Hillary Clinton says it’s your fault, you are what’s wrong

India Today Conclave 2018, Keynote Address, 10 March, Hillary Rodham Clinton


36:00. Aroon Purie: … So what’s gone wrong in America?

HRC: Look, I think that there are several big, uh, problems that beset us and to some extent you’re seeing them in Europe, um, one is the phenomenon of disappointment, of a sense of being left behind in a fast-changing economy. That is absolutely true, it’s been going on for years, but it has sped up. Some of it is the overhang from the disastrous financial crisis of oh-7 oh-8 oh-9, where millions of people lost their jobs, they lost their savings, they lost their homes, and nobody was ever punished for it is the way they look at it. Y’know, y’know, what happened to the bad guys? Nothing. And I’m stuck in a hole after having worked hard and I’ve got nothing to show for it. Some of it was a reaction to advancing opportunities and rights for, um, other groups, for example, African-Americans, um, for the LGBT community, uh, for women, and some people were fury that that meant it was a zero-sum game and there was no similar, uh, potential for them. I think there was also the reaction against immigrants, which you see again in Europe, which has a very difficult set of challenges because of a flooding of immigrants from the Middle East and Africa. Our immigrants, primarily from, uh, Latin America led by Mexico, from India, China, other places, are hard working, productive, law abiding, but if you remember, Trump started his campaign attacking immigrants. Because he knew that in many parts of the country — and let me just hasten to add, in many parts of the country where there aren’t very many immigrants — he was able to scapegoat immigrants. If you have problems, if you’re not happy with your job, you don’t think you’ve gotten enough advancement, y’know you’re working for, y’know, a woman now, ya don’t like it — whatever the reason was, um, he stirred that up. And anti-immigrant feeling became so virulent, um, thanks to his, un, rhetoric that it was a big motivator in a lot of the, uh, votes in certain parts of the country.

If you look at the map of the United States, there’s all that red in the middle, where Trump won. I win the coasts, I win, y’know, Illinois, Minnesota, places like that, but what the map doesn’t show you is that I won the places that represent two-thirds of America’s gross domestic product. [applause] So I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward, and his whole campaign, Make America Great Again, was looking backwards. Y’know, you didn’t like black people getting rights, you don’t like women, y’know, getting jobs, you don’t wanna, y’know, see that Indian-American succeeding more than are — whatever your problem is, I’m gonna solve it. So it was a symptom, but it was also a cause, because having someone run for President who voices those ideas, who rejects so much of the American story and our values, was also the underlying cause as well.

40:00. AP: I was also surprised, uh, looking at the details of the American election, is how almost 52% of white women voted for him, despite the Billy Bush tape and so forth. How do you explain that?

HRC: Well, I should start by explaining that, um, Democrats, eh, going back to my husband and even before but just in recent times going back to Bill and, and and uh, our candidates and then President Obama, have been losing the white vote, including white women. Uh, we do not do well with white men and we don’t do well with married white women. Um, and part of that is a, an identification with the Republican Party, uh, and a, un, a, a sort of ongoing pressure, uh, to, uh, vote the way that your husband, your boss, uh, your son, whoever, uh, believes you should, and what happened in my election is I was on the way to winning, um, white women until [cough] former Director of the FBI Jim Comey dropped that uh very ill-advised letter on October the 28th and my numbers just went down because all — and I heard a lot of anecdotal evidence about this, people have written about it — all of a sudden, y’know, white women who were going to vote for me, and frankly standing up to the men in their lives and the men in their workplaces, uh were being told she’s going to jail, y’know, you don’t want to vote for her, y’know, it’s gonna be terrible, you can’t vote for that. So it just, it stopped my momentum and it decreased my vote, uh, enough — because I was, I was ahead, I was winning and I thought I had fought my way back in the ten days from that letter until, uh, the election, I fell a little bit short, and so I think that it, it was part of a historical trend that I was bucking and then it collapsed on me.

Wind power does not reduce CO₂ emissions.

“In a wind-thermal system, production variations from the intermittent character of wind power results in an increase in system costs and a decrease in the efficiency of wind power as a means to reduce CO₂-emissions from the system. This effect gets increasingly pronounced with increased levels of wind power grid penetration and is due to the adjustment in production pattern of the thermal units to the variations in wind power production. As wind power grid penetration increases, the conventional units will run more at part load and experience more frequent starts and stops. Also, wind power may need to be curtailed in situations where the costs to stop and restart thermal units are higher than the difference in running costs of wind power and the thermal units. Thus, variations in wind power reduce the possibility of the power system to lower CO₂-emissions by adding wind power capacity to the system.”

—“Large scale integration of wind power: moderating thermal power plant cycling” by Lisa Göransson and Filip Johnsson, Wind Energy 2011; 14:91–105

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Olaf Errwigge (Facebook) —

There is no argument that burning fossil fuel to generate electricity releases CO₂ into the atmosphere, or that using the wind to generate electricity does not. But it does not follow that adding wind to the grid reduces CO₂ emissions from other sources: Where there is little hydropower (no CO₂ emissions) to balance the highly variable wind, fossil fuel–fired generators are forced to work less efficiently, ie, with more emissions per unit of electricity generated. Furthermore, the best “balancing” plants for wind are open-cycle natural gas–fired turbines (OCGT), which can respond quickly enough to compensate for the continual changes of wind generation. But combined-cycle natural gas–fired turbines (CCGT) are substantially more efficient efficient, such that wind + OCGT may not represent lower emissions than CCGT alone. Thus, wind power’s manufacture, transport, and maintenance would indeed contribute to increased CO₂ emissions. And there is no benefit at all to weigh against its other adverse impacts on the environment, wildlife, and human neighbors.

Result: Wind + fossil fuel generation does not necessarily mean lower CO₂ emissions, particularly in the comparison of wind + open-cycle gas (necessary to quickly respond to wind’s continually variable generation) vs. the much more efficient combined-cycle gas alone.

And, of course, where there’s hydro, that’s the preferred source to ramp back as the wind rises: no CO₂ involved at all.

With virtually no benefits, wind power’s many adverse impacts – on the environment, wildlife, and human neighbors – not to mention its financial cost and the carbon and materials footprint of its manufacture, transport, and maintenance – are impossible to justify.

Also see:  “Why wind power does not substantially reduce emissions”