If you are a regular reader here, you know that the big problem with so-called "green" or "renewable" energy sources -- we're talking wind and solar -- is that they don't work.  Relying on energy sources that don't work is a big problem when you are trying to provide power for a big, sophisticated modern economy.  

What does it mean that "they don't work"?  It means first that you simply cannot run an electrical grid using just wind and solar energy sources, because they are incapable meeting the fundamental requirement of a grid, namely, matching production to user demand second by second.  And "they don't work" also means that wind and solar are not helpful or even meaningful additions to existing electrical grids, because they require the availability of alternative energy sources -- backup generation or storage -- at all times and at huge duplicative cost.  In short, they are useless.  Oh, and they also threaten grid stability, particularly as you add more of them to a grid.  So they are both useless and potentially destructive.

Unfortunately, basic engineering is not the strong suit of the religious environmental movement, nor of its acolytes in the media.  And so, as atonement for our sins of having an industrial society, we must flagellate ourselves with more and more farms of wind turbines and solar panels.  As these things come to cover the landscape, you can feel the excitement.  Let's have a little roundup:

It was only a short two and a half months ago -- April 1 to be precise -- that I nominated the country of Germany as "The Biggest April Fool."  The reason for the nomination was that Germany's so-called Energiewende ("energy transition") program, initiated in 2010, had saddled German consumers with electricity rates approximately triple the U.S. average, but had brought about exactly zero reduction in Germany's CO2 emissions.  Don't believe it could be that bad?  Here's the chart of Germany's greenhouse gas emissions by year from that post, data from the Umwelt Bundesamt (Germany's Federal Environmental Agency)

Ex-President Obama may have understood next-to-nothing about climate and energy policy, but at least he understood (I think) that the main idea that he was advocating was to reduce usage of fossil-fuel energy through the method of intentionally forcing up the price of same.  Obama's principal "plan" for climate and energy policy was what was euphemistically called a "cap and trade" system -- in other words, a system of putting artificial government-imposed limits on how much fossil fuel could be produced or used (the "cap"), and then letting markets exchange the remaining artificially-scarce supplies (the "trade").  With demand the same and supplies reduced, the price would necessarily have to go up, and probably by a lot, thus forcing rationing and impoverishment on the people.  Here is a link to the famous 2008 video of Obama, in the early part of his first campaign, admitting the obvious with the famous line, "Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket."  He doesn't mention gasoline prices in that particular video, but obviously the consequence would be the same.

And upon his election, Obama wasted no time in trying to put the "cap and trade" (i.e., intentionally higher prices for energy) idea into effect.  Before there was even Obamacare, there was the so-called Waxman-Markey "American Clean Energy and Security Act," otherwise known as the "cap and trade" bill.  Do you remember it?  It was introduced in the Congress on May 15, 2009.  In the grand tradition of progressive efforts to use legislation to remake the world unto perfection (see also, Obamacare and Dodd-Frank), this one was a good 1400 pages long.  It provided for forced "emissions cuts" starting in 2012, rising to 17% (against a 2005 base) in 2020 and 42% by 2030 (and on up from there), and for an unbelievably complicated system of permits and trading for everybody from manufacturers to utilities.  The bill passed the House by a close vote of 219 - 212 (all Republicans opposing and a few Democrats defecting).  But then it got to the Senate, where it died.  Under Majority Leader Harry Reid, it was never put to a vote.  I guess Reid knew that he didn't have the votes, although the Democrats had 59 seats at the time.