Where Would Freezing America Be Without Fossil Fuels?

Wind and solar will never keep us warm in winter

The Polar Vortex has brought some brutally cold weather to most of the United States in the last few weeks. The vortex is a large area of low pressure and extremely cold air that surrounds the North and South Pole in the upper atmosphere.

Sometimes, as has happened recently, it breaks down, allowing polar air to spill southwards. It is not an unusual phenomenon. Incidentally, this latest outbreak has been responsible for the wet weather we have had in Britain for the last couple of weeks.

It has also served as a stark reminder that, without fossil fuels, millions of American lives would have been in peril.

Before Trump pulled the plug on the Paris Climate Agreement last year, the US was committed to effectively halving emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in just the next nine years, by 2035. Biden had also pledged to eliminate all emissions by 2050 in his version of Net Zero.