Doug Sheridan writes “Today’s US policy makers are fully aware of how utterly their energy ministrations fail to benefit the American people.”
“It's in the fine print of policy documents—where the required cost-benefit disclosures are buried—but it's there.”
Doug Sheridan writes
“Today’s US policy makers are fully aware of how utterly their energy ministrations fail to benefit the American people.
It's in the fine print of policy documents—where the required cost-benefit disclosures are buried—but it's there.”
Holman Jenkins writes, it hardly qualifies as news...but the “second wave” of EV buyers isn’t materializing. That's what the WSJ reported recently. What a surprise.
To lure the first wave took thousands of dollars in taxpayer handouts to each buyer and thousands more in subsidies to encourage companies to build the EVs in the first place. And these buyers were the enthusiasts. How much more will have to be piled on the table to lure those customers who aren’t bewitched by EV cultural and technological appeal and care about having a useful car at an affordable price?
But this was always understood. In the fantasy life of greens, the next step would be to ban the sale of new gasoline cars altogether. Except Americans vote. That means politicians who don’t get the votes don’t get to make policy, including the policy of denying the public the choice to buy gasoline-powered vehicles.
At some point, too, the public might look up and notice that subsidizing EVs is having no effect on climate or CO2. The pattern is familiar by now, as pointed out by Butler University’s Peter Grossman, who delivers a smart bomb on the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Arab oil embargo in the latest edition of New Atlantis —
"The worst effect was on US energy policy. Whereas the embargo lasted about five months, the toll on US policy has lasted five decades and counting.”
Bingo. The 50-year-old fuel-economy regime devolved into a convoluted set of political trade-offs serving no legitimate cost-benefit goal. Boondoggles from synfuels to corn ethanol were launched in the 1970s in failed pursuit of energy independence. Of course, only thanks to the still-functioning genius of the free-market system did the US attain true energy security with the help of fracking.
In the climate era pure cynicism finally took over. The words “energy transition” are redundant—the energy economy is always transitioning. Wind, hydro and biomass all existed before fossil fuels arrived. They continue to thrive after.
In short, energy’s uses are unlimited. This is why the effect of green-energy subsidies—aside from enriching their backers—is largely to stimulate increased energy consumption rather than reduce CO2. This effect is already apparent in the numbers.
To Sum It Up 1: The press should be the antidote to the engulfing sea of idiocy on all sides of the energy issue. Ours too often fails. What older Americans remember as the oil crisis was a product of domestic price controls, imposed by people in the Nixon admin who knew better. Not much has changed.
To Sum It Up 2: Today’s US policy makers are fully aware of how utterly their energy ministrations fail to benefit the American people. It's in the fine print of policy documents—where the required cost-benefit disclosures are buried—but it's there.