1) Solar and Wind Energy Will Always Be Tomorrow's Energy Source
Our friend and energy expert Robert Bryce (who has an indispensable Substack) just published this amazing graphic, showing that in 2023 just 6% of the world's energy came from wind and solar energy.
Over the last two decades, fossil fuel use grew three times faster than green energy. In 2023 the world used more fossil fuels than ever before in history.
Bryce estimates more than $4 trillion in global government subsidies have gone to wind and solar.
Biden and the Left love to boast about government "investment" spending.
Question: in the history of mankind has there ever been an investment with a lower return than wind and solar power?
2) Biden's Drug Price Controls Will Kill Tens of Thousands of Americans
Thanks to Bidenflation, the price for just about everything is soaring. Biden blames everyone – from gas station owners to "greedy corporations" to grocery stores, and now the drug companies – for high prices, except himself.
Yesterday, the White House announced government price controls on 64 pharmaceutical drugs.
No one's happy with the high cost of drugs. And we are not shills for the pharmaceutical industry.
But price controls lower prices now in exchange for slower innovation and new cures in the future. Anyone with ALS, Parkinson's, cancer, MS, arthritis, Alzheimer's, epilepsy, type 1 diabetes, and hundreds of other deadly or crippling medical disorders should be cursing Biden out loud.
A study by the Congressional Budget Office estimates that new pricing regulations mean that there will be 13 fewer new drugs brought to market in the next 30 years. University of Chicago economist Tomas Philipson predicts Biden-style price controls could mean 135 fewer drugs over the next fifteen years. He calculates that Biden's new policy could stifle innovation and kill more Americans than COVID.
Biden is replacing Operation Warp Speed with Operation Snail's Speed, so much for the race for the cure.
The Supremes on a 6-3 decision ruled that neither states nor censored individuals have standing to challenge federal officials who suppress speech on the internet. The bitter irony of this blatant violation of First Amendment rights is that in this particular case involving COVID, it was the government – not the plaintiffs – that was spreading the lies and "disinformation."
In effect, the Court ruled that the government can lie and then muzzle anyone who dares question their authority.
For months in 2021 and 2022, a coterie of officials at the highest levels of the Federal Government continuously harried and implicitly threatened Facebook with potentially crippling consequences if it did not comply with their wishes about the suppression of certain COVID–19-related speech. Facebook repeatedly yielded. As a result Hines [the plaintiff] was indisputably injured, and due to the officials' continuing efforts, she was threatened with more of the same when she brought suit.
These past and threatened future injuries were caused by and traceable to censorship that the officials coerced….
We are obligated to tackle the free speech issue that the case presents. The Court, however, shirks that duty and thus permits the successful campaign of coercion in this case to stand as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear, and think.
Because of the perpetrators' high positions [in government], it was even more dangerous. It was blatantly unconstitutional, and the country may come to regret the Court's failure to say so.
The Biden administration can now act with a free hand in pressuring social media companies to censor speech.
This is a ruling that sanctions government tyranny.
4) Vermont to Fine Oil Companies for Providing Energy
The latest attack on oil and gas comes in Vermont, where the Democrats, who control the state legislature by a supermajority, forced through a bill to "hold Big Oil accountable" for what they say is the devastating impact of climate change.
The new law requires oil and gas companies to foot the bill for mitigating the alleged harms of global warming. The funds will more likely go to all kinds of crazy projects that put money in the pockets of out-of-work environmental activists and trial lawyers.
Republican Gov. Phil Scott – who allowed the bill to take effect without his signature – called it a "sad day for Vermonters who simply cannot afford further tax burdens and cost increases."
The AP reports that Maryland, Massachusetts, and New York are already preparing to follow Vermont.
Meanwhile, there are now 32 cases filed by state attorneys general, cities, counties, and tribal nations against companies including Exxon Mobil, BP, and Shell. The lawsuits claim that the industry tried to undermine scientific consensus about the crisis or failed to disclose the impact their activities would have on the environment.
These sham laws and lawsuits hope to turn oil companies into cash cows similar to the tobacco lawsuits 20 years ago. This could bring about the abolition of fossil fuels through the back door of the nation's state legislatures and courthouses.
But what none of these judges or legislators take into account is the catastrophic economic effects of NOT using fossil fuels. What about the millions of jobs that would be wiped out with no fossil fuels? How many thousands of Americans would die in hospitals, assisted living centers, daycare centers, or schools if the HVAC went out because there were no fossil fields to keep them running?
Yesterday, we reported on how steep tax increases by Kenya's government had touched off massive citizen protests that resulted in five deaths. The tax hikes were imposed by International Monetary Fund bureaucrats who demanded Kenya meet debt payments that consume nearly three-quarters of Kenya's entire economic output.
President William Ruto told his people in a TV address he was withdrawing the bill ("I concede"). Some of his advisers are instead urging free-market reforms that will grow the economy.
