Lashing your own back

Written by OP ED Watch on April 13, 2025. Posted in Current News

Although it is easy to despair over the state of democracy, especially if you’ve never lived under tyranny, Robert Bryce notes that there’s an increasing “backlash against solar and wind energy projects” in which “Lately, the rejections and restrictions have been piling up so quickly that it has been difficult to keep track of them all.”

Which he nonetheless tries to do. Apparently after the public was offered pie-in-the-sky and then served a mud pie they aren’t taking it well.

Had proponents been more open with the public about the costs of such projects, and their drawbacks including huge environmental footprint, and if in consequence they’d been more sensitive about where to put them, instead of staging an elitist rush to ram them through intellectually and physically, they’d have been less vulnerable to the backlash because, to quote J. Budziszewski yet again, “People are more logical than they know; they are only logical slowly.” Including in public debate and in the voting booth.

As the Washington Times recently put it:

“Steep increases in energy bills are leading consumers in Democratic-led states to question renewable energy policies that have failed to deliver more reliable, less expensive heat and electricity.”

And clearly it’s easier to win elections or policy battles if you promise people easy gain for no pain. But if it turns out you were wrong, then they’re going to start thinking you’re fools who didn’t know your policies were impractical, rogues who did know and hoped to make an omelet that couldn’t be unscrambled before voters clued in, or some sickmaking combination of the two.

As that story continues, and yes we did just say so about the Bay State:

“Price hikes in New Jersey, Maryland and Massachusetts, among other states, have left consumers fuming. Government leaders are scrambling to provide relief as voters threaten to turn against them at the polls for implementing policies primarily blamed for the spike. ‘It feels like all of a sudden people woke up,’ said Paul Craney, executive director of the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance. ‘I think over time, yes, the blame will be squarely on elected leaders.’”

As surely it should be, for zealotry, deviousness or both. Had they said we need to do it but it will hurt, they might not have gotten the policy approved at all. Of course voters eager to believe unrealistic promises are also part of the problem. But everyone including citizens, politicians and indeed climate change alarmists looking for real long-term solutions would be better off if politicians had been honest from the start. Instead in, for instance, Massachusetts:

“Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat, recently approved a 25% budget increase for the Mass Save program. She has prioritized the elimination of all fossil fuel heating sources in the state. Utility companies increased the fee to pay for the expanded Mass Save budget, adding to electricity prices that were already among the highest in the nation.”

And it’s very hard to explain either why you didn’t see it coming or why you did but didn’t say so.

Consider also that, the Daily Caller observes:

“BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, historically a supporter of green energy initiatives, acknowledged that wind and solar alone ‘can’t reliably keep the lights on’ without ‘major breakthroughs in storage’ and wrote that it’s necessary to be ‘clear-eyed about our energy mix’ in his annual chairman’s letter to investors on Monday.”

OK. Thank you. But Fink is meant to be an investment oracle so it’s not unfair to ask how long he’s known. If the answer is for years and years then the obvious follow-up is “Why didn’t you tell us sooner?” And if the answer is it only just dawned on him then the obvious follow-up is “Why didn’t you know sooner?”

As the Caller adds:

“In 2020, Fink’s letter to CEOs was focused on the fight against climate change. His 2024 chairman’s letter also called for ‘energy pragmatism,’ though it noted that countries were increasingly installing renewables ‘with wind and solar power,’ as it was ‘now cheaper in many places than fossil-fuel-generated electricity.’ Fink noted that pursuing these energy sources was ‘also a major way to address climate change.’”

There’s just no way to make it sound like an achievement.

The same applies to the conduct of alarmists regarding the supposed evidence for a climate change crisis. A high-handed lunge for the brass ring that bypassed logical debate in favour of slick or hysterical fearmongering brought an early advantage but long-term weakness because of the slow but steady way the truth plods on while error rushes about frenetically then takes an ill-timed nap.

Including Al Gore’s tear-jerking lamentation in An Inconvenient Truth about the imminent disappearance of snow on Kilimanjaro by 2016. Especially as mountains are hard to hide and lots of people go to this one, partly to see the famous and abundant snow, it was bound to catch up with him and his ilk. Even the name of his movie, while snide and initially useful to bulldoze opponents Gore openly accused of lying for money, was leading with the chin because every other piece of counter-evidence is now labeled… an inconvenient truth. Including that Gore got very rich making inaccurate claims.

The same could be said much more broadly about climate alarmism including the bullying tone of leading advocates from Greta Thunberg to Michael Mann to, yes, Al Gore. And we will say it. If responsible people had declared at the outset, twenty years ago, that while they believed there was a major problem some of the alarmists’ claims were unsound, they would now stand out as responsible advocates for truth.

Since instead they remained silent, or worse, they now stand out as zealots impatient with reality when it doesn’t conform to their vision as with critics who don’t bow down to it. And for some odd reason normal people dislike that kind of approach.

See more here Climate Discussion

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