugh, Amedee, Edmonston, Frieman, Garofalo, Geymann, Hodges, Mack, and McCormick. Each Louisiana citizen ought to be happy with these Republican legislators for opposing Act 443.
The brand new regulation allocates for leasing to inexperienced power firms as much as 25,000 acres of Louisiana offshore water within the Gulf of Mexico as a way to construct wind generators. The generators are huge, every weighing as much as 200 tons with blades spanning a whole bunch of toes. Furthermore, the 25,000-acre allocation is per lease, which implies that the quantity of Louisiana offshore actual property finally occupied by wind power generators might be way more than 25,000 acres.
There may be additionally the query of legislative oversight, and why there’s none. The brand new regulation vests plenary authority within the State Mineral and Power Board (SMEB) to “settle for the bid it finds is most advantageous to the state and should lease upon no matter phrases it considers correct.” The close to full absence of significant legislative oversight of SMEB is a recipe for exactly the kind of graft and corruption for which Louisiana has been held in doubtful distinction so long as we are able to bear in mind. The regulation, not coincidentally, comes simply in time for inexperienced power vultures to descend upon Louisiana after receiving billions in federal taxpayer subsidies earmarked as a part of President Biden’s Inexperienced New Deal legislative package deal, the identical package deal that unleashes 87,000 new IRS brokers on Americans. (Will the inexperienced power firms who can be lining their pockets in Louisiana with our cash get audited by the IRS? Not an opportunity).
Other than the nice potential for corruption, it’s obvious that neither Zeringue nor Orgeron nor any of the Republicans who handed this legislative scandal have really studied the abysmal historical past of comparable madcap efforts to provide the nation’s power wants by way of using offshore wind generators. If they’d, they’d know that offshore wind energy is incapable of offering a big proportion of a state’s power wants in a constant, cost-effective and environmentally sustainable method. A number of years in the past, Rhode Island constructed and put in 5 wind generators off the coast of Block Island at the price of a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of {dollars}. Block Island has been an embarrassing failure each by way of the generators’ structural sturdiness and power manufacturing. Block Island demonstrates that wind power, even during times of optimum output, and however its huge value, lacks the sustained capability to fulfill a good portion of our power wants. Regardless of the a whole bunch of billions of {dollars} which have already been invested in such inexperienced power tasks over a number of many years, photo voltaic and wind mixed provide lower than 7% of the nation’s electrical energy and can’t boast even that except the generators are working correctly and the wind is comparatively fixed, neither of which is definite.
Germany is one other epic illustration of the near-total inadequacy of inexperienced wind power. Regardless of investing staggering sums within the improvement of wind and photo voltaic power sources over many years, Germany nonetheless depends for the overwhelming majority of its power on coal and pure fuel. Germany’s effort to complement its coal- primarily based power provide with wind power has been a squanderous mess, a failure even Germany has now admitted, however boasting a number of the most good scientists and engineers on this planet.
One other inconvenient truth is that wind generators lose operational effectivity yearly and have to be changed, at a minimal, each 15 years. The recurrent value in income and labor of periodically dismantling and changing the generators can be large, to not point out the possibly devastating impact on the surroundings in addition to the aesthetic eye-sore of getting large machines punctuating 1000’s upon 1000’s of acres of Louisiana offshore water. The brand new regulation hurts Louisiana residents and does little greater than enrich inexperienced power traders and the politicians who prostitute for them. LACAG predicts that the lawmakers who promoted and voted for this regulation will disown it as quickly as they really feel the total measure of its folly, and the simply wrath of Louisiana voters.
One politician who stands to learn richly from the brand new regulation is one in all its authors, Republican Rep. Joseph Orgeron. Orgeron is a managing member of two nd Wind Marine, LLC. Two years in the past, 2nd Wind was featured within the publication Offshore Engineer for constructing two industrial SuperFeeder vessels for the specific objective of “transporting subsequent era offshore wind generators from the US Marshalling ports out to awaiting wind turbine set up vessels.” 2nd Wind is quoted within the article that the SuperFeeders would provide the “quickest, and a confirmed, path to US offshore wind improvement.” One doesn’t want 20/20 imaginative and prescient to discern Orgeron’s battle of curiosity in authoring laws from which his firm stands to handsomely revenue. There was no public proof that Orgeron disclosed this battle of curiosity to his constituents or to his colleagues. Whether or not disclosed or not, Orgeron’s private curiosity within the laws is a textbook instance of why Louisianans now not belief their political leaders and examine them largely as self-enriching opportunists consumed with private ambition relatively than with a need to faithfully serve the individuals who elected them and to whom they’re accountable.
Lastly, I might be remiss if I didn’t make recognized one other incontrovertible fact that the brand new regulation’s proponents would relatively no person knew. Lots of the uncommon earth components which might be wanted to assemble the generators are harvested in China. A considerable majority of Louisianans don’t consider that our State ought to develop into much more depending on international powers for our power wants, notably a sworn adversary of the US whose workforce is comprised of kids who’re handled about as nicely by their authorities as members of a World Struggle II labor camp. On this, as on each different important query associated to Act 443, Louisiana Republican Senators uttered nary a protest.
Each Louisiana citizen ought to bear in mind the names Zeringue and Orgeron and the opposite Louisiana Republican legislators who did not ask the elemental questions that urgently wanted to be requested earlier than supporting this terribly misguided laws. On the very high of the record ought to be Lafayette Republican Senate President Paige Cortez, who has carried out extra to sabotage the conservative agenda within the Louisiana legislature than any Republican in fifty years. He ought to be completely retired. And he ought to take Republican Home Speaker Clay “Shakedown” Schexnayder with him, aptly so named by legendary Louisiana political raconteur Moon Griffon.
J. Christopher Alexander, Louisiana Citizen Advocacy Group www.lacag.org
