“The golden era of American energy is now underway.” (President Donald Trump, The White House, May 14, 2019)

… under the Green New Deal, they don’t like clean, beautiful natural gas. They don’t like anything. (President Donald Trump, “Remarks on Promoting Energy Infrastructure and Economic Growth,” Hackberry, LA, May 14, 2019)

Who has been the most free-market energy President in U.S. history? In modern times, Ronald Reagan comes to mind. He decontrolled crude oil and petroleum products in his first week of office (January 1981), although Jimmy Carter’s phase-out of such regulation had just six months to go. Reagan did some other things to undo a decade of energy statism but fell short of his election goal of abolishing the US Department of Energy. [1]

Enter Donald Trump.…

There was shock, surprise, and humor in the media when Trump not only denounced wind “mills” for intermittency, lack of predictable value, property losses, and bird kills but also topped his discussion with

“They say the noise causes cancer. You tell me that one, okay?”

Is President Trump correct in his five critical points? Even the last one? Or is it possible, as Trevor Noah suggested, turbines might be the only things that don’t cause cancer.

1. Intermittency

Electricity must be consumed the moment it is produced. Storage to allow deviations is prohibitively expensive in all but the rarest of settings. And it has always been this way.

Trump said, “Honey I’d like to watch TV tonight: are the turbines working?” And then his quotation from the Washington Republican fundraiser:

“Is the wind blowing?…

“The Trump folks seem to believe that anything that has Obama’s fingerprints on it, no matter how sensible, they’re going to rescind, revoke and demolish, and it makes no sense at all.”

“[The climate conundrum] is scary and I’m not sure we’re gonna be able to turn it around.”

– John Holdren, December 2017.

This is Part II of a transcribed interview with John Holdren, leader of the energy/climate Malthusian school, by Climate One. Yesterday’s post critically assessed Holdren’s views on federal energy research and development, the Paris withdrawal, and China’s energy policy. Today’s post looks at his views on most other issues in the “energy sustainability” debate.

Holdren quotations are below in red, followed by my rebuttal comments indented in black (subtitles added).

Technology Boom in Renewable Energies

“… there have been huge improvement in battery technology.…

“Over the last year or so, I have tried to advise the progressive community that we should be open-minded about a carbon tax.”

– Greg Dotson, Center for American Progress

“The bottom line here is that the distributional effect of a carbon tax could really be anything you want, depending on how you use the revenues. We think it is shortsighted to only think of the direct effect of the tax.”

– Eric Toder, Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center

“[Trump] … is going to be utterly decimated in November….  Then the question is, what does that do to the Tea Party? …. Is the Tea Party really something to fear now, after a decimation in November? 

– Jerry Taylor, Niskanen Center

It is rare that one gets to follow the talk and reasoning of climate/energy alarmists/activists.…