Ed. Note: Five years ago, Storm Uri caused Texas’s centrally planned wholesale electricity market (ERCOT) to buckle, vindicating warnings about the state’s wind/solar reliance. The mainstream media implicated natural gas instead, failing to explore the why behind the why. Rather than deregulation, Texas post-Uri has chosen to add wind, solar, and batteries, while subsidizing natural gas plants to counter intermittency. This duplicated grid is now driving rates up in a state that could have relied on surplus natural gas instead.

It was not so much the story of freak weather triggering a market failure writ large. It was a classic application of the political economy of government intervention: the seen and the unseen, expert/regulatory failure, and unintended consequences. Don Lavoie, a preeminent thinker in the field of market-versus-government planning, once warned:

If the guiding agency is less knowledgeable than the system it is trying to guide—and even worse, if its actions necessarily result in further undesired consequences in the working of that system—then what is going on is not planning at all but, rather, blind interference by some agents with the plans of others.” 

“We are deeply concerned about the implications of this directive [for DOE to quantify the CO2-intensity of domestic versus foreign goods]. While framed as a study, the structure and scope closely mirror the foundational work required to implement a U.S. carbon tax. Given your well-known opposition to carbon taxes and related schemes, we wanted to ensure you were fully aware of this provision and its potential trajectory.” (AEA Coalition Letter to DOE Secretary Chris Wright, below)

Trump 2 has represented a new era of energy consumerism against the termite aspirations of the Progressive Left. A recent compilation by the Institute for Energy Research lists 263 executive actions in this regard.

But the CO2 tax crowd lurks and can occasionally sneak one through. This occurred recently with a backdoor inclusion of an opening gambit toward an U.S.-side…

“Thanks to President Trump, the U.S. has officially escaped from the Paris Climate Agreement which undermined American values and priorities, wasted hard-earned taxpayer dollars, and stifled economic growth. This is another commonsense America First victory for the American people!” ( – Taylor Rogers, White House spokesperson. Quoted in Politico, below)

Effective yesterday, the United States is removed from the signatories of the Paris Climate Agreement, dated November 4, 2016. [1] Read about it: “So long, Paris: US officially leaves landmark climate pact” (Politico: January 27, 2026).

Even better, Trump II has started the withdrawal process for the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992) that was responsible for the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement.

Trump Statement

The rationale for the U.S. withdrawal was given by Trump in his first administration.…

“All of these E.S.G. funds are wrong. They weren’t going to generate better returns. They are not going to make the world a better place. E.S.G. as an investment thesis should be entirely shut down.”

– Terrence Keeley. Quoted in “How Wall Street Turned Its Back on Climate Change,” New York Times, January 18, 2026.

“Six years after the financial industry pledged to use trillions to fight climate change and reshape finance,” the New York Times front-page article began, “its efforts have largely collapsed.” The reality documented in “How Wall Street Turned Its Back on Climate Change“? Net Zero and decarbonization are unnatural, uneconomic modes of business and economic organization, and businesses are getting back to the basics of fiduciary duty and consumer service. [1]

“2025 may go down as the easiest year in history to retreat on climate pledges,” stated UK climate activist Chris Bowden on social media.…