The American Spectator

Today we again read the unconvincing yet still chilling lecture in an email from the Potomac and Rappahannock Transit Association that “more people are realizing that public transportation is the future of travel in our country”. You know, to get back to the ways before all that darn prosperity, which gave us the horrors of automobility! Please don’t ask how we bring this about…you’ll see.

I’m reminded of the old poll showing that a whopping 90% of Americans believe people should take mass transit more often….sorry, that was other people.

Meanwhile, from the land where they deny their own internal calls for car-free cities (again, that’s other peoples’ cars…the Eurocrats and nomenklatura will still need theirs, as always proves the case on such Animal Farms)…the Guardian reports “EU could ground short-haul flights in favour of high-speed rail: Transport plan aims to reduce carbon emissions from sector by 60% over next 40 years.” Vee haff vays of making you love zee train vedder you likes it or not!

And here at home we see inescapable proof that the Japanese nuclear crisis is already chilling the much-hyped ‘nuclear renaissance’ that also was an assumption of Team Obama economic projections to promote cap-n-trade and otherwise rationing carbon dioxide, a binge of nearly 100 new reactors to keep the cost down (on paper). Now, one of three viable new U.S. projects has been shelved amid difficulties post-Fukushima. If he doesn’t call off his war on coal now, you know the guy is reckless.

Why is it so difficult to advance a real energy policy, the kind that actually looks to produce more domestic energy and increase access to energy, not seal resources off, after years of ‘comprehensive energy policy’ bills passed each of which attests to the fact that the others were no such thing?

Well, just in time my friends and occasional colleagues at the invaluable Institute for Energy Research have one such plan out today, staggering as much for its common sense as for the fact that these reforms remain necessary after a series of grab-bag deliveries of special interest goodies called ‘comprehensive energy legislation’.