If you dutifully read your U.S. mainstream media, you undoubtedly have the impression that “clean” and “green” energy is rapidly sweeping all before it, and soon will supplant fossil fuels in powering our economy.

After all, many major states, including California and New York, have mandated some form of “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050, or in some cases even earlier. That’s only 30 years away.

And reports are everywhere that investment in “renewables,” particularly wind and solar energy, continues to soar. For example, from Reuters in January we have “U.S. clean energy investment hits new record despite Trump administration views.” In the New York Times on May 13 it’s “In a First, Renewable Energy Is Poised to Eclipse Coal in U.S.” The final victory of wind and solar over the evil fossil fuels must then be right around the corner.

Actually, that’s all a myth. . . .

A few days ago I had a post about how tightening “green” energy regulations in Europe are gradually strangling sectors like the automobile and chemical industries. The post was titled “Europe Is Firmly Committed To Economic Suicide.”

Here in the U.S., we have a large coterie of “blue” states that are hungering to follow the EU economic model — California, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and others.

A latecomer to this party is Virginia.

In Virginia, you may be aware that in 2018, for the first time in a generation, the Democrats took control of both houses of the legislature. They wasted no time in passing a big chunk of the progressive agenda en masse, in the form of over a thousand bills that had been blocked by their adversaries for decades. The new laws cover everything from abortion to guns to the minimum wage to tax increases, and plenty more.

Of course, at the top of the agenda, as it always seems to be, was “climate change.” To slay this particular dragon, Virginia now has the newly-enacted Virginia Clean Economy Act, or VCEA.