In assessing the supposed dynamic possibilities of new energy sources we’d like to mention that wind is not “new” as many assert including, for instance, the Hill Times piece we cited last week that spoke of “the amount of energy humanity must replace with new sources (e.g. wind, solar).” In fact, along with water mills, windmills were part of the medieval economic revolution that brought unprecedented prosperity and a cultural flourishing including magnificent cathedrals and the invention of polyphonic music and the university (a mixed blessing, one might now say) aided by a beneficial warming whose end in the 14^th century brought famine and plague. Both kinds of mills replaced a great deal of inefficient drudgery by man and beast, because while the key purpose of both was grinding grain, an unbearable task done by hand yet essential on a huge scale, the power was also adapted for purposes like fulling cloth, driving saws and much more besides.

We bring up this point not merely to challenge the widespread notion of the Middle Ages as the worst historical period ever, from attitudes to innovation to life expectancy to burkas. (No, really, people seem to think they had them.) We do it to remind people that there’s a reason oil and gas supplanted wind: They work better. (They also supplanted whale oil and not a moment too soon for saving those magnificent creatures from extinction.) Indeed, speaking of the multiple uses of wind power in its day, a great many farmers in the 1920s bought a Ford Model T not to drive about in but to put it up on blocks, fit a transmission belt to the axel, and power everything from the well to the saw just as they had once done with the windmill, but with the incredible added convenience of having the power source wherever you wanted it, compact, convenient, available on demand and, well, powerful.

We also bring it up to remind people that the hydrocarbon transition worked brilliantly, precisely because that technology didn’t need subsidies. It was just way better, and a flood of private investment brought large profits to those who made it. No mandates, no bans, just the free market. Can you imagine? Exactly unlike this non-transition in which, the Contrarian notes elsewhere, the projectors’ latest scheme for extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, “clean hydrogen”, is a subsidy-gobbling horror. If it worked, it wouldn’t need subsidies and, again, if it needs them it shouldn’t get them.