“California’s reliance on hydropower and proliferation of remote, centralized renewable energy plants; the mandated environmental mothballing of 19 coastal natural gas power plants located close to customers; redundant transmission lines for green power; and seasonal wind blasts, results in lethal blast-furnace-like wildfires that leave trees alone but incinerate houses.”

“California leaders and opinion-makers must first abandon their blame game and diagnose the problem more clearly than using clichés like ‘global warming,’ ‘Donald Trump,’ ‘greed’ or even ‘not enough clear cutting,’ if they are going to responsibly deal with the dangerous unintended consequences of de-modernizing its electric grid.”

A question arising out of California’s recent wave of wind-fanned wildfires, is why are public officials mainly attributing the cause to downed electric transmission lines that comprise less than ten percent of all the causes of such fires?…

“Getting out of the Paris climate treaty is the single biggest and most important deregulatory action taken by the Trump administration.”

– Myron Ebell, Competitive Enterprise Institute, November 8, 2019

The Trump Administration continues to keep its promises when it comes to climate policy. The focus is on free-market adaptation, not alarmist, government-led mitigation, to deal with the uncertainties of future weather events, whether natural or otherwise.

A 277-word press release from The U.S. Department of State, On the U.S. Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, is from Secretary Mike Pompeo.

Today the United States began the process to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. Per the terms of the Agreement, the United States submitted formal notification of its withdrawal to the United Nations. The withdrawal will take effect one year from delivery of the notification.

“We created a way of raising standards of living that we can’t possibly pass on to our children. It has to collapse, unless adults stand up and say, ‘This is a Ponzi scheme. We have not generated real wealth, and we are destroying a livable climate.’” (Joe Romm, quoted in Thomas Friedman, Is the Inflection Point Near?, New York Times, March 7, 2009)

“Is there any more single-minded, simple pleasure than viewing with alarm? At times it is even better than sex.” (Kenneth Boulding (1970), p. 160. [1]

Are free-market optimists the dumb ones who jump off tall buildings and report that everything is fine, even breezy, on the way down? Or are those who fear, rant, and make this analogy bungee-jumping with reality?

The optimists have been jumping off buildings ever since Robert Thomas Malthus’s An Essay on Population was published in 1798–and not hitting the ground.…

“Energy was just the first step in so many other ways. But without energy, it all doesn’t happen.”

“… we’re at a very, very good point environmentally right now.”

“Anti-energy zealots are blinded by ideology. Democrats want to ban shale energy, but shale energy has reduced America’s carbon emissions by 527 million metric tons per year. So what are they doing? A much better record than the European Union, which is always telling us how to do it. We should be telling them how to do it, based on our economy.”

“And congratulations to all of you, our great energy people, for what you’ve been able to accomplish, especially in the last three years…. [T]he path to that future starts right here in shale country, with all of you — the proud patriots of Pennsylvania and Ohio and West Virginia.”