George Will reminds us of the terrible reality of nuclear weapons. A slice:
Future historians, if there are any, will be dumbfounded. Today, uncountable dollars and unquantifiable hysteria are devoted to the distant threat of climate change milder than some changes Earth has experienced. A recent peer-reviewed study of scientific estimates concludes that the average annual cost of what the excitable U.N. secretary general calls “global boiling” might reach 2 percent of global gross domestic product by 2100. Meanwhile, negligible public anxiety accompanies the intensifying danger of global incineration from nuclear war.
Richard Reinsch warns of the coming of stakeholder statism.
Congratulations to Ed Glaeser.
Gary Galles is realistic about voting.
Brad Thompson suggests that the Ivy League be defunded.
Like the Clean Power Plan, the EPA’s newly finalized replacement rule requires adoption of technology that doesn’t exist. More remarkably, the agency simultaneously published the rules governing mercury, water emissions and solid-waste storage, all of which it had clumsily promised would drive plants to close and thereby reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
EPA officials apparently grasp that the opinion in West Virginia prohibits the practice that admirers call “law whispering” or “teaching old laws new tricks”—particularly on major questions like contriving changes in our energy mix. Gone are paeans to inventive ways of coercing plants to retire. With a newfound modesty, the administrative record published for these non-greenhouse-gas emissions rules disputes claims of causing “a significant number of retirements” and attributes any generation shifting to Inflation Reduction Act subsidies.
The kicker is that no technology exists today to enable railroads to comply with California’s diktat, rendering the whole exercise fanciful at best.
The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial board explained last November that while Wabtec Corp. has introduced a pioneering advance in rail technology with the launch of the world’s first battery-powered locomotive, the dream of a freight train fully powered by batteries remains elusive. The challenges of substituting diesel with batteries—primarily due to batteries’ substantial weight and volume—make it an impractical solution for long-haul trains. Additionally, the risk of battery overheating and potential explosions, which can emit harmful gases, is a significant safety concern. As the editorial noted, “Even if the technology for zero-emission locomotives eventually arrives, railroads will have to test them over many years to guarantee their safety.”
