U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm failed to answer a key question from Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee about the effects of the Biden administration’s radical climate agenda.
On Tuesday, Granholm struggled to offer specific projections on how Biden’s plan to zero emissions across the U.S. economy by 2050 would improve global temperatures. The energy secretary could only describe the general purpose of the “net-zero” agenda.
Difficulties began when Lee asked Granholm if she supported the Biden Administration’s plan for a net-zero emissions transition, to which she responded in the affirmative.
“So, if the United States, consistent with your ambitions, with your plans, with the ambitions of the Biden Administration, if it completely transitions over to get to net-zero, exactly how many degrees will global temperatures decrease as a result of moving to net-zero?” continued Lee after detailing global cost estimates for the green transition compiled by McKinsey and Company in 2022.
“Well, we want to keep global temperatures from rising more than one-and-a-half to two degrees, and net zero is by 2050, so there is time to be able to get there,” Granholm responded.
However, Lee pointed out to Granholm that she had not responded to Biden’s plan’s potential impact on global temperatures, which could cost trillions of dollars.
“We have just talked about the fact that it is going to cost $275 trillion to get there (...) But what impact does this have? What does it do for global temperatures if we get to net zero?” he insisted.
Today I asked Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to estimate the impact net carbon neutrality would have on global temperatures.
She has no idea.
And yet she confidently restated the Biden administration’s commitment to net carbon neutrality, which would cost $275 trillion.
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) April 16, 2024
Granholm continued without providing a clear answer, stating that the goal is to prevent temperatures from rising more than one and a half or two degrees and thus prevent “extreme and accelerating” weather events.
Lee continued to press and question how the billion-dollar investment in a complete transition to net zero emissions can be justified if its impact is unknown.
“I fail to understand how you can definitively say that a complete transition to net zero is necessary when you don’t even know the impact that it would have on global temperatures,” he said.
Sorry, that was meant to be CARBON neutrality.
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) April 17, 2024
This is not the first time a Biden official has had trouble explaining aspects of the climate agenda.
Last year, Deputy Energy Secretary David Turk also had trouble answering Senator John Neely Kennedy’s question about the cost and benefits of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.
“You’re advocating we spend trillions of dollars to seek carbon neutrality - and it’s not your money or my money, it’s taxpayer money - and you can’t how much you’re going to lower global temperatures, or you won’t tell me” the senator criticized after getting no answers on how much global temperatures would be reduced by Biden’s plan or how much would be the approximate price it would take to implement it.
