“Midvale School for The Gifted,” reads the sign in front of the building in the classic Gary Larson “Far Side” cartoon, with a sign on the door clearly marked “Pull.”
The bespeckled genius entering the building, book in hand, is of course trying unsuccessfully to – push – the door open.
What the cartoon doesn’t show of course is that the brainy graduates from the Midvale School for The Gifted went on to assimilate themselves into the energy industry and the ranks of the social policy sultans in the U.S. and Western Europe. Holding sway over those posts for 30 years, they conjured a global solution to man’s ever expanding need for electricity: Replace the firm and dependable sources of electrical power production like coal, nuclear and natural gas with less efficient, more expensive options like wind power and solar production that are prone to system failure and produce way less electricity when they actually do work.
Besides not being able to operate your George Foreman grill if there’s no electricity, the human body starts down the road to hypothermia with prolonged exposure to temps under 45 degrees. That’s a particular risk for mankind during the winter months – thank goodness the geniuses from Midvale have come up with an answer.
That solution is easy: In a situation where the policies you’ve adopted have resulted in reduced ability to meet expanding energy needs, the only thing left to do is to ration the power that is actually available, and to upcharge the be-dickens out of the customer base of users for daring to use the product.
Such was the revelation recently when some 22,000 Xcel Energy electric customers in Colorado suddenly found they couldn’t adjust the Smart Meter electrical controls on their home air conditioning units during a recent heat wave. Someone else had assumed control of their thermostats.
“Temperature locked temporarily during energy emergency,” read a notice those sweltering customers received. “Due to a rare energy emergency that may affect the local energy grid, your temperature slider has been changed from 8 p.m.-9 p.m. because you enrolled in a Community Energy Savings program.”
Standing in their living rooms wiith beads of sweat running down their posterior divides provided a great moment for those Xcel customers to recap. First, enviro-nerds infuse themselves into the government bureaucracy. Using regulatory authority, they then twist the arms of the energy industry through increasing regulation for two decades to drop bonafide means of firm production and replace it with “green” energy. Green energy can’t fill the bill, and now there’s not enough electricity to go around.
After your stiff, cold fingers have succeeded in lighting your charcoal grill in your living room this winter to stay warm and as carbon monoxide steals your last moments of consciousness, think of it as The Curse of Midvale.
Those braniacs in “deep state” government policy positions refuse to acknowledge the example of Germany, where policies driving wind farm development as the vanguard of the country’s “greening” have netted skyrocketing electrical rates and such a loss in electrical production they have to buy French nuclear power and – wait for it – Russian natural gas. The Russians of course have shut off the tap to Germany for its criticism of Ivan’s invasion of Ukraine – so the Germans are stocking up on wool socks and firewood, hoping they can make it through the winter.
This is the precipice to which we’ve been led by idiot academics and hand wringing socio-climatephobes who we allowed to take root in our governments and use their unelected regulatory authority to make zombie followers out of the energy industry. We’ve come to the point where there isn’t enough electricity, and the power company – perhaps at the behest of regulators in the government – can just turn off your electricity if it sees fit.
While our lights are still working, it’s not too late to demand better from our geniuses.
– Dane Hicks is the publisher of The Anderson County Review in Garnett, Kan.