An acorn falls on Chicken Little’s head. Alarmed, Chicken Little cries out, “Henny Penny, the sky is falling! Let us go and tell the king!”
Like Chicken Little, the Global Warming/Climate Change Hoaxers have been predicting the imminent demise of the Earth and its inhabitants. This farce has been playing out for decades now, reaching back at least to the 1990s. The Establishment Media has joined in the crusade, trumpeting news about hot spells and droughts and doing its level best to ignore blizzards and cold snaps. It is more than just a coincidence that the name given to the Hoax has been slyly changed from “global warming” to “climate change.” The Earth’s climate has been changing for at least the last three billion years, so it can be assumed that the Hoaxers felt the need to move off the shifting sands of “global warming” — a truly dubious proposition— to the more solid ground of “climate change.”
If the Climate Change Hoaxers’ official party line is that they are in this to “save the Earth,” what do we see when we look behind the Wizard of Oz’s curtain? What is the real agenda of the Climate Change crowd?
The real agenda can be perceived by taking a close look at the Annual Report of the Hawaiian Electric Industries, Inc. (“HEI”) (trading as HE on the New York Stock Exchange).
It will be recalled that a devastating wildfire consumed the city of Lahaina on the Hawaiian island of Maui in August 2023, for which some have blamed HEI. Although the fire had a major impact on HEI’s stock price, it surprisingly has little impact on the story that is told below, which focuses on Hawaii’s radical Left climate change agenda and the financial and other data supplied in HEI’s 2024 Annual Report.
In 2015, Hawaii’s radical Leftists enacted a law requiring electric utilities such as HEI to meet “renewable portfolio standards” (“RPS”) of 15%, 30%, 40%, 70% and 100% by 2015, 2020, 2030, 2040 and 2045, respectively. Only electrical generation using renewable energy as a source counts toward RPS — energy efficiency programs (for example, switching from incandescent bulbs to fluorescent) don’t count.
So what’s been the effect of this law?
Sales of electric power in Hawaii by HEI have barely budged in the last five years. In 2020, MWh (megawatt hour) sales were 8,120.2. They rose to 8,354 in 2022 and then fell to 8,218.9 in 2024 (all figures are in thousands).
Likewise, the customer base remains largely unchanged: 468,039 in 2020, 469,668 in 2022 and 472,536 in 2024.
Before we move into HEI’s revenues from sales of electricity in 2020 through 2024, let’s first look at the price of crude oil during this period.
Crude oil prices in 2020 plunged greatly during the early phases of the Pandemic, but then began a slow recovery. Excepting the prices during the worst of the Pandemic, they were generally between $43 and $65 per barrel during 2020, rising to $47 to $84 per barrel in 2021, $62 to $80 during 2022 (excepting a high of $130 that was briefly put in), then to $72 to $76 during 2023 and finally $55 to $69 during 2024. (These numbers are general approximations).
If HEI had been relying exclusively on crude oil to generate electricity and was passing through the cost of crude oil to its customers in terms of charges for electricity, we’d expect to see HEI’s revenues rise somewhat from 2020 through 2022 and then fall somewhat during 2023 and 2024. The fact, shown above, buttresses this conclusion that HEI’s electricity generated and sold from 2020 through 2024 was nearly constant.
But that’s not what happened at all.
HEI’s revenues from the sale of electricity was $2,239,530 in 2020, $3,366,621 in 2022 and $3,157,012 in 2024 (all figures are in thousands). Revenues rose by nearly 50 percent between 2020 and 2024 on almost the same amount of electricity sold. HEI’s beleaguered customers were paying about 50 percent more for electricity in 2024 than they were in 2020 for just about the same amount of electricity.
The energy from “renewables” is a heck of a lot more expensive than energy from fossil fuels.
That’s what the Climate Change/Renewable Energy hoax does to you — it jacks up your electricity bill, it makes you poorer.
What must be distinctly understood is that making the Average Joe poorer is precisely the point and objective of the Globalist/Progressive/Climate Change elitist ruling class. In this sense, Climate Change goes hand in glove with importing hordes of immigrants to reduce the Average Joe’s pay and with exporting good manufacturing jobs to India and China.
And why is it so essential for the Globalist/Progressive/Climate Change ruling class to reduce the Average Joe’s pay and to make the Average Joe poorer?
Two reasons: (1) People whose income is so low (even with two or three jobs) that they find it difficult to support themselves tend to turn to the government for financial assistance, at which point the Globalists rush in with food stamps, welfare, Medicaid, etc. as their ostensible saviors. Globalists are like thieves who sneak into your house at night, steal all your money, and then show up the next morning as your best friend and hero, giving you a fraction of your own money back in the form of a small pittance. (2) By keeping the Average Joe’s pay low, the Globalists can have the government engage in huge deficit spending funded by printed money, all without creating runaway consumer price inflation. People who are broke tend to buy fewer consumer goods. Reduce demand and you will find it easier to keep a lid on prices.
With gigantic budget deficits funded by printed money, you can funnel large amounts to your non-governmental organization (NGO) buddies for DEI programs, critical race theory, etc., a portion of which comes back as political campaign contributions helping the Progressive Left win elections. Under Biden and Obama, the federal government has become in part a giant money-laundering operation.
It all fits together when you know where to look.
*****
Image Credit: GROK image generator
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