Jonah Goldberg today on the wonders of oil:
As for wind and solar, even if such technologies were wildly more successful than they have been, so what? You could quintuple and then quintuple again the output of wind and solar and it wouldn’t reduce our dependence on oil. Why? Because we use oil for transportation, not for electricity.
Can conservatives please stop pretending that the electrification of our transportation infrastructure is some arcane topic that only a few wild-eyed eggheads have ever discussed publicly? Please.
On the other hand, the bulk of Goldberg’s column is about the idiocy of ethanol subsidies, so I’ll hold down the snark. Strange bedfellows and all that. In fact, what he really ought to be asking is this: given that liberals, conservatives, and libertarians all agree almost unanimously that ethanol subsidies are completely indefensible, how is it that they exist anyway? So here’s my proposal: let’s make getting rid of ethanol subsidies a destruction test for the whole concept of bipartisanship and the American system of government. If, in the end, left and right can’t even work together well enough to get Congress to eliminate ethanol subsidies that we all hate, let’s just pack up, rewrite the constitution to turn ourselves into a parliamentary democracy, and be done with it.
