What Protests Against Green Energy Policy Around the World Means for North Carolinians

Two countries have been consumed by protests over the unforeseen impacts of green energy policy, and there are some critically important lessons for North Carolinians to consider. As environmentalists push countries to adopt their radical ideology, many governments are running up against something rather simple: reality.

In Sri Lanka, the president escaped the country to hide out in the Maldives as thousands of protestors swarmed his official residence and burned down his private home. Most of the headlines around the world discuss the disastrous policies that led to the collapse of the country and its subsequent defaults on foreign loans, but never go into detail about why this happened.

For example, the BBC claims that the “same global headwinds – rising inflation and interest rate hikes, depreciating currencies, high levels of debt and dwindling foreign currency reserves – also affect other economies in the region.”

NPR, which discusses the crisis at length, explains: “Corruption and mismanagement have left the island nation laden with debt and unable to pay for imports for basic necessities. The shortages have sown despair among the country’s 22 million people. Sri Lankans are skipping meals and lining up for hours to buy scare fuel.

“Until the latest crisis deepened, the Sri Lankan economy had been expanding and growing a comfortable middle class.” 

But neither of these publications acknowledge the real culprit: green energy policies.

As The Federalist explains, “Suckered by European Green Deal propaganda, the Sri Lankan government implemented a ban in April 2021 on the main thing propelling its agriculture-based economy: chemical fertilizer. On an island where 15 million out of its 22 million people rely on farming, over 90% of them had used chemical fertilizer prior to the ban, which went into effect immediately with no time for contingency planning. By the time the government realized its mistake, it was too late.”

Given America’s current energy predicament, the situation feels somewhat familiar.

But news outlets eager to prop up the necessity of every country radically embracing green energy policies are perfectly comfortable ignoring the real precipitator of Sri Lanka’s demise.

That’s a little bit harder to do with The Netherlands, where farmers have taken to their tractors to protest green energy policies that would close a third of all farms and livestock. This is all being done to address excess nitrogen in the soil.

While Holland is less than a third the size of North Carolina, it is actually the world’s second largest food exporter in terms of value. Given that reality, hindering farming doesn’t seem like such a good idea, but when it comes to green energy policy, logic has never been at the forefront.

Spend some time trying to read Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (NY) mistake laden Green New Deal and it’s clear that in the rush to go “green” America could soon become Sri Lanka or Holland, mired by political fallout and chaos. 

There are incremental things that can be done to address climate change, for those who feel so strongly about it, but the do or die scenario pushed by alarmists can only lead to ruin.

These large-scale protests may seem far away and remote to life in the Tar Heel State, but they could quickly become a feature of life in North Carolina if green energy policies are adopted en masse without forethought. 

A wind turbine farm out on the coasts may seem like a good idea to the environmentally minded, but what about the impact to the tourism and fishing industry? What if it hurts marine wildlife? What if North Carolina adopts radical measures and relies on solar and wind power, only to suffer from crippling blackouts during weeks with temperatures soaring over 100 degrees or temperatures dipping below freezing?

Those realities are usually the least of politicians’ concerns, until their city, state or country is figuratively or literally on fire.

For North Carolinians, this could occur sooner rather than later as Duke Energy is currently putting forth scenarios for pushing the state towards unreliable and expensive green energy, which could increase electric bills by $86 to $95 per month for residential customers. The cost would go up astronomically for some businesses. 

To learn more about the impact of these environmental policies, you can find more here.