“California leaders know that rising prices are a huge problem. The state is now considering a plan to tie utility rates to personal income so that the rich pay more and low-income residents pay less. Costly California looms as an example of poor energy policy.”

Energy prices are skyrocketing in California. The state’s electricity, gasoline, and natural gas prices are amongst the nation’s highest and rising. Green energy policies are the primary cause for high and escalating California energy prices.

Electricity

California electricity prices increased by 98.2 percent over the last 15 years, the highest rise in the nation. No other state comes close in terms of price increases. US average electricity prices rose 30.6 percent over the same period. California power prices rose to a level that is the second highest in the nation, only lower than Hawaii.…

“I don’t agree with many (any?) of [Alex Epstein’s] points in his response, and it is conspicuously lacking in arguments about climate itself.”  Tyler Cowen

“It’s sad that a guy as smart as Tyler not only 1) irresponsibly commented on a book he was not willing to read carefully, but also 2) refused to admit any wrongdoing whatsoever.” Alex Epstein

It was distributed on social media by the director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s loan programs office, Jigar Shah, described as “The man in charge of how the US spends $400bn to shift away from fossil fuels.” Shah forwarded Tyler Cowen’s post (at Marginal Revolution) critiquing Alex Epstein’s book, Fossil Future: Why Human Flourishing Requires Using More Oil, Gas, and Coal–Not Less.

A ‘classical liberal’ handing an intellectual gift to a DOE grifter?…

“The UN’s COP process is almost as dead as its deeply dishonest posturing about ‘keeping 1.5°C alive’…. With the COP process itself on life support, surely it’s time to change tack….”

“The sight of 80,000+ delegates unwittingly providing credibility to the fossil fuel incumbency that COP now unapologetically represents, has become sickening. Stay away. Call it out. Tell the truth.”

– Jonathan Porritt (below)

At least some climate crusaders are realistic in the lack of progress in the mitigation policy designed to dislodge consumer-driven, taxpayer-neutral energies (oil, gas, and coal) and substitute politically correct, inferior ones (wind, solar, batteries). It all gets back to energy density, a fundamental concept that climate activists do not want to understand (or do understand, but want pure de-industrialization).

A recent post by “sustainability campaigner and writer” Jonathan Porritt, “From COP 28 to COP 29” (January 4, 2024), has a number of realistic points regarding politics, while clinging to the narrative that Net Zero is achievable and at hand.…

Energy is ubiquitous to modern industrial life. It is the fourth factor of production in addition to the textbook triad of land, labor, and capital. Julian Simon coined the term master resource to describe the resource of resources, energy.

Energy as been recognized as a unique driver of economic activity and human betterment for almost two centuries–about as long as carbon-based energies came to be recognized as a sea change from the inherently dilute, unreliable renewable energies of before. The Industrial Revolution was enabled by coal, the energy required by the new machinery, as W. S. Jevons so brilliantly saw in his day.

The quotations below, some classic, resonate as well or better today than ever before. They are as ‘right” as the peak-oil quotations (compiled here and here) have been wrong.…