Let Them Eat Solar Panels

Last week, during a speech at a high-dollar fundraiser for the League of Conservation Voters in Washington, D.C., President Joe Biden exulted about a solar project in Angola. According to a transcript of his speech that can be found on the White House’s website, Biden said:

“We have plans to build a railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean. We have plans to build in — in Angola one of the largest solar plants in the world. I can go on, but I’m not. I’m going off-script. I’m going to get in trouble.”

Ignore, of course, Biden’s gaffe about building a railroad across the Pacific. Ignore, too, his statement that he was “going to get in trouble” for going off script. Joe Biden is the president of the United States. He commands a huge arsenal of warships, warplanes, and nuclear weapons. With whom, exactly, might he be getting in trouble?

Instead, focus on the part about the solar project in Angola. Biden didn’t give any details, but he was referring to a $900 million loan commitment that was announced on June 1 by the Export-Import Bank of the United States that will back the construction of a 500-megawatt solar project in Angola. In a press release touting the deal, the Ex-Im Bank claimed the project will “generate over 500 megawatts of renewable power; provide access to clean energy resources across Angola; [and] help Angola meet its climate commitments.”

You can be forgiven for not knowing that Angola, an impoverished country of 32 million people where more than 60% of the population doesn’t have access to electricity has made any climate commitments at all.

You can also be forgiven for not knowing that Angola is a member of OPEC and has enormous oil and gas reserves. Further, you can be forgiven for not knowing that Exxon Mobil may invest as much as $15 billion in Angola to develop a new offshore oil field and that Angola exports tens of thousands of barrels of oil per day to the United States. Finally, as can be seen in the graphic above, you can be forgiven for not knowing that the average Angolan resident is emitting a paltry 0.6 tons of CO₂ per year and that U.S. per capita CO₂ emissions are about 15 tons per year, or 25 times more.

The Ex-Im Bank loan for the Angolan solar project — and Biden’s crowing about it to the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), which is one of America’s richest dark-money climate NGOs — drips with irony, hypocrisy, and green colonialism.

Read the rest of this piece at Robert Bryce Substack.

Robert Bryce is a Texas-based author, journalist, film producer, and podcaster. His articles have appeared in a myriad of publications including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Forbes, Time, Austin Chronicle, and Sydney Morning Herald.

Photo: courtesy Robert Bryce Substack.