The Economist helped push the UK’s romance with Green power, and now many Brits have to choose between heating and eating!
By Dennis Avery ~
Churchville, VA. — We can’t predict how the government shutdown will be resolved in the short term, let alone the more permanent long run effect. Things are so bad that The Economist magazine has a sketch of George Washington’s Mt. Rushmore head, scowling at the brawling political parties. The Economist claims to offer “Global intelligence for excellent thinkers.” It says the Republicans should retreat so the liberals can deal with the unfortunate “polarization” of American politics.
Has The Economist’s advice worked in the past? It ardently recommended exactly the “soft socialism” that piled up the current huge debt burdens in the EU, the national health care the EU cannot support without “death panels,” and an unsupportable population of EU non-taxpayers. Think Greece, Italy, Spain, etc.
Worse, The Economist has also led the decades-long “global” campaign for the Kyoto treaty. They claim the planet needs the “insurance policy.” Never mind that the premiums on the “insurance” would beggar society without making a significant difference in the atmospheric CO2.
The Economist helped push Britain into the “greenest” carbon policies in the known world. Now, even though the global temperatures haven’t risen for more than 15 years they have created their very own energy crisis. Their North Sea gas is running out. Britain has plenty of coal, but the EU is shuttering the UK’s big coal-fired plants for emitting too much CO2. Its nuclear plants are due for decommissioning. Blackouts loom.
There is only one “acceptable” new energy source. Three thousand wind turbines scarring its finest landscapes. Britain promises to build thousands of still-more-expensive turbine barges offshore. However, no fossil power plant has been decommissioned because the renewables are so erratic. They must be 90% backed by fossil plants running in “spinning reserve” or the lights go out.
Many Britons must choose now between heating and eating. Electric bills have doubled in a decade, with another doubling guaranteed by the wind subsidies. This winter, the British Red Cross is planning to hand out food to the poor—for the first time since the end of World War II.
Germany’s industries are paying three times as much for their electricity as U.S. companies—mainly because of the natural gas fracked on private land that Obama had no power to stop. German and British companies are already earmarking billions for U. S expansion.
The head of Britain’s Labour Party helped inflict the “Green”policies,” and now says he’d “freeze” British electric bills. Price controls have failed for 4,000 years, but he is leading in the polls. Investors have lost billions because the renewables cost more than the subsidies, and they are unilling to finance additional power.
The Economist says it is sorry about the lost energy, the lost jobs, and the about-to-be lost British industries. However, it is still as worried as Barack Obama and his deluded Environment Protection agency about energy being “too cheap.”
In the U.S. struggle, urgently concerned conservatives are trying to try to rein in the debt binge before it takes us back to wheelbarrows full of 1930s German marks needed to buy a loaf of bread. The Economist does not deserve what little reputation it still has.
Dennis T. Avery contributes Posts at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) site. He is a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., and he is an environmental economist. He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of “Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years.”
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