With this being the end of the school year and the beginning of the White House’s “Energy Week,” let’s take a look at the energy sector for an end-of-the-year lesson on dramatic irony. For reference, dramatic irony is when the audience knows something a character does not, setting up a humorous or tragic juxtaposition between the character’s expectations and reality.
Here are three recent examples of dramatic irony in the energy sector:
First there’s Rupert Darwall’s recent op-ed in the WSJ, which claims that unlike China, India can’t afford unreliable renewable energy and thus should stick with coal. This was published the day after news broke that Coal India is closing 37 coal mines because coal can’t compete with the cheaper solar and wind prices. India’s well on its way to replacing Japan as the world's third-largest solar market and phasing out coal entirely by 2050, well ahead of its Paris Agreement commitments. (Side note: China, deniers’ other favorite Paris scapegoat, is carefully rolling out its cap and trade program this year.)
Second, at his Iowa rally last week, Trump told the crowd about his love of coal and how he doesn’t want to “just hope the wind blows to light up your homes and your factories.” But Iowans don’t worry about wind not being able to keep the lights on because Iowa has the most reliable electrical grid and has the second-most wind power of any state in the country. With over a third of its energy coming from wind power, Iowa is proof that renewables make the power grid more reliable. What’s more, Iowa’s hardly the only red state going big on renewables.
Then we have Scott Pruitt. After he began gutting EPA regulations to benefit the energy industry, he met with energy CEOs last week. There was no doubt that Pruitt was expecting praises and requests for further slashing the public health and environmental protections that prevent the building of more coal plants. But he was in for a shock. The resulting headline of the meeting: Energy CEOs Tell EPA Chief They Want Carbon Regulation. One attendee said that “none of our people are ever going to be building a coal plant again” and that Pruitt’s coal fixation is “devoid of reality.” This ignorance and denial of reality is definitely one of the reasons why some career EPA staffers are “openly dismissing and mocking” Trump and Pruitt’s anti-regulatory agenda.
We all expected the reality-TV President’s tenure to be dramatic. But only a few could have predicted the extent to which it would be dramatically ironic.
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