The billions living in developing countries ARE NOT benefiting from Government subsidies.

Guest essay co-authored by Ronald Stein, Oliver Hemmers, and Steve Curtis

When governments go into business, citizens start to suffer. When governments support laws that promote a level of economic playing field for all in a free enterprise system, citizens prosper.  A good example of this is the United States. Under the free enterprise system, this small coalition of little more than 13 disparate colonies grew to become the most imposing industrial power in the world in just over 100 years.

Under the current system, in which government spending picks winners and losers in the business world and hires massive numbers of people, we have amassed an unsupportable debt of more than $100,000 per person. This is beyond the personal debt that is burdening our citizens today. Yet, we still have advocates who want to transfer personal debt to national debt and further burden our posterity. This cannot end well.

The poorest Americans are richer than most of humanity. Of the eight billion people now on this planet, more than five billion live on less than $10.00 a day, almost half the world — over three billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day, and billions have little to no access to electricity. This is the benefit of dictatorships and oligarchies disguised as democratic republics controlling these disadvantaged people.

The most important commodities we have today are the products and fuels made from fossil fuels that did not exist 200 years ago. Oil produces raw materials for more than 6,000 products manufactured by different industries, which are demanded by the 8 billion people on this planet. Without oil, all of our products would cost much more.   

The fossil fuel industry also provides transportation fuels. Today, we have more than 50,000 merchant ships, more than 20,000 commercial aircraft, and more than 50,000 military aircraft that use fuel manufactured from crude oil. The fuels to move the heavy-weight and long-range needs of jets moving people and products, the merchant ships for global trade flows, and the military and space programs are also dependent on what can be manufactured from crude oil. Those fuels also support the 1.4 billion cars in the world and the 14 million trucks registered in the world.

The second most important commodity we have today is electricity. It is the perfect commodity to control on a national level to enhance the boot of oppression on its citizens. Subsidies for continuous, uninterruptible, and dispatchable power from coal, natural gas, and nuclear are JUST for electricity, the same electricity that CANNOT exist without the products and components made from the oil derivatives manufactured from fossil fuels. Subsidies help control the production of electricity in a manner that keeps it scarce and expensive.

Most electricity is produced with coal and natural gas. Natural gas is replacing coal, but beyond that, the mix has not changed much despite the massive subsidies poured into the coffers of those willing to incorporate inefficient and expensive production of electricity in favor of inexpensive and plentiful sources. This is reflected in the fact that coal and natural gas are producing 95% or more of the proportion of electricity they were even a decade ago. Renewable energy subsidies have driven costs for electricity to double or triple their retail costs in some countries compared to a decade ago, even though quality of air has suffered in that same time frame.

Yet many advocate ridding the world of coal, natural gas, and oil no matter how much it costs people. Maybe we ought to rethink this radical and expensive transition. Remember, you, the citizens, pay for all government expenses, including the costs of electricity production infrastructure, whether it is in taxes or direct utility bills.

We all know that special interests financially support the Government decision-makers, and thus, Government policies financially support special interests with subsidies. The Press paints these subsidies as “free money,” and we seem to ignore that this money really comes from the poor people and their children. If rich people paid the taxes, they would not remain rich, so it must come from somewhere.

Since subsidies come from all of us, maybe we should be careful how we use them. It turns out that most of the subsidies go to foreign businesses, many of which support the exploitation of slave labor to mine for the “green” minerals and metals to produce windmills, solar panels, and EV batteries, as well as the infliction of environmental degradation to “their” landscapes to reinforce mandated EV’s, wind turbines, and solar panels in “our backyards”!

We also pay foreign companies to install them. This reality reveals the imperialistic nature of US politics, which exploits the world’s poor people to fuel our desire for luxury. This is patently immoral.

The “renewables” industries would disappear without US government subsidies.

Ironically, allowing free enterprise competition to supply your electricity would result in far lower costs to the consumer, as it does for all products. In fact, nuclear power is the cheapest and least imposing way to produce electricity when all subsidies are eliminated. This was proven in the 1960s and 1970s throughout the world. Today, China leads the world in the production of new nuclear power plants.  Are they seeing something the rest of the world is not?

How do countries justify personal power and control of their citizens through a subsidy process that takes money from their people to produce an inferior product and increase their daily expenses?

Since the US took the lead in all technological advancements during the Industrial Revolution, which started in the mid-to-late 1800s, it makes sense that we lead the rest of the world into the production of cheap, clean energy using nuclear power. One way to do that would be to petition individual state Governors to show the Federal government how it is done. Compete the production and delivery of electricity like our citizens demanded of the long-distance phone call business. After all, how better would your life be with competitive one cent per kWh electricity over the possibility of one dollar per kWh electricity that data centers would bid for electricity if production stayed the same while their demands soared?

When people know the possibilities, the transition to nuclear power will happen quickly. The transition should happen without the elimination of cheap production of electricity through natural gas and coal until the market drives the transition to nuclear power. Imagine the massive increase in quality of life worldwide with easily affordable electricity delivered to every household.

If the US does not take the lead with a “New Nuclear Posture for a Hungry World” that is fully supported by Oliver Stone’s 105-minute movie NUCLEAR NOW, our adversaries will.

Ronald Stein P.E.

Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure, Co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations”, policy advisor on energy literacy for The Heartland Institute, and The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and National TV Commentator- Energy & Infrastructure with Rick Amato.

Ronald Stein, P.E. is an engineer, energy consultant, speaker, author of books and articles on energy, environmental policy, and human rights, and Founder of PTS Advance, a California based company.

Ron advocates that energy literacy starts with the knowledge that renewable energy is only intermittent electricity generated from unreliable breezes and sunshine, as wind turbines and solar panels cannot manufacture anything for the 8 billion on this planet.