August 04, 2024

Weighing N.Y.'s Climate Statute

August 04, 2024/ Francis Menton

The headline of this post is the same headline as appears in today’s New York Daily News as a big banner spanning pages 26 and 27 of the print edition, which are the main op-ed pages. Those two pages then contain two op-eds taking opposite positions on the future of New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019, which the Daily News refers to as the “Climate Statute.”
The column on page 26 is by Emily Gallagher and Kim Fraczek, with the headline “Getting to affordable, clean energy solutions.” On page 27 the headline is “We have to rethink the state’s climate act”; the by-line is Jane Menton.
Both pieces are behind the Daily News’s paywall, although it appears that you can get through it by paying them $1 for an introductory subscription. In my case, when I found out that Jane’s piece was running I went out and splurged $3.50 for the print version.
Comparison of the two pieces will provide a look into the quality of the debate going on in New York over the supposed energy transition.

August 01, 2024

The Energy Transition Ain't Happening: "Green" Economy In Retreat

August 01, 2024/ Francis Menton

As mentioned in my recent post from July 20, there are many data points gradually accumulating as to the lack of progress toward the so-called “green” economy.
It has long been clear to people who think about it that the energy transition to “net zero” is a fantasy that will not occur.
But the question remains of exactly how the mania will come to an end. Will the net zero fantasies of the climate cultists proceed at full speed until they crash into a wall of physical reality (e.g., blackouts)? Or instead will these fantasies gradually retreat as governments respond to voter pressure over costs and convenience, and as investors pull back as it becomes clear that projects cannot succeed financially?

July 29, 2024

July 29, 2024/ Francis Menton

Of all the epithets of the left that don’t make any sense, the term “settler colonialist” is one of my favorites.
We live in a world where the ability of people to relocate, even to places thousands of miles distant, has increased greatly over time. These days, many millions of people per year pick up and relocate, or try to relocate, from one country to another.
By far the biggest mass migrations going on currently are into the U.S. and into Europe from various poorer countries. This November 2023 piece from NPR puts the number of “migrants” crossing the U.S. Southern border illegally in 2023 at about 2.4 million. That would be in addition to about 1 million legal immigrants to the U.S. each year. The European Commission at this site from April 2024 gives a figure of 42.4 million people living in the EU who were not born there, about 9% of the population. That would suggest something like 1 million or so new arrivals per year.
So are all these people “settler colonialists”?

July 26, 2024

July 26, 2024/ Francis Menton

I frequently write about how the mandates for energy transition that New York has adopted are impossible and irreconcilable in the real world; and therefore it is inevitable that they will have to be abandoned at some point when implementation of the project runs up against physical reality.
Probably the most frequent question that I get asked is, OK, how and when will that occur?
The question is important because for as long as the impossible mandates remain in place they are causing massive ongoing damage to our electricity system and to consumers.

July 23, 2024

July 23, 2024/ Francis Menton

Probably very few readers here are old enough to remember China’s “Great Leap Forward.” You’d have to be my age (73 - born in 1950), or close to it, to remember the GLF from reading about it at the time.
The name “Great Leap Forward” refers to Mao Zedong’s second Five Year Plan, launched in 1958, and intended to catapult China’s economy from backwardness into modernity.
This was to be not just any old central planning project, but a whole new approach designed by the really smart people to correct the mistakes and failures that the Soviet Union had encountered on the road to communism. This time, they were going to get central planning right.
Yesterday the Biden Administration launched a significant new climate initiative with a design that has some remarkable resemblances to the Great Leap Forward. Since most readers probably don’t know how the Great Leap Forward worked out, I’ll save that for the end of the post.

July 20, 2024

July 20, 2024/ Francis Menton

These days, there is lots and lots of news about how the supposed “energy transition” is not happening.
There’s so much news on this subject that I could devote this entire blog to that subject alone and have plenty to occupy my time. Expect multiple posts about this topic over the next several weeks.
To whet your appetite, I will take you today to Australia, where we find the latest news on the inevitable collapse of impossible dream of “green” hydrogen as the means to make electricity from wind and sun work.