New Quillette & Newsweek, Isaac Orr on PHP, & Painted Buntings

Jul 15, 2022

New pieces in Quillette & Newsweek, Isaac Orr on the podcast, & Painted Buntings!

As you’ve probably heard, Texas has been getting hammered by extreme heat and a months-long drought. Temperatures in Austin have been over 100F every day for the past 12 days. The heat has been oppressive. Thus, the most welcome news Lorin and I have had in a long while was the drenching rain that came through Austin last night. The thunderstorm didn’t last long, but it rained hard. It was a joy to hear the sound of the rain. It was also delightful to walk in the yard this morning and bask in the warm, humid smell of grass, plants, and trees that have been given a much-needed drink of rain. The other positive news of the past few days: Joe Manchin killed the climate bill that was pending in Congress. That’s positive news for consumers and for rural communities that have been fighting the subsidized encroachment of Big Wind and Big Solar. The death of the climate bill was met with some world-class hyperbole. Former Obama advisor, John Podesta, issued a statement that was quoted in the New York Times. He said it was “odd that Manchin would choose as his legacy to be the one man who single-handedly doomed humanity.” I will write about the climate bill soon. But not today.

At the moment, Lorin and I are on an A320 bound for Denver. Mary, Michael, and Jacob are meeting us there. We are going to have some family time and birthday celebrations. Four items today:

Quillette: California’s energy war on the poor
Newsweek: The folly of wind energy
Isaac Orr on the podcast talking coal and more
Painted Buntings on Barton Creek

The image of the Painted Buntings above is by John James Audubon.

On Tuesday, Quillette published my piece on California’s assault on the poor and the middle class. I am pleased with the article for several reasons. First among them: Quillette’s founder, Claire Lehmann, who I quite admire, reached out to me and requested the piece. I was also pleased that she gave me enough room to take a (relatively) deep dive into the misguided climate and energy policies that California’s bureaucracy is imposing on the poor and the middle class. I began:

A few years ago, author and demographer Joel Kotkin declared that “California is a great state in which to be rich.”
Of course, it’s good to be rich anywhere. But California—the province that for decades has led the United States in cultural issues like fashion, gay rights, and entertainment—has devolved into a state where the American dream is being strangled by a phalanx of energy and climate regulations that are imposing huge regressive taxes on the poor and middle class. And worse yet, the state’s vast bureaucracy is imposing yet more regulations that will further tighten the financial noose on Californians.
Before going further, it’s essential to put California into context. While the state is known for posh spots like Beverly Hills, Marin County, and Silicon Valley, the Golden State has the highest poverty rate in America. Indeed, the poverty figures in the state can only be described as shocking.

I concluded:

Given the state’s many problems, residents are reacting with what has been dubbed the “California Exodus.” Last year, for the first time in its 171-year history, California lost a seat in the US House of Representatives. Meanwhile, Texas gained two seats and Florida gained one. A few months ago, U-Haul, the company that rents moving trucks, issued a press release that said its California locations experienced the biggest loss of one-way truck rentals in 2021. The top destination for those soon-to-be-ex Californians? Texas. (I can verify this, as it seems everyone from California is moving to Austin.) Furthermore, since 2018, about 300 companies have moved their headquarters out of California. Among the more notable corporate departures: Tesla and Oracle, both of which moved their headquarters to Austin.
The punchline here is obvious: For decades, regulators and politicians in California—a state that is a pillar of the Democratic Party as well as the home of US vice president Kamala Harris and the home of America’s biggest climate-activist group, the Sierra Club—have been implementing a skein of policies, nearly all of them tied to energy and climate, that are blatantly anti-poor and anti-working class. Yes, California is a fine place to be rich. But Californians who aren’t rich have seen enough. And now they are voting with their feet and with whatever U-Haul truck they can find.

Again, here’s a link. Please share it.

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Also on Tuesday, Newsweek published my piece on how recurring wind droughts are leaving Texas and Germany at the mercy of the weather. I began:

All over the world, consumers are being slammed by soaring energy prices. In Australia, the wholesale cost of electricity jumped by 141 percent in the first three months of 2022. In Britain, residential customers are paying about 43 percent more for their household energy than they were last year, and prices are expected to jump another 65 percent in October. And here in the U.S., we're paying close to $5 a gallon—for the first time in generations. That's thanks in no small part to the Biden administration, which has restricted oil and gas drilling while continually promoting renewable energy. Among the most recent moves: a pledge to deploy 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind by 2030.
Pushing for offshore wind—one of the most expensive forms of electricity production—may please some of Biden's supporters, but the latest evidence shows that investing too much in wind energy is terrible for grid reliability, as well as bad for consumers.

I concluded:

It's readily apparent that the energy crisis that is engulfing Germany and the rest of Europe is the result of bad energy policy. Over the past two decades, Europe has spent too much money on renewables and too little on hydrocarbons or preserving existing coal and nuclear plants.
The same is true in Texas. Between 2014 and 2020, about 6,200 megawatts of coal-fired capacity in Texas was retired, and despite rising electricity demand, the state has not added any new gas-fired generation over the past two decades. The result is that by the end of next year, the Texas grid could have more weather-dependent generation capacity than it has gas-fired capacity.
The punchline here is obvious: We could cover all of Texas and Germany with wind turbines, but we can't make the wind blow. Those two provinces are running short of electricity because they have made their electric grids too reliant on weather-dependent renewables.
If climate change means we are going to be facing more extreme weather—hotter summers, colder winters, or both—it is pure foolishness to make our electric grid dependent on the weather. And yet, that is exactly what is happening.

Again, here’s a link.

Isaac Orr on WV v. EPA, power shortages in the Midwest, coal, and more

I have admired Isaac Orr’s work for a while. In his second appearance on the podcast (his first was on August 10, 2021), Isaac, who is a policy fellow at the Center of the American Experiment, talks about a range of issues. Among them: the importance of the Supreme Court’s recent West Virginia v. EPA ruling, why utilities are keeping their coal plants in the Midwest open this summer, how renewables are undermining the integrity of the electric grid, and the looming shortfalls of generation capacity throughout the country.

Isaac is a plain-spoken guy, a trait that likely comes from the years he spent growing up on his family’s farm. That background makes him something of a rarity in the think tank business (and in broader society). You may recall that last year the Center of the American Experiment published my “Not In Our Backyard” report, which shows the depth and breadth of the rural backlash against the encroachment of the wind and solar sectors. Isaac has become a leading expert on the politics and workings of the electric grid in Minnesota and the Midwest. It was a fun discussion. The podcast is available on all major podcast channels, and of course, on YouTube.

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Painted Buntings on Barton Creek

Last week, I wrote about the Indigo Buntings we saw at Commons Ford Park. This week: I’m all about Painted Buntings (Passerina ciris). Yes, I’ve written about them before in this “news” letter. But on Thursday morning, Lorin and I saw a pair of them while we were hiking on Barton Creek, about a mile and a half from our house. It was the first time we’ve seen Painted Buntings on the creek. We usually see them in rural areas west of Austin. They seem to prefer wide open fields. When we saw them, they were feeding on seeds from some sunflowers that had sprouted in the middle of the creek near the Gus Fruh access point. (The photo above was taken in 2009 by Doug Janson.)

We weren’t carrying binoculars. At first glance, we thought that the Buntings were Lesser Goldfinches, as there were a handful of those feeding on the sunflowers. We walked closer to the Buntings and had to stand still for a while to get a positive identification. But by relying on GISS (general impression, size, and shape) we both agreed that we were seeing a male PB. The red chest was the main giveaway. We also got a pretty good look when it took flight. The colors of the PB are so dazzling that I never get tired of seeing them. Wikipedia says this:

A bird in the cardinal family, Cardinalidae. It is native to North America. The bright plumage of the male only comes in the second year of life; in the first year they can only be distinguished from the female by close inspection...the male painted bunting is often described as the most beautiful bird in North America and as such has been nicknamed nonpareil, or "without equal." Its colors, dark blue head, green back, red rump, and underparts, make it extremely easy to identify, but it can still be difficult to spot since it often skulks in foliage even when it is singing. The plumage of female and juvenile painted buntings is green and yellow-green, serving as camouflage. Once seen, the adult female is still distinctive, since it is a brighter, truer green than other similar songbirds.
...found in thickets, woodland edges with riparian thickets, shrubbery and brushy areas. In the east, the species breeds in maritime hammocks and scrub communities. Today, it is often found along roadsides and in suburban areas, and in gardens with dense, shrubby vegetation. The wintering habitat is typically the shrubby edges along the border of tropical forests or densely vegetated savannas... shy, secretive and often difficult to observe with the human eye, though can be fairly approachable where habituated to bird feeders... Painted buntings are mostly monogamous and are solitary or in pairs during the breeding season, but sometimes exhibit polygyny. The breeding season begins in late April and lasts through to early August, with activity peaking mid-May through to mid-July.

Have a good weekend.

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