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Energy Wedgists Versus Breakthroughists

3 Comments

Put me in the latter camp.

Although the Climate Security Act does direct some spending towards low-carbon energy research, it is basically a wedgist scheme. If something like it is adopted by the next presidential administration, we will find out which side is right. If the wedgists are correct, cutting carbon dioxide emissions will produce a modest increase in energy prices resulting in the deployment of a wide variety of readily available low-carbon energy sources over the coming decades. If the breakthroughists are right, energy prices will soar provoking a political backlash. In which case, perhaps one need only peer across the Atlantic to the spreading protests against higher fuel prices in Europe to see the future.

Yup.

One of the most disturbing things about McCain is that he has bought completely into the hysterical climate-change claptrap, and is unamenable (so far at least) to reason.

3 thoughts on “Energy Wedgists Versus Breakthroughists”

  1. I’m less concerned with what McCain believes about the science of climate change than with what he believes are the appropriate tools of government to address whatever the voters want addressed.

    He can believe we all need to stop farting and breathing immediately or the Earth is doomed from the methane and CO2 emissions for all I care, so long as he also believes the government has to remain squarely within the Constitution in whatever effort it makes to accomplish that.

    This is part of what bugs me about modern political discourse. We seem to have tacitly settled on the sick collectivist frame of mind wherein it’s OK to use any amount of constraining force from a government as large and omnipresent as seems useful, just so long as the ends are justified. That forces us, indeed, to examine a candidates beliefs under a microscope, to find out what they’re going to do with all that power.

    How nice it would be to move instead toward the liberal paradise the Founders envisioned, where a candidate’s beliefs hardly matter, since what he can do by force (as opposed to by persuasion) once he gets into office is severely limited.

  3. Considering the Oath McCain took to commission as an officer in the Navy, he really is quite the failure.

    Sadly, of all posts in federal ‘service’, that Oath is even more pertinent to the one he occupies now.

    Again, too bad he’s failed us.

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