On June 6, US president Joe Biden invoked the Defense Production Act “to accelerate domestic manufacturing of clean energy.” That goal sounds laudable and, for those of us who don’t own stock in oil or coal companies, probably uncontroversial. But once we start focusing on the details, Biden’s order turns out to be just another crony capitalist boondoggle that’s more likely to increase prices and slow adoption than the other way around.

Let’s start with the situation as it is, according to the Department of Energy’s press release:

“Demand for clean energy technologies such as solar panels, heat pumps, and electrolyzers for hydrogen has increased significantly as the costs of these technologies have plummeted over the last decade.”

In other words, “things are GREAT! Everyone’s adopting these new technologies and it’s getting cheaper and cheaper to do so!”

With the situation well in hand, what’s the purpose of Biden’s order?

Here’s the first clue: “Unless the U.S. expands new manufacturing, processing, and installation capacity, we will be forced to continue to rely on clean energy imports …”

And here’s the second:

“DPA authority, with the necessary funding appropriated by Congress, will allow the federal government to invest in companies that can build clean energy facilities, expand clean energy manufacturing, process clean energy components, and install clean energy technologies for consumers.”

The goal of the order isn’t to “drive down energy costs for American consumers.”

It’s to artificially advantage American companies over those conniving foreigners who can profitably sell solar panels, heat pumps, etc. to American consumers at lower prices than American manufacturers can.

It’s central planning’s age-old black box: Your tax dollars are fed into one end; higher prices for the things you want and need come out the other.

If this idea doesn’t sound like a win for you, that’s because it isn’t.

All the DoE blather about “supply chain vulnerabilities,” “job opportunities,” “climate change,” and “national security” is just cover for a standard issue corporate welfare program.

You’ll pay more to convert your home to rooftop solar or replace your old gas furnace with a heat pump, and whichever American companies hire the most effective lobbyists will pocket the difference.

If Biden was serious about spurring adoption of clean energy, he’d take a meat ax to tariffs and restrictions on importing the relevant goods. Instead, he’s just writing welfare checks to Big Business and handing you a “Green” Raw Deal.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Over the last few years, the world’s transition from powering our cars with gas-burning internal combustion engines to zipping along on battery power has accelerated faster than the Tesla Model S Plaid, which can supposedly got from zero to sixty miles per hour in less than two seconds.

Setting aside my visceral love for the old muscle cars I grew up around, I wholeheartedly support that transition. My own “car” happens to be an electric bicycle (it used to be a regular bicycle, but knee problems made motorization attractive), and I hope that the next family vehicle, or the one after that, will be electric too.

That said, the urge to get society completely electrified and off of fossil fuels suffers from both propaganda oversell and from practical problems.

The big selling point for electrification has always been “emissions reduction.” Whether you accept mainstream climate theory or not, pouring less smog out of tailpipes and into the atmosphere seems like a good idea.

But electrifying cars does not, as such, solve that problem. It matters where the electricity comes from. Running a coal-fired power plant to charge your electric car doesn’t reduce overall pollution. It just moves that pollution off of city streets (which is nice) and into the air around the power plant (which doesn’t change the overall equation).

Lately, spiking gas prices due to US/EU sanctions over Russia’s war on Ukraine have come into vogue as reason to electrify. But again: Unless that electricity is produced using wind, solar, or nuclear, it still entails use of fossil fuels and the attendant pollution.

If electric makes sense for your situation, go electric. But don’t lie to yourself about how much good you’re doing the environment by transitioning. It’s a holistic problem and electric cars are, at best, only part of the solution.

In addition, technology and infrastructure lag still make electrification a problem for those who need to travel long distances in a timely manner.

Rachel Wolfe recently chronicled an all-electric round trip between New Orleans and Chicago for the Wall Street Journal. The headline sums it up nicely: “I Rented an Electric Car for a Four-Day Road Trip. I Spent More Time Charging It Than I Did Sleeping.”

Even assuming sufficient charging stations along your route (an infrastructure problem), charging your car still burns a lot of time (a technology problem). Even “fast charge” facilities take much longer than a gas fill-up.

Will these problems be solved? Almost certainly. The market for electric cars continues to grow, so the market for more and faster charging options will too.  We’ll get there. But we’re not there yet.

Unfortunately, the urge to “nudge” us in that direction with government subsidies and spending programs will almost certainly take us down various paths that produce worse rather than better outcomes.

Instead of subsidizing electric cars, governments should stop subsidizing fossil fuels. Free markets will always solve these kinds of problems faster, better, and with fewer unintended consequences than government propaganda and force.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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The clamor for “gun control” never goes away in American politics. It occasionally simmers down to a dull roar, but every mass shooting recharges the bullhorn batteries.

Thus, in the wake of the recent atrocities in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas,  a Morning Consult / Politico Poll poll says that 56% of Americans consider it “a top priority” or “an important, but lower priority” for Congress to pass legislation “placing additional restrictions on gun ownership,” with only 23% saying that “shouldn’t be done.”

To put it a different way, 56% of Americans resemble the proverbial drunk looking for his car keys under a streetlight, rather than a block away where he lost them, because “the light is better here.”

Let’s set aside the stock arguments over whether the right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental human right (it is), whether that right is guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the US Constitution (it is), etc., and focus on the question of whether, if passed, such legislation would solve the problem of mass shootings.

The answer: It wouldn’t.

First of all, mass shooters are criminals. They don’t care about your laws. They operate outside those laws.  Including, as you may have noticed, the “Gun Free School Zones Act,” sponsored by then-US-Senator Joe Biden back in the 1990s. If they want guns, they’ll get guns. If they decide to try to use those guns to kill innocents, they won’t consult the statutes before acting.

Secondly, such legislation could not be meaningfully implemented without a bloodbath the likes of which the US hasn’t seen since 1865.

While estimates vary, at the conservative end (pun not intended) more than 100 million Americans own more than 400 million guns.

For many if not most of those guns and gun owners, the response to “gun control” legislation will always be “no.”

You can’t have them.

If you’re not stupid, you won’t try to take them.

If you do try to take them, go long on the stocks of companies that provide burial, cremation, and funeral services first, because they’re going to make bank. If even 1% of those gun owners resist your edict, it’s going to get very, very ugly.

You don’t have to like it. That’s how it is whether you like it or not.

Even if you don’t agree that the right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental right.

Even if you don’t agree that the Second Amendment means what it says.

Even if you want it really, really, really badly.

What’s the solution to mass murder? I don’t know. I wish I did.

But I do know to look for my car keys where I lost them, instead of wherever the light happens to seem better.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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