Rick Whitbeck: Walz’ climate record should sound alarms for American energy security

By RICK WHITBECK | POWER THE FUTURE

If mad scientists went to a secret lab to create a climate clone of Kamala Harris on energy policy, they’d be thrilled if the new handiwork ended up looking – and acting – like Tim Walz.

Check the record: The Minnesota governor wants to decarbonize his state the same way extremists like California Gov. Gavin Newsom do.  He signed a 100 percent carbon-free electrical standard by 2040, and tied his state’s emission standards to California’s. He did so despite the fact that nearly 70 percent of Minnesota’s current energy mix comes from traditional energy sources.

Now, Tim Walz wants to be your next vice president, and bring those ideals to America at large.

To no one’s surprise, the Minnesota governor’s ideology is aligned with climate zealots running the Democratic party.  Their proposed platform for their upcoming convention will most assuredly focus its energy sections on decarbonization, ending fossil fuel use, and the false narratives surrounding a “climate crisis.”

Tim Walz’s ideologies fit right in with those hardliners, and has since his days in Congress, where he supported job-killing ideas like a cap-and-trade bill and even voiced support for a carbon tax, in spite of how those actions may have harmed the manufacturing and agricultural sectors in his home state.

With Walz on the ticket, it is worth noting how his views and actions regarding energy have increased regulatory burdens, made Minnesota more federal government-dependent, and hamstrung The Land of 10,000 Lakes from developing its natural resource base. All these actions have weakened American and Minnesotan opportunity, while empowering Communist China and other enemies of our nation.

Walz is an outspoken cheerleader of Biden and Harris’ actions on climate, praising the administration for its goals of decarbonizing America, pushing the country toward ‘green’ energy solutions and away from traditional ones.  He’s championed social and environmental justice programs in Minnesota, taking hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants and subsidies to enact those programs.  

His work to ensure Minnesota is seen as a leader in the race to decarbonize includes a 69-page climate plan that includes “a goal of increasing the share of electric cars on Minnesota roads to 20% by 2030 from the current 1%, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030, and achieving a zero net carbon emissions goal by 2050.”  He has joined the 24-state coalition of the U.S. Climate Alliance, which seems more concerned with ‘just transitions and equity’ than it is with the impacts to jobs and economies of member states with their mandates-over-markets approach to accelerating net-zero policies.

In short, Tim Walz is a fan of the green agenda.  But at what cost to Minnesotans?

By raking in federal monies designed to solve the ‘climate crisis’, he’s made Minnesota more dependent on government largesse moving forward.  Walz has no plan for when the federal green gravy train runs dry.  More importantly, if he really wants to move Minnesota toward a decarbonized goal, why did Walz praise the Biden-Harris administration when they killed a world-class mine that could have established a domestic supply chain of critical – and short-supplied – components of the ‘green’ agenda?

Rich mineral deposits lie in the vast wilderness of northeast Minnesota, where copper, nickel, cobalt and platinum have been found in abundance.  Each of those are currently in short supply in America, with China firmly in control of the global supply chain.  

The result is that Tim Walz wants his energy from unreliable sources and his precious metals from anywhere but the United States.

Twin Metals – a Minnesota-based company – wants to develop a swath of the state to change that.  Mining copper would help Minnesota develop  wind power, while nickel and cobalt would fill needs for components in battery systems and the electric vehicles Walz champions. More than 750 full-time jobs in the rural areas of the state would be created, with another 1500 support jobs created throughout the state.

Yet, in one of the Biden-Harris administration’s more nefarious acts, it denied Twin Metals the permits it needs to move forward with the project in January, 2022.  

One would think Tim Walz would stand with Twin Metals and demanded the chance for his state to lead in domestic supplies of ‘green’ energy components.  After all, on the line is thousands of jobs, and the chance to jump-start rural Minnesota’s economy.  Instead, Walz praised the actions as being good for his state and nation. Proving that Tim Walz is a reliable rubber stamp for whatever Harris and Biden needed, no matter the cost.

With his capitulation, Tim Walz failed Minnesota on Twin Metals.  He stood with the green lobby against sound economic opportunities. He showed that China is more important than his home state. 

If he will abandon his own state for the green agenda, imagine who Tim Walz will leave behind if he becomes Vice President.

Rick Whitbeck is the Alaska State Director for Power The Future, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for American energy jobs. Contact him at [email protected] and follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @PTFAlaska. This column first ran in Townhall.com.