Utopia, you are standing in it!

A few years ago, I found myself subbing for the teacher of an urban sociology class. It was the last day so we covered the last chapter in the text book, which talked about policy reforms. The book covered some reasonable topics, such as the need to have better regional government in the US to help coordinate things like transportation.

To spice things up, I added four intentionally provocative proposals that might improve urban life. I want you to guess which proposal triggered the most violent reaction:

1. End the over-policing of neighborhoods by decriminalizing narcotics.
2. Revive dying cities, such as the Rust Belt, by liberalizing immigration. A lot of poor people in developing nations would love to live in Detroit or St. Louis.
3. Deregulate housing construction, so we can have higher density and cheaper homes for working class people. San Francisco – I’m looking straight at you!
4. Surge pricing for…

From JoNova:

A big new study by electricity grid nerds (and I mean that in the nicest possible way) shows that after all the money and pain of 20 years of forced transition Australia’s electricity has shifted from 85% coal powered to 75% coal powered, which cost billions and as a bonus, made electricity more expensive and unstable. We drove out some brown coal, but swapped it for black coal. Instead of ousting coal power, the extra solar and wind power replaced some gas and hydro.

The authors are genuine independent experts, and the report is incredibly detailed — so this is rare — but still suffers from serious drawbacks:

1) The team doesn’t question the need for an artificial expensive transition. Almost all the problems they describe are caused by government policies that task our grid with changing the climate as well as producing cheap and reliable electricity.

Robert P. Murphy writes at Mises Wire Economists Have Been “Useful Idiots” for the Green Socialists. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

In the old Soviet Union, the Communists allegedly used the term “useful idiot” to describe Westerners whose naïve political views furthered the Soviet agenda, even though these Westerners didn’t realize that they were being exploited in such fashion. It is in this context that I confidently declare that American economists have been useful idiots for the green socialists pushing extreme climate change policies. The radical environmentalists were quite happy to embrace the economic concepts of “Pigovian negative externalities” and a carbon tax in the past, but now that it is impossible for economic science to endorse their desired agenda, the activists have discarded the entire field as hopelessly out of touch. Economists who still support a carbon tax and other climate “mitigation policies”…

WHEN will the CSIRO, Australia’s premier ‘scientific’ body retract their 2001 “no snow by 2020” prediction?

SNOWFALL will become “A very rare and exciting event…
Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”
Dr David Viner – Senior scientist, climatic research unit (CRU)

“Good bye winter. Never again snow?” Spiegel (2000)

“Milder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms” IPCC (2001)

“End of Snow?” NYTimes (2014)

“Good bye winter. Never again snow?” Spiegel (2000)

“The high impact scenario for 2020 leads to reductions of 30-40 days in average season lengths. At higher sites such as Mt Hotham, this can represent reductions in season duration of about 25%, but at lower sites such as Mt Baw Baw the reduction can be more significant (up to 60%)” CSIRO (2003) (Kevin Hennessy, Penny Whetton, Ian Smith, Janice Bathols, Michael Hutchinson and Jason Sharples)

“We must face up to the fact that if our societies…