1/ The cult of Elon is a subdivision of the ecowarrior movement that is pushing to eliminate all fossil fuels (and nukes) by 2030. That would mean keeping poor people poor while the connected grow fat on subsidies for their $tsla EVs and Powerwalls.
2/ Where the Progressive-Greens are influential (California, Germany) the cost of energy has doubled (or more) from what a free market mix would have provided, reliable paid-for nuclear is being shut down, and the costliest forms installed earlier are decaying.
3/ Wind turbines are especially costly, mechanical collectors of a low-density source which can never compete on cost with other forms. Already windmill farms installed early in the movement are largely abandoned. Photovoltaic is already maxed out in California at 10%.
4/ Patrick Moore (@ecosensenow) as founder of Greenpeace has come around to regret the cultural Leviathan he helped create. Political energy planning, like industrial policies everywhere they’re tried, is captured by special interests and corruptly siphons off wealth.
5/ After Solyndra and the litany of multibillion $ losses on grants, loans, and subsidies to political supporters of government, it’s clear this is a losing strategy. But pols want to double down, because hoodwinking the voters keeps the gravy train going.
6/ I’m all for a sustainable future. What’s not sustainable is borrowing $trillions to make bad investments that have small or negative return to society. And expensive EVs as status objects for the wealthy should no longer be subsidized.
7/ People who believe oil companies and ICE cars are highly subsidized are responding to decades of propaganda by true believers as well as proponents of political control of *every decision in life.* This is the “Bootleggers and Baptists” coalition. jebkinnison.com/2016/03/31/boo…
8/ Direct political control of investment automatically creates corruption. For every example of a bankrupt private company that made a mistake and had to be liquidated, there is a government agency that lives on forever despite its failure.
9/ Without an honest accounting of good produced vs social and financial cost of regulation and control, voters can never see the but-for world where a better policy was followed. In this case, the cost of additional CO2 to future humanity is only vaguely known.
10/ Relentless global warming (now “climate change”) propaganda was justified as necessary to alarm voters enough to create support for costly actions. We now know the rate of change is something like a third of the crude alarmist model predictions.
11/ Slower change can’t justify keeping millions in poverty to save the planet - it points toward cheaper mitigation of effects. Economists correctly argued for small but increasing carbon taxes as the least costly means of repressing CO2 production.
12/ But (a la @instapundit) an efficient, neutral tax returned to the people offered insufficient opportunity for graft. Instead we have two generations of children out of public schools who have been indoctrinated in quasi-religious claptrap about recycling and alt-energy.
13/ An offshoot of the “populist” rejection of globalist control of governments in the EU and Anglosphere should be a rejection of controlled energy markets. Middle-class voters see who has the shiny solar panels and EVs, and who pays through the nose in rates for basic needs.
14/ Solar will often make sense as costs drop. New battery tech will change the economics of solar and allow it to take a larger share without distorting grid economics. But $tsla is a parasite which would not exist without $billions in subsidies and set-asides.
15/ $tsla occupied the US ZEV niche created by gov’t, but is unlikely to survive Musk’s mistakes of the past (which left it with heavy debt and legal liabilities.) Better managers can take it forward but only after restructuring.
Exemplar boondoggle: California’s high speed rail project. Floated on lies and maintained by the one-party state.
