The Law of (Un)Intended Consequences

We've heard the mandate from the Messiah. We're going to be required to depend upon fuel-sipping mini-cars with choked off emissions from their combustion to transport our smaller families with our preciously expensive single bag of government supported daily sustenance.

From the pinnacle within the Beltway, our elected prima donnas who are chauffered to and from their offices, enact the enabling legislation to make this miracle of automotive disprogress occur. If they hauled their puffy and pampered bodies to the heartland and followed many of us through our daily routine they would quickly begin to understand the value of pickup trucks and SUVs. This isn't medieval Europe with the village inside the castle walls. It's sea-to-shining-sea, amber waves of grain and purple mountain majesties with occasionally slippery roads. The soccer moms and good ol' boys aren't ready for this.

So, here we've got the real agenda laid out in a panorama spanning the failed history to the mandated future:

Plug Me In Please

I've ranted before about the ludicrous concept of a $40,000 Chevy Volt with a 40 mile electric powered range supplemented by a lawn-mower engine and a 12 hour recharge cycle. That isn't practical even if anybody beside a Kool-aid sipping, Birkenstock-wearing metrosexual wanted one.

Apparently the thinking of the administration ends after "gasoline is bad--electricity is good."

We are approaching another summer. It looks right now as though it isn't following the global heating cycle quite so obviously. So far, the temps have been cool in my neck of the woods. About 10-20 degrees below average highs each day.

Still, I'm certain that come August we will see the electric grids challenged to meet demand once again. California's paradise will see the annual "rolling brown-outs" to equalize the load on the deteriorating network. In Texas we will hear of the lack of capacity for the future and again go through the painful debate about whether to build more coal-fired power plants.

And, once again, on the first of the month I will get an electric bill that exceeds $700. Electricity is expensive and we use all we produce to light our homes, wash our clothes, cook our food and make life bearable in the summer.

So, what happens when the Messiah achieves his dream of electric powered kiddie cars for the masses? Do we then exploit all our our coal resources? I doubt that seriously. Do we build nuclear generating plants? Oh, my God...of course not.

What we will do is depend upon the Messiah's doubling of the 1% of our electrical generating capability to a whopping 2% produced by wind and solar. Yep. We'll recharge all those magical cars without actually doing a thing about the realities of how to produce all that juice.

Cato Offers Details on the Plan

How does a Harvard educated man create such a fantasy?