Sowell On The No Solutions Brigade

Here's Thomas Sowell on the no-solutions brigade:

[W]e are left with nothing we can do about the rising demand for oil around the world, nothing we are willing to do about increasing the supply of oil, and angry denunciations of rising oil prices.

The politically correct answer is that we must have "alternative energy sources" and "conservation." At what cost -- in money, in jobs, in constraints on people's lives -- is too crass a question for those delicate souls who are dead set against producing more oil.

These souls are apparently not so delicate, however, that they are bothered by the deaths of coal miners who get killed producing one of those "alternative energy sources" that sound so nice when you don't count the costs.

Many of the same delicate sensitivities have kept nuclear power plants or hydroelectric dams from being built in the United States for decades. Some in liberal political or media circles talk ominously about the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant "disaster" -- in which no one was killed, as compared to coal mines, in which lives continue to be lost, year after year.

Meanwhile, the fetishes of a self-congratulatory few, who demonize others as selfish, impose staggering costs on the country as a whole. Facts get nowhere against these fetishes because the fetishes are what provide a badge of identity as wonderful and special people.

Thanks to Common Sense and Wonder for the pointer.

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