Essay by Eric Worrall
h/t M; There have been some surprisingly climate skeptic Wall Street Journal articles lately, at least in terms of hilighting the obvious flaws of big government subsidised climate “solutions”.
Why Pretend Green Pork Will Stop Climate Change?
Because organized groups and politicians want the money, and the public wants to be a sucker.
By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.Follow
July 29, 2022 6:07 pm ETLies told by government officials provoke little concern from the public until voters encounter a consequence: That mask or vaccine didn’t prevent you from being infected by Covid. You can’t keep your doctor. The half-trillion dollars you were asked to spend on climate change didn’t stop climate change.
Take the Joe Manchin-sponsored climate compromise coming together in the U.S. Senate. Despite panegyrics in the press, this euphoric proposal amounts to exactly the sort of subsidy regime the National Academy of Sciences in 2013, after a similar splurge, judged to be a “poor tool for reducing greenhouse gases and achieving climate-change objectives.”
One analysis pinpointed in the fewest possible words why: “Alternative energy is not replacement energy.”
Such packages are sold on the public’s faulty intuition that an erg of green energy consumed is an erg of fossil energy that stays in the ground. But it does not follow. The most widely celebrated paper in recent years on the economics of climate change concludes that green-energy subsidies mostly just increase total energy consumption rather than displace fossil fuels. The impact on CO2 and temperatures is “minuscule,” according to Princeton’s José Luis Cruz Álvarez and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg.
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But the saddest sound effect is the claim by the Senate bill’s admirers that China, India and other emitters will be so impressed with the Manchin compromise that they will fall in the line.
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Read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-pretend-green-pork-will-stop-climate-change-alternative-energy-global-warming-lies-government-officials-11659129705
I hope Wall Street Journal continues this trend of shooting climate change sacred cows – its about time mainstream media started to do a little actual journalism, instead of just accepting whatever left wing politicians say as gospel.
I agree with the journalist Holman W. Jenkins, that believing that the West can lead others with their climate insanity is one of the strangest aspects of the climate movement.
This belief in climate leadership is certainly not unique to green politicians in the USA. European politicians frequently speak of “climate leadership”, they think they are influencing the world to follow their climate action.
So far the only part of the world which has so far allowed itself to be completely led down the garden path by American and European greens is Sri Lanka. Poor countries might get a lot of things wrong, but after the Sri Lanka fiasco, finding another poor nation sucker willing to fully embrace the Western green roadmap could be a challenge, no matter how much funding or international recognition is on offer.
Success is what others follow and try to copy. The success of the industrial revolution spread throughout the world. The success of capitalism overturned the Soviet Union and Maoist communism – only a handful of miserable holdouts like North Korea completely refuse to embrace private enterprise, and even they intermittently allow private markets.
The energy shortages and economic pain green Europe and green energy obsessed parts of the USA are currently suffering are not a template for success.
via Watts Up With That?
August 1, 2022
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