The Fox and the Henhouse

"Climate change is real!" goes the ever-shriller mantra of the warmists.

Some of us ask "how real?" as in "how much climate change are humans causing?"

That's not climate change denialism, though it often is derided as such. It's a fair and proper question - akin to asking "how badly?" if someone says "the boat is leaking."

Degree matters. In toxicology, Rule 1 is "the poison is the dose." Eat a cyanide-containing apricot pit, nothing will happen. Eat a hundred, and you may get sick or die. A boat that's taking on a gallon of water a week is far less disconcerting than one that's taking on a gallon of water a second.

Degree matters not, apparently, when it comes to climate change. The mere existence of some amount of anthropogenic climate change is decreed a Bad Thing that demands immediate and disruptive action, no matter the cost, and no matter the impact on people's lives.

That the non-occurrence of countless prognostications of doom has done nothing to stanch the hyperbole is disappointing but unsurprising.

The greening of American society has been, up until recently, something of a quirky indulgence. People buying electric cars with subsidies and incentives isn't exactly free market, but it's not all that destructive either (I won't get into the dirtiness of rare earth mining here). Same for those putting solar panels on their roofs with taxpayer money. There is time and place for wind and solar, even without subsidies, tax breaks, or other government scale-tipping - market forces have made that clear.

Shit's starting to get real, though. These niche sources don’t scale well and aren’t really ready for prime time, but they are being pressed upon us in a roughshod manner.

The mad rush to shut down carbon (and nuclear) energy sources, coupled with the increased demand on power grids produced by a transition to plug-in cars, the cessation of natural gas service to new homes and businesses, and other forms of "electrification," has a real potential to overdraw available supply. As the Wall Street Journal reports, rolling blackouts are a very real possibility in many places as soon as this year.

As with excessive government spending, people's concern about the negative effects of policy excesses is mostly academic until the chickens come home to roost. Those who’ve been advocating for those excesses tell us that the risks are just fear-mongering, and offer up cockamamie rationalizations (see: eco-doom and Modern Monetary Theory) to defend their profligacy.

Now that the inflation piper is being paid (that's euphemism #4, in case you haven't been keeping score), the past indifference to the extremists is being replaced by outrage and demands for correction from the masses.

Come this summer, when outages become more frequent, utilities more frequently have to repeat the rolling blackouts that California imposed last year, and home energy costs spiral upward, will the citizens suffering in heat and darkness while bleeding cash be content in thinking "at least we're saving the planet" (spoiler: you’re not), or will they be angry that their public servants shut good, reliable power sources down before adequate substitutes were established?

Surveys have found that people aren't willing to pay even a few dollars extra to combat climate change, no matter the sturm-und-drang that alarmists and activists perpetually rain down upon us through news, opinion, popular culture, and guilt-mongering. Are people really going to be grumpily accepting of a degradation in their living standards caused by a mad rush to "green" the American grid and roadways?

Such greening has already been a significant contributor to the supply chain issues that have been plaguing the nation this past year or so. California's rules and regulations regarding trucking have added to the container shipping bottleneck. More “unexpected consequences” will certainly follow.

Politicians love to over-promise. With our culture having reached the "largess from the treasury" point of the national lifecycle, it's a tried-and-true electoral strategy. Most of the time, that overpromising simply leads to somewhat disappointed constituents. Sometimes, however, it produces broader consequences.

Profligate spending has spiked inflation. Now, too-rapid greening is on track to create misery and privation. And, almost without a doubt, otherwise-avoidable heat-related and other deaths. An irony, that: actions in response to "heat" will exacerbate heat problems.

And, as I've written repeatedly, all for naught. No matter the realities or degree of global warming, the current path being embraced by America and Europe is little more than spitting in the wind. The rest of the world will not commit the living standards suicide that is this WASABI monomania, and even the Europeans who were all agog with green are now rethinking their plans. Yet, no one’s allowed to even question the wisdom of this particular remediative strategy, let alone argue for alternatives. To do so is to invite accusations of dishonesty and denialism.

Why all this? Why are we beset by inflation, consumer goods in short supply, energy mini-crises, high gas prices, restrictions on what appliances and heating systems we can put in our homes, and similarly avoidable problems?

All these are the result of our leaders' policies.

Policies motivated not by the good of the citizenry, but by obeisance to a narrow segment of activists, extremists, rent-seekers, cynics, and other don't give a [redacted] about anyone but themselves’ types.

Foxes guarding the henhouse. Keep that in mind next time a politician promises you something.

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Yours in liberty,

Peter.