Utopia, you are standing in it!

Back in 1983 the American Wind Industry Association claimed that solar and wind would be “competitive and self-supporting on a national level by the end of the decade if assisted by tax credits and augmented by federally sponsored R&D”. That was 36 years ago. And there was no lack of assistance in the form of tax credits and federally sponsored R&D, along with a whole bunch of other punitive mandates and targets designed to cripple conventional generators and favour chaotically intermittent wind and solar.

Now, as then, claims from renewable energy rent seekers that wind and solar are truly competitive with nuclear, coal or gas evaporate the instant policymakers start talking about removing subsidies to wind and solar.

With their 40^th birthdays approaching, the wind and solar ‘industries’ are a pair of perpetual infants who – like Peter Pan – are determined to never grow up.

We’ll hand over…

Wilhelm II (Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert; January 27, 1859 – June 4, 1941) was the last German Emperor and King of Prussia, ruling the German Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia from June 15, 1888 to his abdication November 9, 1918. He was the eldest grandchild of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and related to many monarchs and princes of Europe, most notably King George V of the United Kingdom and Emperor Nicholas II of Russia.

Wilhelm was born at the Crown Prince’s Palace, Berlin, to Prince Friedrich-Wilhelm of Prussia (the future Friedrich III) and his wife, Victoria, Princess Royal, the eldest daughter of Britain’s Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

At the time of his birth, his great-uncle Friedrich-Wilhelm IV was king of Prussia, and his grandfather and namesake Wilhelm was acting as Regent. He was the first grandchild of Queen Victoria and…

When I put up one of my frequent posts about the ideological follies on American campuses—and yes, these often involve the Left—I’m sometimes told that these follies are irrelevant, and I should pay them no attention. It’s only a fringe element, people say, and the students will grow out of their Wokeness when they graduate. (Another criticism, along the lines of “Why don’t you go after Trump instead?”, is not worth answering today.)

My response has been that campus extremism may involve only a minority of students, but it’s a vocal minority, and that minority is the group that will take over—and has taken over—Leftist politics and media, as well as institutions like the schools themselves. (Campus administrators and professors are about as Leftist a group as you’ll find in “regular” jobs.)

Now I count myself among the Left, too; I’m referring here to Woke, identity-politics Left in which the…

There’s been some argument around these parts about whether Wokeism will increase or decrease when Trump is gone. On the “increase”, side, Biden is seen as an enabler of Wokeism, supposedly instantiated in his increasing leaning toward the Left, and in the fact that now the “progressive” left now sees a big opportunity to advance its program. (We’ll ignore the Senate for the time being.)

On the “decrease” side, one could argue that Wokeism was aggravated by Trump’s racism and the ascendancy of Republicans, and will calm down after Trump leaves. Some have conjectured, too, that Wokeism is exacerbated by the pandemic: people with not a lot to do can nurture and express their grievances.

My own view is that Wokeism is not going away any time soon, for the fear of being labeled a bigot—one of the main motivation for the excesses of Leftism and identity politics—is too deeply…