No Jay Leno this year at the annual confab of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). Instead of celebration and jokes (all at the expense of taxpayers and ratepayers), there is doom and gloom.

Bill Opalka reports at EnergyBiz:

Failure to extend the production tax credit would devastate the domestic wind energy supply chain and virtually wipe out wind power development next year, officials stressed during the June 4 opening of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) annual conference in Atlanta.

But the public is catching on to the industrial wind ruse.  The lead comment (7:48 AM) on Opalka’s article says much about how fatigue has set in to this ancient, postmodernistic energy source:

Will this desire to feed at the public trough never end? The mere fact that wind needs the PTCs to survive tells us very loudly and clearly it is not a competitive power technology at this time.

“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. To the naive mind that can conceive of order only as the product of deliberate arrangement, it may seem absurd that in complex conditions … adaptation to the unknown can be achieved more effectively by decentralizing decisions and that a division of authority will actually extend the possibility of overall order. Yet that decentralization actually leads to more information being taken into account.”

– F. A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (1988), p. 76

Whenever the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is confronted with evidence that its proposed regulations will kill jobs, risk blackouts, or otherwise harm economic growth, it typically seeks refuge in its own estimates of the amazing public health benefits the proposal will have.…

The “Bootleggers and Baptists” theory of regulation, coined by Bruce Yandle in 1983 in Regulation magazine, uniquely explains what otherwise would be considered bizarre coalitions between moral crusaders and morally indifferent businesses.

In a later telling, Yandle explained how the theory

draws on colorful tales of states’ efforts to regulate alcoholic beverages by banning Sunday sales at legal outlets. Baptists fervently endorsed such actions on moral ground. Bootleggers tolerated the actions gleefully because their effect was to limit competition.

One such unholy alliance has emerged between environmentalists and some utilities in the context of the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent Utility Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (Utility MACT) rule.

Those unfamiliar with the Bootleggers and Baptists theory may conclude that those compliant energy companies are enlightened at long last. But those who know the theory will take a more cynical view.…

“If you want to be an economist, it would be wise to study the economy.” [1]

It was a simple but profound statement made in an everyday email exchange. The writer was Peter Boettke, the author of an important new book, Living Economics: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (reviewed below), which makes a case for realistic, applicable, fascinating economics in place of so much of the hyper-theoretical, classroom variety.

Real-world economics elucidates the world of business, politics, and decision-making in general. Such analysis and application brings in real-world energy, the subject of MasterResource and much of my books.

A prolific scholar, Dr. Boettke is BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism, Mercatus Center, and University Professor of Economics and Philosophy, Department of Economics, all at George Mason University. He was profiled for his good teaching work in the Wall Street Journal piece, Spreading Hayek, Spurning Keynes.…