End of a Climate Delusion

Amid California’s fires, voters wake up from the dream that green pork is a solution

By Holman W. Jenkins. Excerpts:

"CO2 emitted into the atmosphere is rapidly and, for all practical purposes, uniformly distributed around the planet."

"Emitting industries leave the state. They don’t stop emitting. If California imports Canadian hydro to charge its electric vehicles, consumers elsewhere have to burn more coal and gas. If Californians drive EVs, more gasoline is free to be burned by others, releasing more CO2 that influences climate change in California and everywhere else."

"Green-energy subsidies do not reduce emissions."

"A National Research Council study sponsored by congressional Democrats in 2008 concluded that such handouts were a “poor tool for reducing greenhouse gases” and called for carbon taxes instead."

"A 2019 University of Oregon study had already revealed the empirical truth: Green energy doesn’t replace fossil fuels, it enables more energy consumption overall. That same year the EPA calculated that the potential emissions savings from subsidizing electric vehicles had been offset five times over by the pickup truck and SUV boom Team Obama facilitated to assure the success of its auto bailout.

Last year, the premier journal Science put a nail in the question: 96% of policies supported worldwide as “reducing” emissions failed to do so, consisting mostly of handouts to green-energy interests."

"A decision in 2019 authorized yet more Third World blackouts instead of reasonably shielding utilities from lawsuit risk over fires their power lines might be accused of contributing to. One result, predictably, has been a proliferation of backyard generators, which increase fire risk."