Utopia, you are standing in it!

Topping the list of things that seemed like a good idea at the time sits wind and solar power.

What, with the energy sources that drive them free and natural; with no visible emissions of spent gas or fumes; with their shiny panels harvesting the sun’s rays and delivering electricity for five or six hours a day (rain and cloud cover permitting); with their majestic 50-60m blades lovingly caressing benevolent breezes and thereby ‘powering’ hundreds of thousands of homes (around-the-clock, according to wind industry marketing blurb), why wouldn’t the gullible masses be sucked into the belief that sunshine and breezes will soon deliver all of our energy needs, forevermore?

That was then. This is now.

The increasing reliance on the unreliables has been revealed for what it is: sheer lunacy.

But this is stupidity with a kicker: the blackouts caused by sudden and unpredictable collapses in wind and solar output…

Born in 1819, Victoria was the only child of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, and Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Duchess of Kent. Tragically, her father died shortly after Victoria was born and her mother then fell under the alluring spell of John Conroy, her comptroller and personal secretary, a man upon whom the eyes of history have not looked favorably. He was considerably ambitious, apparently plotting with Victoria’s mother to keep the young princess locked away in Kensington Palace under the strict tutelage of her governess, Baroness Lehzen. Young Victoria had a secluded and lonely life. She was reared to be neither weak nor submissive, as in the tradition of the Whigs, but her freedom and joy was very much repressed under what became known as the “Kensington System,” a rigid series of rules intended to keep Victoria a puppet when she eventually became queen, as well as…

My home province of Quebec in Canada has been under lockdown since the Holidays (again). At 393 days of lockdown since March 11th 2020, Quebec has been in lockdown longer than Italy, Australia and California (areas that come as examples of strong lockdown measures). Public health scientists admit that the Omicron variant is less dangerous. But the issue is not the health danger, but rather the concern that rising hospitalizations will cause an overwhelming of an exhausted health sector.

And to be sure, when one looks at the data on hospital bed capacity and use-rates, you find that the intensity of lockdowns is well-related to hospital capacity. Indeed, Quebec is a strong illustration of this as its public health care system has one of the lowest levels of hospital capacity in the group of countries with similar income-levels. The question then that pops to my mind is “how elastic is…

A key insight of international economics is that there should be “convergence” between rich countries and poor countries, which is just another way of saying that low-income nations – all other things being equal – should grow faster than high-income nations and eventually attain the same level of prosperity.

The theory is sound, but it’s very important to focus on the caveat about “all other things being equal.” As I explain in this interview from my last trip to Australia, countries with bad policy will grow slower than nations that follow the right policies.

When I discuss convergence, I often share the data on Hong Kong and Singapore because those jurisdictions have caught up to the United States. But I make sure to explain that the convergence was only possible because of good policy.

I also share the data showing that Europe was catching up to…

I only share long videos when they satisfy key criteria, such as being very informative and very educational.

This video from Arthur Brooks is both.

What I like most is that he does a very good job of showing that concern for the disadvantaged is the most important reason to support free markets and limited government.

And he does this by exploring some very interesting and challenging topics, such as Denmark’s unusual mix of free markets and a welfare state (I’ve referred to that country’s public policy as a combination of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde).

But I want to focus on his discussion of India’s partial economic liberalization. We’ll start by perusing the most-recent edition of Economic Freedom of the World to confirm that there was a significant increase in economic liberty during the 1990s.

But it’s also important to stress that India’s partial economic liberalization was…well…

Charles’s beheading was scheduled for Tuesday, January 30, 1649. Two of his children remained in England under the control of the Parliamentarians: Elizabeth and Henry. They were permitted to visit him on January 29, and he bade them a tearful farewell. The following morning, he called for two shirts to prevent the cold weather causing any noticeable shivers that the crowd could have mistaken for fear: “the season is so sharp as probably may make me shake, which some observers may imagine proceeds from fear. I would have no such imputation.”

He walked under guard from St James’s Palace, where he had been confined, to the Palace of Whitehall, where an execution scaffold had been erected in front of the Banqueting House. Charles was separated from spectators by large ranks of soldiers, and his last speech reached only those with him on the scaffold. He blamed his fate on his…

Wind power never adds up: it doesn’t matter how many turbines carpet your horizons, in calm weather total output always amounts to nothing.

For sheer density, the Germans win hands down, with more than 30,000 of these things carpeted across Deutschland’s rural landscapes and, once pristine, forests.

And yet, from late September, through October and well into November last year, wind power output in Germany often ranged between dismal and a doughnut.

Demonstrating that their delusional obsession with wind and solar runs deep, the Germans are determined to axe all of their nuclear and coal-fired power plants, and ‘replace’ the lost output with thousands more wind turbines and solar panels.

As to the former, as this little analysis by Professor Fritz Vahrenholt demonstrates, it simply doesn’t matter how many wind turbines Germany might eventually manage to squeeze into its landscape; when the wind stops blowing, the power stops flowing.

Germany’s…

Case dismissed
Another climate lawfare caper, supposedly by youths (who pays the legal costs?), bites the dust. Governments can’t control the climate, but may pretend they can. Next!
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The Alaska Supreme Court on Friday upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by 16 young Alaskans who claimed long-term effects of climate change will devastate Alaska and interfere with their individual constitutional rights, reports AP via the Daily Mail.

The lawsuit against the state of Alaska claimed the state´s legislative and executive branches had not taken steps to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

The lower court dismissed the case in 2018, saying these questions were better left to other branches of government.

If I were a conservative Catholic bishop, I would think that God had just answered my prayers.

Planned Parenthood in Seattle recently fired a CEO who has been a hero of the reproductive health and rights sector for the last forty years. It’s not hard to find public examples of the Left eating our own to the detriment of real change (here, here, here, here). But when it comes to reproductive health and rights, this is one of the most stark examples of form over substance that I have witnessed. And given the expected evisceration of Roe v Wade, it couldn’t come at a worse time.

Chris Charbonneau was terminated abruptly under a cloud of implied racism after she accurately described, behind closed doors, a donor’s use of the “n-word” to characterize how women in Texas are being stripped of dignity and bodily autonomy with…

The wind and solar industries couldn’t care less whether you freeze to death when winter bites across the northern hemisphere and wind and solar output collapse.

Solar panels plastered in snow and ice produce nothing; wind turbines frozen solid during breathless, frigid weather produce even less (they actually consume power from the grid to run heating systems meant to prevent their internal workings suffering permanent damage).

So, if you’re sitting freezing in the dark, don’t expect wind and solar power generators to come to your rescue.

No, if the lights and power are on this winter, then you ought to raise a glass for the gas, coal and nuclear power generators separating you and your loved ones from a date with hypothermia and, ultimately, the morgue.

Hundreds died during the Big Freeze that hit Texas last winter, thanks to a complete collapse in wind and solar output. Thousands more would…

At the start of Mary Beard’s comprehensive but pedestrian history of ancient Rome she gives some examples of the ‘legacy’ of Rome as reasons why people should know more about ancient Rome and read her book. I critiqued her reasons for being arbitrary, superficial and not really justifying her case. Nonetheless it does broach an interesting subject: just what should be included in the Legacy of Ancient Rome to the present day? Over the week it took to read her book, I began to make a list of aspects of the legacy of Rome which live on in the modern world. Can you add any more to my list?

Roman Catholicism, the religion of power

Surely the biggest legacy is the Roman Catholic church, founded and spread across the eastern Mediterranean but given its definitive organisational and liturgical form after it was decriminalised by the Emperor Constantine in 313 and…

I have a four-part series (here, here, here, and here) that explains why it’s much better to focus on fighting poverty rather than fretting about inequality.

I also think that our friends on the left who fixate on inequality are mostly motivated by an ideological desire for bigger government (or an ideological desire to hurt the rich).

Helping the less fortunate seems to be – at best – a secondary concern for them.

But let’s not worry about deciphering their real motives and instead look at why their approach is misguided.

Here’s a tweet from Gabriel Zucman, who (along with Thomas Piketty) is one of the most widely cited crusaders for class-warfare policy.

He is upset that the richest people in the world earn a lot more than the poorest people, and he obviously wants people to view these numbers as scandalous…