Energy

America's Energy Scam a Deliberate Exploitation of Humanity

Ronald Stein — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 20:28:58 -0400

America is aggressively pursuing “green” electricity and actively phasing out crude oil to reduce emissions generated in America by deliberately increasing worldwide exploitations of humanity, environmental degradation, and increased emissions.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, President Joe Biden, and world leaders are not cognizant enough to know that wind turbines and solar panels only generate occasional electricity and cannot manufacture tires, cable insulation, asphalt, medicines, and the more than 6,000 productsnow made from the petrochemical derivatives manufactured from crude oil.

Without a replacement for the petrochemical derivatives manufactured from crude oil, phasing out oil would also phase out the medical, military, transportation, communications, and electrical power industries, none of which existed before the 1800s.

Climate change may impact millions, but without fossil fuels and the infrastructures and products we have today that did not exist before the 1800s, we may lose billions from diseases, malnutrition, and weather-related deaths.

Eradicating the world of crude oil usage would ground the 20,000 commercial aircraft, and more than 50,000 military aircraft worldwide, leave the 50,000 merchant ships tied up at docks, and discontinue the military and space programs! Without a backup plan to replace crude oil, the 8 billion on this planet will face the greatest threat to humanity without jets, merchant ships, and space programs.

America’s climate policies being introduced are particularly harmful to developing countries. America is probably the most environmentally controlled country in the world, but by deliberately relying on poorer developing countries for our fuels and products, we are “leaking” to other countries:

Leakage of emissions to countries with minuscule environmental laws.
Leakage of the exploitations of people with yellow, brown, and black skin to counties with minuscule labor laws.r
Leakage of environmental degradation to landscapes in developing countries where there are minuscule environmental laws.

In the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis in 1977, the Department of Energy was established to lessen our dependence on foreign oil, but today, with its 14,000 employees and a 48 billion dollar budget, the D.O.E. continues to remain dead silent and has allowed California, the fourth-largest economy in the world to increase imported crude oil from 5 percent in 1992 to almost 60 percent today of total consumption.

Read the rest of this piece at America Out Loud.

Ronald Stein is an engineer, senior policy advisor on energy literacy for the Heartland Institute and CFACT, and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book "Clean Energy Exploitations."

Photo: courtesy America Out Loud.

The Myth of America's Decline

Joel Kotkin — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 20:28:58 -0500

North America may suffer from some of the world’s poorest political leadership. Yet it seems destined to remain the wealthiest, most dominant place on Earth.

This may come as a surprise to many. After all, generations of pundits have insisted that the future will be forged elsewhere – Europe for some, Japan for others and, more recently, China. But none have the resources, the dynamic population and innovative acumen of North Americans.

Once taken for granted, China’s claim to the future is looking especially wobbly. In 2018, Chinese foreign ministry official Zhao Lijian described efforts to slow China’s dominion as being ‘as stupid as Don Quixote versus the windmills’. He added that ‘China’s win is unstoppable’. Today, China’s triumph looks far from inevitable. Projections that China could surpass the US in terms of aggregate economic output as soon as 2028 are being readjusted to 2036. Some now believe it won’t happen at all.

As for Japan or the EU, neither are likely to ever surpass the US. Each has experienced consistently slower growth. According to International Monetary Fund data, the eurozone economy grew about six per cent over the past 15 years, compared with growth of 82 per cent for the US during the same period. Europe’s once formidable industrial base has eroded in large part due to the ever rising burden of regulation. Germany’s economy, the most powerful economy in the EU, is barely the size of that of California.

Nothing better reflects the tectonic shift in global economic power than investment flows. Between 2012 and 2022, US inbound foreign investment swelled by nearly $100 billion in adjusted dollars, well above the level of investment into China. Levels of inbound investment into the EU and the UK have actually fallen during the same period.

Indeed, investment in China dropped from more than $300 billion in 2021 to a 30-year low of less than $50 billion in 2023. Other parts of Asia are headed West. Last year, Taiwan-based TSMC, the world’s leading semiconductor foundry, decided to build a $12 billion new plant in Arizona. Samsung, a huge Korean chipmaker, is also shopping for sites for a $17 billion plant in the US.

The US is also the world’s preeminent military power. Although somewhat degraded from its Reagan-era strength, and challenged increasingly by China’s expansion, the US military remains the dominant force on Earth. The US spends roughly 3.5 per cent of GDP in defence and has a military budget roughly five times that for the combined militaries of the UK, France and Germany. Despite some recent increases, most European countries fail to spend even two per cent of GDP on defence. They have, until now, depended largely on the US to keep the Ukrainian cause alive. In recent months, European countries have once again been asking the US to protect what are really their own critical shipping lanes in the Red Sea.

Why America leads the way

The resurgence of North America clearly does not stem from either the leadership of doddering US president Joe Biden, who seems barely in control of his own White House, or his rival, the clearly demented Donald Trump. Nor has Canada’s uber-woke prime minister, Justin Trudeau, been of any help. Rather, the key lies in three factors: natural resources, technological dominance and demographic vitality.

Overall, natural resources account for more than half of all Canada’s exports and roughly one-quarter of those of the US. Together the US and Canada produce roughly twice as much oil as either Russia or Saudi Arabia. Fossil fuels, the demon rum of the green catastrophists, are not going away, even in Europe.

Read the rest of this piece at Spiked.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Photo: Nikolas Zane, via Flickr, under CC 2.0 License.

Oil Exporting and Poorer Countries Have Lower Costs for Gasoline

Ronald Stein — Wed, 06 Mar 2024 20:28:58 -0500

The political class obsession in the wealthy countries to lower emissions with subsidizing expensive and utterly unreliable breezes and sunshine to generate electricity, and divesting in fossil fuels, have already put the cost of electrical power and fuel out of the reach of the poorest in the developed first world countries.

The healthy and wealthy countries of the United States of America, Germany, the UK, and Australia representing 6 percent of the world’s population (505 million vs 7.8 billion) could literally shut down, and cease to exist, and the opposite of what you have been told and believe will take place. Emissions will be exploding from those poorer developing countries.

Simply put, in these healthy and wealthy countries, every person, animal, or anything that causes emissions to harmfully rise could vanish off the face of the earth; or even die off, and global emissions will still explode in the coming years and decades ahead over the population and economic growth of China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Vietnam, and Africa.

Richer countries now have higher gasoline prices, while poorer countries and countries that produce and export oil have lower cost for fuels. A review of global petroleum gasoline prices per gallon in U.S. dollars shows the international intelligence and trends of gasoline prices of the wealthy countries that have opted to go “green” at any cost, compared with poorer countries and countries that produce and export oil.

A sampling of richer countries that have higher prices for gasoline per gallon that have gone “green” and import crude oil to meet the demands of their country:

UK $8.78 per gallon
Germany 7.27
Australia 5.48
USA 5.01

While gasoline nationwide is at or near all-time highs, California gasoline prices tends to be more than a dollar higher than the USA national average due to excessive State taxes and costly environmental compliance programs, which are dumped onto the posted pricing at the pumps.

When we look outside the few wealthy countries, we see that at least 80 percent of humanity, or more than six billion in this world are living on less than $10 a day, and billions living with little to no access to electricity, politicians are pursuing the most expensive ways to generate intermittent electricity. Energy poverty is among the most crippling but least talked-about crises of the 21^st century. We should not take energy for granted. Expensive electricity and fuels are being borne by those that can least afford living in “energy poverty.”

Read the rest of this piece at CFACT.org.

Ron Stein is an engineer who, drawing upon 25 years of project management and business development experience, launched PTS Advance in 1995. He is an author, engineer, and energy expert who writes frequently on issues of energy and economics.

Photo: Courtesy CFACT.

Out of Transmission Revisited

Robert Bryce — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 20:28:58 -0500

The “energy transition” depends on massive expansions of our high-voltage transmission grid. But capacity additions are falling, and per-mile costs and utility product costs are soaring.

Proponents of the much-hyped energy transition frequently claim that rapid decarbonization of the electricity sector can only be achieved with huge expansions of America’s high-voltage transmission grid. We are told those expansions, totaling tens of thousands of miles of new capacity, must be completed in the next decade or two.

Once this “grid modernization” has been completed, the new grid will deliver juice from vast areas of rural America that have been paved with solar panels and wind turbines to consumers living in distant cities. In doing so, this new grid will deliver us to the Valhalla of “a net-zero economy with high electrification of transport, industry, and buildings by midcentury,” in which, presumably, everyone is using “clean” energy that’s too cheap to meter.

But there’s a terawatt-size disconnect between the rhetoric and the reality. America isn’t building anything close to the amount of high-voltage transmission capacity that the wind promoters, solar advocates, and spreadsheet jockeys claim is needed. Indeed, the latest numbers from Atlanta-based C Three Group show that the amount of new high-voltage transmission (230kV and above) built annually in the United States is flat or declining. Furthermore, the cost of building new high-voltage capacity and the components needed to expand the electric grid is skyrocketing. Meanwhile, all across rural America, transmission projects are facing fierce resistance from local communities and some Native American tribes. Let’s take a look.

In 2023, the U.S. added about 1,251 miles of new high-voltage capacity. That’s significantly below the average number of miles added to the U.S. power grid over the past two decades. According to C Three, which has the best information on transmission trends in the U.S., about 1,677 miles of new high-voltage capacity was added annually to the grid between 2008 and 2023.

As seen in the graphic above, new capacity additions peaked in 2013, when Texas completed the CREZ lines, a system of HV lines spanning some 3,600 miles. That $7 billion project is significant because the CREZ lines were all built intrastate. That is, they didn’t cross any state boundaries, which made the permitting process much easier. In addition, Texas has very little federal land and relatively few state parks.

Costs are also soaring. Before diving into those numbers, reviewing the hype is essential. Last February, in the original “Out Of Transmission” published in these pages, I explained that billionaire investor John Doerr, who has funded a “sustainability” school at Stanford University and is giving hundreds of millions of dollars to climate activist groups, claims we need enormous expansions of the grid to accommodate more wind and solar projects.

Read the rest of this piece at Robert Bryce Substack.

Robert Bryce is a Texas-based author, journalist, film producer, and podcaster. His articles have appeared in a myriad of publications including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Forbes, Time, Austin Chronicle, and Sydney Morning Herald.

Photo: transmission lines out, courtesy Robert Bryce Substack.

South Africa's Coal Question

Hügo Krüger — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 20:28:58 -0500

“With coal almost any feat is possible or easy; without it we are thrown back into the laborious poverty of early times.” (The Coal Question William Stanley Jevons, 1865).

Is this quote still valid, almost 160 years later?

Coal is globally, and certainly for South Africa, the most important source of power. The commodity is required for almost every product and structure that we see around us and use every single day, either directly or indirectly. There is virtually no machine, cement, steel, aluminum, building, car, computer, iPhone, or even a solar panel or windmill that can be created without coal.

In South Africa, the warnings of many engineers, economists and other experts within the energy sector that South Africa won’t easily walk away from coal has already played itself out in the political scene in 2023 when the Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, Gwede Mantashe, a former coal miner, called the just energy transition that advocated for a rapid transition towards “renewable” energy only, “a foreign concept”. In response, the ANC led government, presumably under the pressure of international investors and the media, created a new portfolio titled Minister of Electricity. The new Minister Ramakgopa initially recommitted to the “green” transition, but shortly after the closure of the Komati Coal Power Station, he also started speaking out against “the end of coal”. The blowback was felt throughout the corridors of power to the extent that even the Presidential Climate Commission admitted that “little attempt had been made to consult with workers”.

The Democratic Alliance, the official opposition who is South Africa’s de facto green party, did not fare better. Despite having an official position “against coal”, the DA mayor of Pretoria, Mr. Cilliers Brink’s spokesperson, Sipho Stuurman, recently announced that the city intends on bringing back the 300 MW Rooiwal Coal Power Station for at least 10 years. Brink’s revelation came only a few months after the announcement of his 2050 Net Zero Strategy that presumably foresees “the end of coal”.

Even though critics have accused the ANC leadership of “fake news”, and exaggerating the situation, it’s worth reflecting why it is so difficult for South Africa to simply “walk away from coal”. Interestingly, as South Africa’s electrical utility Eskom faces challenges to keep the lights on, a pragmatic energy realism has emerged that does not fall on traditional political party lines.

Supporting coal is often viewed as a heretical form of “denial” of climatic changes and an “ignorance” of the “toxic” poisons spewing from coal plants. However, the reality is that (a) modern coal is not what it used to be (b) coal releases FEWER greenhouse gas emissions than LNG imports, over the entire supply chain and (c) economic trade-offs and not ideological purism should be what drives the decision making in developing nations such as South Africa.

In a global context, coal holds significant value. This fuel, derived from plants that have existed for millions of years, continues to maintain its status as the foremost source of electricity and the second most crucial source of primary energy, accounting for approximately 36% and 25%, respectively, in the year 2023. As the graph below shows, its absolute volumes continue to set new records almost every year, despite a slight reduction in the global share of coal.

Read the rest of this piece at Hügo's Newsletter.

Hügo Krüger is a South African born Structural/Nuclear Engineer, writer and YouTube podcaster, commentating on topics relating to Energy and Geopolitical Matters, Hügo is married to an Iranian born Mathematician and Artist; the couple resides in Paris.

Figure: Worldwide electricity production by source; Schernikau based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy and Global Electricity Review.

"Electrify Everything" Slammed Again By Ninth Circuit

Robert Bryce — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 20:28:58 -0500

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has cranked up the heat on the “electrify everything” foolishness.

Last month, the Ninth Circuit denied the city of Berkeley's petition to re-hear its case after the city’s ban on natural gas use in homes and businesses was ruled illegal last April. The January 2 ruling has national implications and is an enormous loss for the electrify everything movement, the lavishly funded campaign that seeks to ban natural gas stoves, water heaters, and other gas-fired appliances in the name of climate change.

Before I delve into the court ruling, it’s essential to understand the danger to our energy security posed by the electrify everything effort and the dark money groups that are pushing it.

As I have reported here, the electrify everything movement could result in enormous reductions in the affordability, reliability, and resilience of our electric grid. The campaigners want to add massive amounts of new load onto an energy network that is already cracking under existing demand. Indeed, the electrify everything jihadis are pushing for the electrification of heating, transportation, and industry at the very same time that numerous policymakers and regulators are warning about the declining reliability of the power grid.

To cite two recent examples, last May, members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission delivered stark warnings to the members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The agency’s acting chairman, Willie Phillips, told the senators, “We face unprecedented challenges to the reliability of our nation’s electric system.” FERC Commissioner Mark Christie echoed Phillips’ warning, saying the U.S. electric grid is “heading for a very catastrophic situation in terms of reliability.” His colleague, Commissioner James Danly, averred that there is a “looming reliability crisis in our electricity markets.”

Last August, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation named “changing resource mix” as a top reliability risk facing the electric grid. And for the first time, it named climate policy as one of the most significant risk factors. It said, “policy decisions can significantly affect the reliability and resilience of the [bulk power system]. Decarbonization, decentralization, and electrification have been active policy areas. Implementation of policies in these areas is accelerating, and, with changes in the resource mix, extreme weather events, and physical and cyber security challenges, reliability implications are emerging.” (Emphasis added.)

Read the rest of this piece at Robert Bryce Substack.

Photo: Fried rice being prepared over a gas flame, Tokyo, March 4, 2023. Photo by author.

Biden's War on Fossil Fuels is Hurting America

Joel Kotkin — Sun, 04 Feb 2024 20:28:58 -0500

When Joe Biden assumed office in 2021, the progressive press hoped, as the LA Times crowed, that he would “turn America into California again”. To the great loss of America, the West and, of course, Californians, he is living up to this credo in spectacular fashion.

California’s last two large oil producers, ExxonMobil and Chevron, this week announced a combined $5 billion in write-offs of their assets in the state.

The Golden State once boasted a giant fossil fuel industry, but climate hysteria has been the state religion for almost two decades. Not long ago, California was home to a host of top 10 energy firms — in 1970 ARCO, Getty Oil, Union Oil, Oxy and Chevron constituted the five largest industrial companies in the state. Now only Chevron, which has been reducing its headcount in northern California and is clearly shifting its emphasis to Texas, remains.

This predicament can’t be blamed on California running out of oil and gas; some estimates of the state’s oil and gas reserves are considerably larger than those of Texas. Monterey shale, located under the state’s economically struggling midsection, holds almost two-thirds of the nation’s total supply of shale oil. Tapping this source, one USC study notes, could bring as many as 500,000 new jobs to the state in a matter of years.

But such palatable returns do not mean much to the state’s powerful environmental lobby. California regulations have managed to cut production by more than half in less than 30 years. In the Golden State, this ban threatens to eliminate an industry that, according to a 2019 report from the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation, amounted to 152,000 direct jobs, as well as an additional 213,000 related jobs. Nearly half those jobs comprise black, Asian, or Latino workers.

California reflects the kind of mindset that has captured the Biden administration. Just two years ago the bond firm Pimco predicted that America was about to seize “energy dominance”. But White House officials are so soaked in green ideology that they have abandoned the basic logic of geopolitics, according to which energy is power. Take Biden’s decision to halt permitting new LNG ports as the latest example. The likely result won’t be so great for the planet, given that cutting off natural gas may accelerate the use of far dirtier coal, which is already happening in energy-starved Germany. The real long-term winners will not be Gaia but instead countries such as Russia, Iran and Qatar — the new natural gas hegemons.

Nor is this move a political winner. Most Americans favour, by a wide margin, the “drill baby drill” approach over Net Zero and the energy austerity being pushed by jet-setting oligarchs. One recent poll of swing state voters suggests that only 3% consider climate a key issue, far behind concerns such as the economy, crime, and immigration.

Read the rest of this piece at UnHerd.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Executive Director for Urban Reform Institute. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Photo: Screenshot from White House video, via YouTube.

Juice: Power, Politics & The Grid - Video Series

Robert Bryce — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 20:28:58 -0500

After finishing our first documentary in 2019, I told myself I was done making films. The process of making documentaries takes too long, costs too much, and involves too much friction, particularly when it comes to distribution.

But in February 2021, Lorin and I lost power at our home here in Austin for 48 hours. My colleague, Tyson Culver, who directed our first film, Juice: How Electricity Explains The World, also lost power. That blackout and the fact that the ERCOT grid nearly collapsed, convinced us that we had to do another film. And now, three years later, we accomplished what we set out to do. Our five-part docuseries, Juice: Power, Politics & The Grid, is now available for free on YouTube.

Rather than make a feature-length film, we decided to make this content as user-friendly as possible. That’s why we broke it into five episodes, each lasting about 20 minutes.

The series features 34 interviews that we shot in Texas, Japan, Vermont, Oklahoma, Colorado, California, Washington D.C., Illinois, Egypt, and England. Our cast of characters includes many of the world’s top thought leaders on energy, including political scientist Roger Pielke Jr., Grid Brief editor Emmet Penney, civil rights leader Jennifer Hernandez, author Michael Shellenberger, Canadian nuclear activist Chris Keefer, author Meredith Angwin, former IEA director Nobuo Tanaka, World Nuclear Association director Sama Bilbao, Campaign for a Green Nuclear Deal founder Madi Hilly, and many others.

I’m super proud of Episode 3, which features the Osage tribe’s battle with Enel over a wind project the company built by violating the tribe’s sovereignty. I have been reporting on this story for more than four years. I was thrilled last month when a federal court judge in Tulsa ordered Enel to remove all 84 of the turbines it built in Osage County. As I reported here on December 23, it’s a landmark ruling and an enormous embarrassment for Big Wind and Enel, a company that has endlessly touted its “green” credentials.

The Osage story has particular resonance for me. I have deep roots in Oklahoma. My great uncle, Ernie Rapp, was born in Fairfax in 1909 and was a member of the Osage tribe. Although he never discussed it with us, he witnessed the Reign of Terror in the 1920s, during which dozens of Osage tribal members were killed for their oil wealth. Ernie’s daughter (my cousin, Nora) owns an Osage headright.

Our goal with this project is not to make a bunch of money. That’s why we are making the docuseries free. Our goal is to change the conversation. We want to help alert people and policymakers about the dangers facing our electric grid and the importance of what Chris Keefer calls our “civilizational life support system.” Our goal is to help people understand how our grid is being fragilized and why we need fission to fix it.

You can help us by sharing these episodes with your friends, family, and colleagues. Our goal is to get millions of views. You can help by subscribing to our YouTube channel. You can follow us on Twitter and share our content by referring people to our trailer and our website, juicetheseries.com.

Read the rest of this piece and view the videos at Robert Bryce Substack.

Photo: screenshot from the video series.

Globalists are Using Green Energy to Destroy Our Way of Life

Ronald Stein — Mon, 29 Jan 2024 20:28:58 -0500

In 10 years before the proverbial 2035 date when many mandated transitions to “green electricity” occur to reduce or eliminate the usage of fossil fuels, most of today’s elected officials, policy advisers, and policymakers are:

NOT trained in engineering.
Reside in wealthy countries.
Unaware of the engineering reality that without the petrochemicals manufactured from crude oil, those 6,000 products that entered society after the 1800s start to disappear, the same products that have been the basis of the world populating over the last 200 years, after the discovery of crude oil, from 1 to 8 billion.
Unwilling to engage in conversations about where and how the world will replace the fossil fuels that are now providing the basis of all the “PRODUCTS” in society that did not exist before the 1800s.

Petrochemicals manufactured from crude oil… (1) Are key ingredients in manufacturing wind turbine blades and solar panels. (2) Are widely used in healthcare as feedstock for pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, and plastic medical supplies. (3) These are the key ingredients for construction materials, from décor to kitchen necessities. (4) The basis of tires and asphalt used in transportation infrastructures. (5) Also provide the fuels to move the heavy-weight and long-range needs of jets, moving people and products, merchant ships for global trade flows, and military and space programs.

Those policymakers only focus on “just weather” dependent electricity generated from wind turbines and solar panels, i.e., “green electricity” that only exists because of government subsidies. They fail to understand that it’s the PRODUCTS that run this world, not just electricity. They also fail to comprehend that wind turbines and solar panels CANNOT make any products needed to support humanity.

Not being able to comprehend simple engineering principles, they fail to understand that all the components needed to make wind turbines and solar panels are made from petrochemicals manufactured from crude oil, the same crude oil that they want to rid the world of!

By 2035, most of today’s elected government officials and policymakers will be termed out of office and either be retired or deceased, leaving their policies for today’s teenagers and grade school kids to pay for the implementation of those dictates from today’s “leaders” in wealthy country dictates!

The other 90+ percent of the world’s developing countries continue with unabated emissions for their dismal economies!

Today’s policy advisers, policymakers, and the news media, also primarily NOT trained in engineering, constantly refer to all climate changes being caused by humanity, but they never identify where most of that emission-generating humanity is located!

Read the rest of this piece at America Out Loud.

Ronald Stein is an engineer, senior policy advisor on energy literacy for CFACT, and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book "Clean Energy Exploitations."

Elites Want to Ban Gasoline Cars, Gas Stoves

Randal OToole — Thu, 25 Jan 2024 20:28:58 -0500

Urban elites are far more likely than other Americans to oppose gasoline powered cars, SUVs of all types, and gas stoves, according to a survey released last week by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. The survey defined “elites” as people who have post-graduate degrees, live in households that earn more than $150,000 a year, and live in zip codes with densities of more than 10,000 people per square mile, which is about four times the average urban density in the U.S.

The cities of Boston, Chicago, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco all average more than 10,000 people per square mile.

Conducted by Scott Rasmussen, the survey found that 72 percent of these elites (and 81 percent of Ivy League elites) favored banning gasoline-powered cars, compared with 24 percent of Americans as a whole. Further, 58 percent of elites favored banning SUVs compared with 16 percent of Americans and 66 percent of Ivy League elites, while 69 percent of elites (and 80 percent of Ivy League elites) favored banning gas stoves compared with 25 percent of all Americans.

The survey estimates that about 1 percent of Americans fall into its definition of “elites” (and half of those were Ivy Leaguers), but this is a very different 1 percent than the 1 percent who earn the highest incomes. About 20 percent of Americans live in households that earn $150,000 or more a year, but most of those either live in low-density neighborhoods or don’t have post-graduate degrees.

What is it about dense cities that causes people to lose empathy for anyone else? I’ve noted before that people who live in suburbs or rural areas love their lives but don’t think that anyone else should live that way if they don’t want to. However, many people who live in dense cities think their lifestyle is so wonderful that everyone else should be forced to live that way as well.

The wording of one question gives a hint of what some of these people are thinking. Asked whether non-essential air travel should be banned, 55 percent of elites and 70 percent of Ivy Leaguers agreed compared with 22 percent of all Americans. Of course, no one thinks that their own air travel is “non-essential,” so they all imagine that others will be most likely to have to give up their travel. In the same way, it is likely that many of these elites already have gas stoves and/or SUVs and so won’t mind if new ones are banned.

The elites also tend to think that Americans have “too much individual freedom.” When asked this question, 47 percent of them agreed (as did 55 percent of Ivy Leaguers) but only 16 percent of Americans as a whole thought we have too much freedom. In contrast, 57 percent of Americans think we suffer from too much government control compared with just 21 percent of the elites and 15 percent of Ivy Leaguers. Of course, no one thinks that they themselves should be controlled; only others.

Read the rest of this piece at The Antiplanner.

Randal O'Toole, the Antiplanner, is a policy analyst with nearly 50 years of experience reviewing transportation and land-use plans and the author of The Best-Laid Plans: How Government Planning Harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook, and Your Future.

Photo: Mai-Linh Doan via Wikimedia under CC 2.0 License.