This October Residents of Franklin County will be thrilled and excited to learn that they there will be “Level 2″ charging stations easily accessible to them at Bates College, the City of Auburn, and the town of Skowhegan
I haven’t actually met a single man, woman, or child who showed signs of excitement or thrills. These are adjectives invoked by town managers and other public figures quoted in the newspapers. Skepticism is allowed to readers, but I’d be slack if I didn’t pass these sentiments along. It seems that Governor Mills and her supporters are thrilled and/or excited because there will 47 new public-use charging stations across Maine. This is another step forward, they claim, for our new governor’s ongoing work with the Efficiency Maine Trust to expand the use of EVs, save Maine people money on fuel costs, and reduce the amount of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere. “Too many Maine people are at the mercy of the gas pump and its prices. It is time to break the stranglehold that fossil fuel companies have over our wallets and put that money back into the pockets of Maine people,” Governor Mills explains. “By expanding the network of charging stations, our state is making electric vehicles a reality for more people, helping them save money on fuel costs, and protecting our environment from harmful carbon emissions…” Summing up, this project has three goals: 1) to strengthen Maine’s economy by reducing the amount of money Maine drivers are forced to spend on fossil fuels for their vehicles; 2) to fight climate change by reducing the amount of CO2 emitted into the air by vehicles; and 3) to promote tourism from neighboring provinces and states. Take these jubilant claims at face value and we will all experience feelings or contentment and optimism. Considering them with the skepticism that the wary voter customarily treats politicians’ excited announcements and we begin to feel an itch for a few relevant details
Exactly how much money, we ask, are we going to save, and how much money will we pay in taxes to support these new facilities? How many fossil fuel companies is Gov. Mills going to help drive into bankruptcy and extinction? How many dollars will we save if we buy electricity in place of gasoline? Who is going to receive the dollars we are to going to divert from those vile fossil fuel companies? How is this electric energy going to be generated? How many tons of CO2 can be expect to reduce with this electrification program? According to my own “back of the envelope calculations (made without an envelope) we may hope to reduce emissions by 0.0003%. This is not a reliable calculation but it’s better than no numbers at all. Is it even possible to calculate how many additional tourists will Maine lure across its borders with these charging stations? More to the point, how will Maine’s environment improve if the state adds a couple million more visitors?
We can agree, in fairness, that there’s no way to arrive at accurate statistics in response to most of these questions. But that is not so much an argument against asking the question as it is an objection to making claims that cannot be verified. Now let’s look at some official statistics which are available: 1) Typical charge times for a full battery range from 20 minutes to an hour; and 2) the charging station can deliver up to “250 miles of range per hour.” Maine’s citizens and visitors will have to make their own calculations about how long they are prepared to spend powering up, as opposed to gassing up, and how often they wish to do it. Readers who make their own calculations will, unlike the governor and her supporters, have valid numbers which they alone are able to compile.
Janet Mills majored in French Literature as an undergraduate and when she moved on to law school she took no climatology courses. I know this because I’ve never heard of a law school curriculum that offered a climatology course. This suggests that she knows no more of the climatology science than I. She may actually know a tiny bit more since my academic history of scientific study is an unbroken record of disgrace. The solution to my ignorance was provided by advice from a Nobel laureate. Milton Friedman recommended a rule of thumb for laymen untrained in economics, too busy to go back to grad school to learn about the competing economic theories, but anxious to form a sensible opinion. Judge by the record of successful prediction was his rule and I’ve adapted it evaluating the debate about the impending Climate Doom.
Here are some examples. In 1967 Stanford’s Prof. Paul Ehrlich published “The Population Bomb,” predicting worldwide famine as well as other major social disaster in the 1970s and 1980s due to overpopulation. He advocated immediate action to limit population growth. The book sold very well. No significant action was taken. No disaster happened. Ehrlich is still among us. Is till proud of his book. He has a new list of disasters and an expanded list of urgent measures. Odd coincidence; they include all the “solutions” proposed by far-far-far left advocates and activists for an anti-capitalist revolution
In 1971 a top NASA scientist predicted an “ice age” by 2021. Too late to do anything about that, but still plenty of time to buy some earmuffs.
In 1988 it was predicted that the Maldives would be submerged in the in the Indian Ocean by 2018. The Maldives Real Estate Investment Corporation (MREIC) was launched in 2007 “to exploit the growing real estate market.” Its website is http://www.mreic.com.mv. I offer no investment advice, but readers may wish to check it out.
In 2008 Al Gore assured us that the Arctic would be free of ice by 2013. It’s now 2019 (in case you’ve forgotten). I’ve heard that there’s still plenty of ice up there. The list of failed predictions goes on and on, one skeptic compiled forty examples. The list of accurate predictions? Can’t help you there. If a reader has a list, I invite him to send it along for me to publish.
So why has Janet Mills made such whoop-de-doo about taking control of the planet’s climate? The simplest answer is that take charge of the climate means taking effective control of the whole national economy, even of our society in toto. Politicians have an appetite for power. That’s the simple answer, perhaps too simple. It is an indisputable fact that the heading off Climate Disaster is an exciting political project on the far-left and Janet must please the far-left if her political career is to prosper. I’m guessing that her support for the CMP corridor has stirred up a lot of hostility in the far-far-left so she has a strong incentive to neutralize it with climate control activism. This, by the way, is not the same as saying she doesn’t share some of the left’s beliefs, I believe she does. It’s only a question of emphasis.
There’s another factor we might consider. Janet is constitutionally competitive and she has suddenly found herself in rivalry with a sixteen-year old. That must rankle. Ours was the only governor invited to address the United Nations and no one outside Maine even noticed. Greta Thunberg completely obscured Janet’s performance. Greta’s furious expression alone got more attention than Janet’s speech altogether. She looked like a petulant teeny-bopper to me, but a lot of people saw the face of a Viking climate warrior. Last Friday Michael Darby, a scientific associate at London’s Natural History Museum rubbed salt in Janet’s wound by naming a beetle “Nelloptodes gretae” in honor of the brat. Speaking for myself, I’d get no kick from getting a wingless, eyeless, one-inch long beetle named Whichtodes fraryae in my honor. But I’m unusually humble, maybe the humblest man in the State of Maine, so I can’t speak for Janet. She may feel very differently.
John Frary of Farmington, the GOP candidate for U.S. Congress in 2008, is a retired history professor, an emeritus Board Member of Maine Taxpayers United, a Maine Citizen’s Coalition Board member, and publisher of FraryHomeCompanion.com. He can be reached at jfrary8070@aol.com
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