Pruitt leaves a proud legacy to the EPA

Under President Obama, the EPA bureaucrats became the shock troops of a new "green revolution". different from the one who revolutionized agriculture. Mr. Trump chose Mr. Pruitt to lead the counter-revolution. As a result, Mr. Pruitt received encouragement from the agency to "pursue and settle" disputes that allowed outside lobbyists to establish l & # 39; EPA.

Another horror of horrors, the president pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement, ending the long-standing collaboration between the EPA and the Intergovernmental Panel on Chemicals. Climate change of the United Nations. Governments around the world have already spent hundreds of billions of dollars to reach the US targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Last July, Danish researcher Bjorn Lomborg predicted that the cost of implementing the Paris Climate Agreement would reach $ 2 trillion by 2030.

CO2 is a major contributor to climate change. natural component of the air we breathe. United States alarms about a CO2 "greenhouse" causing global warming are based on dubious computer models. As Pat Michaels and Ryan Maue of the Cato Institute observed on this page last month, the temperature of the Earth's surface has not increased significantly since 2000.

stakes are high. Government restrictions on carbon emissions have given rise to a large renewable energy industry that specializes in solar panels and wind turbines. In places where these industries have thrived, such as Germany and Australia, the result has been unreliable power at a significantly higher cost. According to the International Energy Agency, Germans pay roughly three times what Americans pay for electricity.

The idea that "renewable energy" is a kind of modern technology to save the planet is nonsense. Other than fire, renewable energies were the only sources of energy for humanity for eons. Primitives built their huts with mud bricks heated to solar energy. European explorers of the fifteenth century relied on the wind to fill their sails. The "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" describes the well-known danger of being stuck on the vast ocean with water everywhere, "no drop to drink". Modern sailors, with fossil turbine boats, are rarely confronted with this problem.

This is not a new discovery that renewable energies do not work when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing. What is less well understood is that even when governments force utilities to buy renewable energy, electricity companies still have to use fossil fuels or uranium to maintain the operational network when the sun and the wind are inactive. Renewable energy is therefore superfluous for the electricity companies, but its cost reduces their ability to finance basic power plants. The result is either higher electricity bills or an unreliable grid. Consumers are punished anyway.

Even the Bonneville Power Administration, a large government hydroelectric complex that supplies 28% of its electricity to the northwest of the United States, has been confronted with this problem because of the need to make room for it. Government-subsidized wind and solar power reduces its ability to use its system efficiently. A BPA statement in January said, "Our customers have expressed serious concerns that the recent costs and rates of increase in BPA are unsustainable."

Things are even worse in some countries where environmental parties have been more successful. At the request of its Greens, Germany has closed not only the coal power plants but also some nuclear facilities after the merger of the ill-conceived Fukushima factory in Japan. The high costs of electricity have been an important factor, with the influx of refugees, to the Chancellor

Angela Merkel

Electoral debacle last year.

The left of Australia used to boast that its nation had more solar panels per capita than anywhere else in the world. They said less about the costs of household electricity in Australia – also among the highest in the world. When South Australia suffered blackouts in the summer of 2006, politicians began to realize that something was wrong. Last October, the Australian Prime Minister

Malcolm Turnbull

scrapped plans to set new renewable energy targets, and his government expects to have a new, more reliable energy plan by next month. It can include such irreligious means as the renewed use of the country's abundant coal deposits.

million. Trump has abandoned the Paris Agreement to prevent the United States from going to Germany and Australia. Obama had drunk the American Kool-Aid, echoing the claim that global warming was an existential threat to the planet. Its 2015 Clean Energy Plan was designed to reduce CO2 emissions from the electricity sector by 32% over 2005 levels by 2030, including through greater dependence on electricity. wind and solar energy.

When Mr. Obama launched the CPP (without congressional legislation), he attracted 150 companies, including 27 states, 24 trade associations, 37 rural electricity cooperatives and three unions, reported. EPA. Taking these complaints seriously, the Trump administration has decided to abandon the plan. This will save up to $ 33 billion in compliance costs by 2030, according to a new estimate from the EPA.

million. Pruitt's successor at EPA, Acting Director

Andrew Wheeler,

will now fire snipers. But consider this: Enviro-shaman

Al Gore

warned in "Earth in the Balance" that the planet was in imminent danger of global warming 26 years ago. Yet, weather records from weather stations and satellites today show that the various climates of the Earth are pretty much what they were then. Hyderabad is still very hot in summer, as it has done for centuries, and Yakutsk becomes very cold in winter, ditto. San Francisco is very nice all year round except for fog and politics.

Melloan is a former deputy editor of the Journal's editorial page. He is writing a book on the costs of false science.