Tax Dollars Go to What Is Politically Popular, Not to What Makes Sense

An Old Curmudgeon

In 2020 I started a blog post with this sentence: "Money goes to what is popular, not to what makes sense." It was an introduction of sorts to an article by Robert Bryce titled,  Why Is Solar Energy Getting 250 Times More In Federal Tax Credits Than Nuclear?

It wasn't the first time I read something by Robert Bryce. In 2011 he published a book titled Power Hungry: The Myths of "Green" Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future, which I read some time afterwards.

In case you miss the connection, Robert Bryce is a contrarian.

For some reason I am attracted to contrarian thinking. Perhaps that is why I invented the word Herdwinked. Perhaps that is why I purchased books by the Ad Contrarian, Bob Hoffman. 

When it comes to EVs, the power grid, crime, homelessness or world peace, I hope that I am wrong, but I'm quite pessimistic about how these things are going to play out. I'd rather be wrong, because there's peril in the future I see, a peril that is not being adequately talked about or addressed. 

I really liked the opening line of The Imitation Game, which was about the machine Alan Turing created to break Germany's Enigma encryption code. The film begins with the words, "Are you paying attention?"

None of us can be experts in everything. On the other hand, to keep from being herdwinked requires constant vigilance. Each of us must learn to discern, to separate wheat from chaff when it comes to ideas. 

Today's Substack eNewletter from Robert Bryce is titled Out Of Transmission Revisited. He begins by presenting the Green energy optimist's vision of the future. Unfortunately, there is a disconnect between their rhetoric and reality.

Bryce lays out the facts, with plenty of charts that demonstrate what we're up against. You can read the story here.

If you can't make the time, then here is a brief snippet to munch on. "The high-voltage grid is expanding very slowly, the costs associated with it are soaring, and the opposition to such a vast expansion is real and growing."

And here's one more.

Jenkins may be correct that [building out enough power transmission lines to meet future demand] “shouldn’t be viewed as impossible.” But the odds  of the U.S. building 75,000 miles of new high-voltage transmission over the next 10 years are, as my father used to say, “slim and none, and Slim left town.”

Open your eyes.