Environmental Policy As Fad
They are finding lots of new oil and gas in Texas, while California is shuttering its few remaining refineries. That might go a long way to explain why a gallon at the pump in Texas is about half the price of that same gallon in California, taxes notwithstanding. It also defines the Red State/Blue State divide. Reason is returning to our environmental policy, at least in reasonable places.
Over the past year, banks have been scaling back high‑profile ESG and climate mandates by exiting net‑zero alliances, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Drives, and any politically motivated restrictions on investments in fossil fuels.
Now, Axios, a publication not known for its hot right takes, has just posted an article on “The World’s Great Climate Collapse.” The piece emphasizes how quickly climate policy and investment momentum have eroded, declining by “nearly 50%” from the peak climate cult insanity of 2021.
The ESG project market was created by the government through tax credits, grants, subsidies and basically just throwing money around. The emphasis in that sentence should be in “created.” Marketplaces are discovered, not made – and there is no market for this nonsense unless underpinned by public money. Wind, solar, EV’s, etc. etc. etc. just don’t make sense. The tech is simply too immature. But they are faddish. Like the Pet Rock of old, massive interest was generated, but there was no intrinsic value. Therefore, the market is collapsing as rapidly as it appeared.
There is one major difference between the Pet Rock and this though – the alternative energy market was generated with government money, not private capital, and the numbers were terrifyingly large. Everybody that wasted money on a Pet Rock was at least amused for a bit and the price tag was such that they did not mind. While when it comes to alternative energy, the government wasted everybody’s money, whether they wanted to spend it or not, and there is not even amusement to show for it. Sadly there will only be additional costs without government money to help. All those solar installations that have gone in in the last few years will eventually need servicing. Absent government money, the companies to provide such service will be gone and those installations will be very expensive boat anchors, requiring huge sums to demolish and dispose. And EV’s? That’s gonna be a huge problem once they start wearing out.
The EPA is busy pulling back and limiting plans that would drive this madness any further. Meanwhile, the only truly viable tech to replace burning stuff to generate energy is quietly seeing a renaissance – in Tennessee of all places.
This fad boom-and-bust cycle is driven by two things. One, there really are enormous amounts of money to be made off of fads. The guy that came up with the Pet Rock made a huge bundle. and that’s fine if you are playing with your own money. But these fads play with public money and at that point its just a rip-off. Secondly, environmental fads these days drive to socialism. They are such that they make the issue everybody’s problem, not just my problem or your problem. That opens the public money gates, but it also gets us to think communally, not individualistically and on that altar we sacrifice our freedom – mostly to succeed.
You want to spend your money needlessly on the latest valueless fad, by all means, that’s capitalism. Yo want to spend my money on a fad that I care nothing about, well then we have a problem. It would appear the problem is correcting itself.
Meanwhile, In Other News…
AI and mental health. Apparently AI does not help with mental health at all. It may, in fact, be making it much worse – at least in some cases. There is no substitute for human contact.
Other things are not helping with mental health either. Did you know you can get a university degree in “mindfulness?” That is more useless than [stick your favorite tasteless metaphor here.]
Is there nothing that someone won’t be unhappy about to the point of protest? Maybe we ought to ban people that want to ban things?
Artifacts of very early Christianity discovered. There has to be some truth in ideas that have persisted this long.
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