Ed. Note: This short piece by Robert Bradley Jr. from mid-2012 is reproduced verbatim. It is good to have a laugh sometimes in the energy debates, which the Onion parody (below) invited. Serious posts on Peak Oil can be found here.

“We are on a collision course to a world without rocks. Only take as many rocks as you absolutely need.”

        – Dr. Victoria  Merrill, author, “No Stone Unturned: Methods for Modern Rock Conservation“

“Think about it. When was the last time you even saw a boulder?”

         – Henry Kaiser (geologist and Onion expert)

The easy oil has been found. There are no more mega-fields. Costs up … prices up … economic stress … crises. We have such certain knowledge from the smartest guys in many rooms: Paul Ehrlich, John Holdren, Colin Campbell, Jean Laherrère,  Richard Heinberg, Chris Skrebowski, Matthew Simmons, ….…

“[Radiant Solar] was able to [rip off homeowners] in part because home solar energy systems are complicated, expensive things — they often cost around $50,000 — typically involving layers of financing and tax incentives that leave many consumers confused.” – New York Times

The rooftop solar industry might be in freefall and on the way out, but the damage of bad performance and long-term contracts endures. The New York Times article, “New York Sues Solar Panel Firm, Saying It Bilked Hundreds of Customers” (January 29, 2026), explains how the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection is seeking almost $20 million in restitution and penalties from ‘home improvement contractor’ Radiant Solar.

In all, “300 victims of the same company, Radiant Solar, which left a trail of damaged homes, large debts and broken promises across the city,” the article reported.…

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…