Environment

Down With Electric Vehicles!

Featured image Are people finally starting to catch on to the fact that electric vehicles are a terrible idea? I hope so. Bjorn Lomborg makes the case in accessible form in the Wall Street Journal. To begin with, EVs don’t even save much on CO2 emissions: Over its lifetime, an electric car does emit less CO2 than a gasoline car, but the difference can range considerably depending on how the electricity is »

Podcast: Two Cheers for the Climate Bill? Alex Trembath Explains

Featured image This classic format edition features a conversation between me and Alex Trembath, the deputy director of Breakthrough Institute, about the climate provisions of the so-called  “Inflation Reduction Act” (IRA), namely the massive increases in subsidies for “green energy” that normally summon a gag reflex from conservatives. I’ve written about the “Breakthroughvians,” as they are known, many times before on Power Line. They are progressives who dissent from or critique much of today’s progressive orthodoxy, »

Today’s Energy Tutorial

Featured image I’ve discovered a wonderful energy data tool, ElectricityMaps.com, that offers interactive real-time and historical maps of electricity production and consumption around the world (insofar as data exist, which it doesn’t for China and other key places). Check it out for yourself. I want to draw a contrast between “green energy” Germany and France as of this morning (though use the time-slide in the lower left hand corner of the site »

In Re: The Climate Bill (Part 1)

Featured image I’ll have a lot more to say about the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” in due course after I finish unpacking and catching up with five weeks of snail-mail and other things in the pile, but as an opening generalization it should be said that by passing massive subsidies for wind and solar power, the U.S. has decided to emulate Germany’s energiewende (“energy revolution”) policy that it adopted 20 years ago. »

Guest Post: Ken Green on the ICE That Just Won’t Melt

Featured image Ken Green returns with his patented snark on electric vehicle hype versus the evil gasoline cars most of us drive: For as long as I’ve been following EHS (Environment, Health, and Safety—the ESG of the last generation) and transportation policy (and that’s a long time, since my first days as a doctoral student/EHS policy analyst at Huge Aircrash Company in the early 1990s), there has been one kind of ICE »

More Evidence of the Pointlessness of Wind and Solar

Featured image This essay by David Stevenson of the Caesar Rodney Institute Center for Energy & Environment appeared in May, but I just ran across it today. It analyzes data from the PJM electrical grid, America’s largest, between 2019 and 2021. This comparison of actual regional grid carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions between 2019 and 2021 shows increased use of wind and solar did not reduce emissions. Wind and solar electric generation are »

When Reality Bites

Featured image I suggest these two news stories are related: Global 2021 coal-fired electricity generation surges to record high LONDON, July 21 (Reuters) – Global coal-fired electricity generators are producing more power than ever before in response to booming electricity demand and the surging price of gas. The world’s coal-fired generators produced a record 10,244 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2021 surpassing the previous record of 10,098 TWh set in 2018 (“Statistical review of »

Dems Want to Ban Telling the Truth

Featured image In a virtual Axios event on Thursday, Gina McCarthy, Joe Biden’s top climate official, urged tech companies to suppress truthful information about climate issues: “The tech companies have to stop allowing specific individuals over and over again to spread disinformation,” she told Axios’ Alexi McCammond at a virtual event that aired Thursday. “We need the tech companies to really jump in,” McCarthy said. “Really jump in” means to ban, suspend, »

Is It Immoral to Drive an Electric Vehicle?

Featured image Of all the crazy policies we see implemented around us, from decriminalizing theft to teaching children to change their “gender,” perhaps the craziest is government’s determination to force us to drive electric vehicles. EVs like the Tesla are perfectly fine cars, or would be if they weren’t subsidized or mandated. But they are terrible for the environment, and the conditions under which their materials are mined raise serious ethical questions. »

Goodbye to Coal? Hardly

Featured image The United States has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions more than any other country, primarily by shifting from coal to natural gas as a source of electricity. Our government has applied considerable pressure to kill America’s coal industry, ostensibly to preserve the Earth’s climate. But other countries haven’t gotten the memo. Energy expert Robert Bryce explains: [O]ver the past few weeks, China and India have announced plans to increase their »

A Bumblebee Needs Fins Like a Fish Needs A…

Featured image An appellate court in California has held that bumblebees are fish: The issue presented here is whether the bumble bee, a terrestrial invertebrate, falls within the definition of fish, as that term is used in the definitions of endangered species in section 2062, threatened species in section 2067, and candidate species (i.e., species being considered for listing as endangered or threatened species) in section 2068 of the Act. It takes »

Another “Green” Catastrophe

Featured image We briefly noted here the agricultural apocalypse occurring in Sri Lanka: [W]here are the environmentalists in all this? They are doing their best to reduce agricultural output. In Sri Lanka, the government mandated organic farming, with the result that yields declined catastrophically, prices skyrocketed, and, no doubt, many died. The London Times had a more detailed account last month, headlined: “How Sri Lanka’s shift to organic farming left it in »

Green Nightmares

Featured image Global warming hysteria is lowering living standards around the world, but the real disasters are generally a ways off in the future. If countries actually try to meet their foolish carbon reduction pledges, the result will be a human disaster rarely paralleled in history. A small preview of what is in store comes from Northern Ireland: Northern Ireland will need to lose more than 1 million sheep and cattle to »

Earth Day, Biden style

Featured image President Biden traveled to Seattle yesterday to observe Earth Day, Biden style. The White House has posted the transcript of his remarks here. The speech went on at what must have felt like Castroite length to those in attendance. The text is far beyond my poor power to add or detract, but it warrants attention. The transcript reflects Biden mangling names, slurring words, misreading numbers, and so on. That is »

It’s Earth Day. Again. Contain Your Excitement

Featured image Yup, it’s Earth Day today. (Also Lenin’s birthday, but I am sure it is just a coincidence.) I know you can’t contain your excitement. But try. As always, today is a good day to check in with Mark Perry’s list of 18 predictions made on the first Earth Day in 1970 that have all proven spectacularly wrong. My favorite: Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, »

Another Smash Up at the Leftist Intersectionality

Featured image I never tire of noting how the same ideology that goes on about the “rights of nature” goes on in the very next breath to deny human nature, or even to argue that invoking human nature is hate speech. You know, like suggesting that it is possible to know what a woman is without a degree in biology. And then there are stories like this, from Politico, that send me »

Who’s Putin’s Mouthpiece?

Featured image Despite the fact that public opinion is unusually united on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, quite a few people are being accused of sympathizing with Russia, parroting Putin’s propaganda, and so on. Some of these people have been accused–absurdly, I think–of treason. More about this later. For now, let’s ask another question: who are those who actually have been mouthpieces for Putin and his predecessors, echoing Russian propaganda to the benefit »