Free market supporters are often criticized for being out of touch with reality or taking too simplistic an approach to the policy challenges we face today. But the beauty of free market principles is that they reveal simple truths that with expertise and experience can yield practical real world solutions to real world challenges – demystifying a world of regulations and policies that is far more complex than need be.
And who is being unrealistic anyway? In the Wall Street Journal, Holman Jenkins provides us with an estimate by the International Energy Agency of what will be needed to ward off the worst of climate change under the cap-and-trade CO2 models being proposed today: “The world by 2030 must build 34 hydroelectric dams the size of China’s Three Gorges Dam, 510 nuclear plants, 289,000 wind turbines, 6,800 biomass plants and 714 fossil fuel plants equipped with unproven CO2 capture technology.”
Talk about out of touch! Does anyone actually believe that this will come to pass? And where are we supposed to get the money for this? Of course, this scenario is coming from the same crowd who said back in 1978 that solar power would meet 20 percent of our needs by 2000.
Next week, I’ll offer an example a “simplistic” free market approach to dealing with global warming and related issues that I think is much more in touch with reality.
– Bill Peacock