Times columnist Thomas Friedman is seemingly never at a loss for words. He has opinions on everything. The problem is, however, that often his opinions have no basis in fact. His column published on August 4th is a good example of well presented idiocy. Friedman writes about the natural gas boom in the USA and the danger it presents to "renewable" energy forms like wind and solar. His solution is to impose a tax on "carbon"; in other words Friedman wants to make fossil fuels so expensive that wind and solar energies will be able to compete with them.
For those of you who are thinking that this sound like a good plan, let me explain reality. Right now, the price of natural gas is at historically low levels. This is because the ability to extract the huge deposits of shale gas located across the USA has flooded the market with excess supply. Slowly, that supply is being used by new gas-fired power plants; trucks and other vehicles that run on natural gas; home heating systems that are switching to gas; and industries that build plants to run on gas. For the first time in decades, the USA has a competitive advantage over other countries because our energy costs are lower; cheap natural gas will bring hundreds of thousands, or maybe millions of jobs back from overseas as the low cost energy source makes American manufacturing less expensive and the bonanza of gas profits for land owners and drillers across the country pumps a recurring and actual stimulus into the economy each year for the foreseeable future. In other words, the gas boom has the ability to undo much of the damage that Obama and his policies have inflicted on the American economy. But Friedman wants to impose a tax which will undo all of that benefit.
If a tax is imposed on "carbon", the price of all fossil fuels will go way up. That cheap energy that will fuel an economic recovery will disappear. Instead, American energy costs will rise above those of other countries. We will have a competitive disadvantage. Wind and solar may be able to survive as viable alternative energy sources, but the need for energy will decline as the economy continues to stagnate. There will be no new jobs, just more job losses. The squeeze on the middle class will get worse as prices for home heating and fuel for vehicles will rise with this heavy tax. (I say heavy tax, because in order to make wind and solar able to compete with fossil fuels, there would need to be at least a 400% tax on gas.) Imagine filling up your gas tank at a cost of $100 or $150. How many people could afford that?
Friedman clearly does not understand economics. His idea to raise the tax on carbon is not just stupid; it is moronic. No sane person who understood the likely impact could put forth such an idea. Friedman is just another wealthy liberal for whom the extra cost means nothing. He is not concerned with the impact on real people; the potential impact on the green energy which will "save" the planet is at stake as he sees it. How sad!
Friedman also puts in a plug for federal regulation of fracking in this article. States just cannot do the job according to Friedman. We need the heavy hand of Uncle Sam to stop fracking from being done wrong. Maybe the feds could bring in the border patrol to regulate fracking. They have been so successful. Seriously, Friedman actually talks in his piece about the "mom and pop" drillers who do much of the fracking. They are the ones who need regulation, not the big drillers according to this genius. Well here are the actual facts. Fracking is a specialized business; drillers do not do it. Essentially all of the fracking is done by the few companies in that business. This are large companies; the average frack job costs hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. The equipment needed to do the fracking alone costs well over a million dollars; indeed for some types of fracking a set of equipment can cost about thirty million dollars. There are not too many "mom and pop" businesses with that kind of money to invest.
But the truth never stopped Friedman before, and this time is no different. He is out there pushing garbage that has no relation to reality. No editor at the Times knows enough about the subject to point out to this fool that he is totally wrong. Instead, this trash gets published in the Times and read by countless folks who think that if something appears in the Times, it must be right. How many Democrats in Congress will read Friedman's column and decide that he must be right? Sadly, it is not a low number.
UPDATE: I happened to go back to the Friedman article and to look at the many comments from readers. They confirm my point above. The comments are filled with discussion of the "dangers" of natural gas. That's right, the same natural gas that has been used in American homes for over a century is now suddenly "dangerous" and "dirty". Soon we may hear that electricity is problematic.
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