Regulating is hard work!

I really used to like Thomas Friedman.  I thought The World is Flat was one of the best non-fiction books of the last decade.  However, like most people who have become zealously converted to the cult of envirostatism, he has completely lost touch with reason and reality.  In his Sunday column today, “Who’s Sleeping Now,” Thomas Friedman engages in yet another Sinophiliac rant about how China is leading the charge towards a clean, green future.  He then claims that in order for us to catch up, “We are either going to put in place a price on carbon and the right regulatory incentives to ensure that America is China’s main competitor/partner in the E.T. revolution, or we are going to gradually cede this industry to Beijing and the good jobs and energy security that would go with it”

Did you catch that, just like China, we are going to place a price on carbon and use regulatory incentives …oh wait, China is the one leading any resistance to taxing carbon.  So I guess you have to ask, if China isn’t interested in putting a price on carbon, what regulatory incentives are they using to encourage such a nourishing environment for the E.T. revolution that Friedman longs for?

He unwittingly answers this question:

Here’s e-mail from Bill Gross, who runs eSolar, a promising California solar-thermal start-up: On Saturday, in Beijing, said Gross, he announced “the biggest solar-thermal deal ever. It’s a 2 gigawatt, $5 billion deal to build plants in China using our California-based technology. China is being even more aggressive than the U.S. We applied for a [U.S. Department of Energy] loan for a 92 megawatt project in New Mexico, and in less time than it took them to do stage 1 of the application review, China signs, approves, and is ready to begin construction this year on a 20 times bigger project!”

So, Mr. Friedman, I am confused.  Will having an expensive tax on carbon somehow speed up the bureaucratic process for getting solar power plants approved?

Friedman then revels in the recent announcement of China’s new super-fast bullet train, then he compares this accomplishment to the dismal failure, Amtrak.  I guess we can assume that an expensive new tax on carbon will also fix Amtrak.

Just in case you missed it, he closes with this statement:

It is clear that if we, America, care about our energy security, economic strength and environmental quality we need to put in place a long-term carbon price that stimulates and rewards clean power innovation. We can’t afford to be asleep with an invigorated China wide awake.

I am going to have to conclude that Friedman is a complete idiot.  The problem that he correctly identifies, the impotent and massive regulatory bureaucracies of the federal government, will not be solved by increased taxes that will only augment the regulatory burden of this apparatus.  The problem isn’t that we need to be taxed more, Mr. Friedman.  The problem is that the regulatory regime that Friedman thinks will fix this problem won’t wake up.