By MarekPhotoDesign.com @Adobe Stock
Originally posted April 5th, 2024
Will Policy Align with the Real World
“The cult of fossil fuel suppression presents itself as an orthodoxy from which no dissent is permitted,” writes Francis Menton in his Manhattan Contrarian.
In the U.S., there has been substantial and growing resistance to the enforcement of that orthodoxy, among Republicans in general and particularly from red and energy-producing states. By contrast, in Europe, there has been little push-back.
Somewhere along the line, in country after country, the drive for Net Zero carbon emissions got the backing of an effective all-political-party consensus. In a gigantic political miscalculation, many mainstream center-right conservative parties got fully on board. That mistake now looks to destroy several of these parties in the major countries.
An Unproven Socialist Central-Planning Scheme
The only way to success was to drive up energy costs and impoverish the population. Mr. continues, “the proposed solution of building lots of intermittent electricity generation never had any chance of working at reasonable cost.”
The price of energy in the United Kingdom has soared. And no one, least of all Mr. Menton, is surprised. Especially for anyone paying attention, which the Manhattan Contrarian does in spades. As the Contrarian notes: UK consumers are paying the equivalent of double the average U.S. consumer electricity price.
Short-Circuiting Elections
It’s more than pocketbooks that are being affected. It also is happening in places other than the UK.
It looks like the Conservatives are set up to get wiped out. The situation in Germany is similar.
The mainstream center-right parties, the CDU and CSU, under long-time Chancellor Angela Merkel, led Germany to the “Energiewende.” They got massive building of wind turbines and solar panels, and the closing of all their nuclear plants. Result: consumer electricity prices of triple or more the U.S. average. The recent news from Germany is that the CDU and CSU see their popularity fading, while a populist right-wing party called the AFD is on the ascendant.
Mr. Menton hopes U.S. Republicans will learn a lesson:
As the cost of crazy green energy schemes becomes more and more apparent, standing up against them looks to be increasingly a political winner.
