At the just-completed CERAWeek, here in Houston, Daniel Yergin had an excellent opportunity to inject some scholarly realism into the climate-change debate. As a wise man of energy and an opinion leader, he could have stated publicly what many in the vast audience mutter privately, such as:

1. Global warming has stalled in the last decade or more, bringing into question the high-sensitivity, high-warming scenarios of climate models (the major costs of climate change)
2. Cap-and-trade CO₂ reduction in the European Union has failed under a variety of metrics–deadweight costs, higher prices, very little gain, unintended consequences
3. U.S. voters have put climate-change at the very bottom of their list of concerns and affordable energy high on their list of concerns
4. What emerges from Congress in the next several years will be grotesque–almost regulation and higher energy costs for its own sake (with no appreciable effect on climate).