The woke attitude on energy is gone with the wind | Mulshine

Perhaps the most prominent opponent of puritanism in the last century, the great H.L. Mencken, once said of New England, "It began life as a slaughterhouse of ideas and it continues so to this day."

Indeed it does, only now it's been rebranded as "woke" rather than puritanical. Consider this quote on climate policy from Massachusetts senator Ed Markey:

"It's time for us to stop talking about what is politically feasible and start talking about what is scientifically necessary. We cannot compromise on science."

I would recommend that quote to any of my Democratic friends who whine about the death of democracy.

What Markey was saying is that the views of the public should be discounted if they clash with the views of whatever scientists are cherry-picked by a politician.

Markey was among the authors of the so-called "Green New Deal" during the early years of the Biden administration.

But we're now approaching the early years of the second Trump administration and we're going to get a new deal of a different sort.

I found that out last week when I had a phone conversation with the man who may be the member of Congress most despised by the Democrats.

That's U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew of Cape May County.

Van Drew is disliked by the Democrats because he once was one of them. But after getting elected to Congress in 2018 as a Democrat, he moved to the GOP in 2020.

It was a smart move. Then-President Trump threw a fund-raiser for him in Wildwood that year. And as of last week he has won three elections as a Republican.

Van Drew remains close to The Donald and speaks to him regularly. One of the issues they discuss is that plan to line the ocean off New Jersey with as many as 200 wind turbines more than a thousand feet high.

Trump plans to deep-six those turbines as soon as he gets into office, Van Drew said.

"He's opposed to them," Van Drew said. "It's just a matter of figuring out how to get rid of them."

While they're at it, perhaps they could get rid of that 120-foot wind turbine in Van Drew's yard.

Van Drew, who was a dentist in real life, was an early adopter of renewable energy.

"I was always open-minded," he said.

The solar panels he put on his roof work fine, but the wind turbine has been problematic at best, he said.

Even when it was new, the turbine only put out half the power that was advertised, he said. And then it broke, as highly complicated appliances do when left out in the weather.

The cost to repair it would be $30,000 to $40,000, so it sits in his yard as "a monument to stupidity," he said.

Bob Stern agrees. Stern is a Long Beach Island resident who started a group called "Save LBI" to oppose the turbine project.

He's an actual scientist with a Ph.D, as well as years of experience working for the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Environmental Protection.

His expertise is in environmental impact statements. Those for the wind project that could be built off Long Beach Island say that any effect on New Jersey's carbon footprint would be negligible, he said. (But the turbines would "adversely affect" whales.

"If China sells one coal plant to Africa, basically everything we do to reduce carbon emissions is out the window," Stern said.

There's a way to produce plenty of carbon-free power, he said.

"If your primary concern is carbon dioxide emissions, the realistic alternative is nuclear," he said.

That's certainly my preferred alternative. In Ocean County, where I live, we had one of the first nuclear plants in America, Oyster Creek.

It pumped out reliable, carbon-free power for half a century.

But it was shut down after in 2018 after objections by environmentalists.

Nuclear power is also expensive, but unlike wind it produces energy around the clock. The Biden administration made some efforts to keep existing nukes online, but Bill Gates argues we need a national effort promoting nuclear power as the best way to generate the base load of electricity.

Gates has famously stated that we need nukes "because the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine."

And when those two aren't working, electricity rates skyrocket, as is happening in California at the moment.

The question of cost is crucial. One reason the Democrats lost this election was the rise in the cost of living under President Joe Biden.

A Monmouth University Poll in 2023 showed that most New Jerseyans support offshore wind. But when asked if they would still support it "if it caused your electricity rates to increase for the next few years," support dropped to a mere 25 percent.

Gov. Phil Murphy remains a big proponent of offshore wind. But when he was asked last week about whether Trump would pull the plug on offshore wind, he replied, "That's going to be an interesting one...is he gonna do what he said versus prosecute a different agenda?"

Van Drew said he's gonna do what he said.

It's worked for him so far.