It is possible that Mr. Tillerson is simply trying to get the best he can out of bad situation. Let me paraphrase what he says here to illustrate what I think he means:

Ignorant voters in the United States have just empowered a bunch of even more ignorant, but very arrogant, do-gooders who believe that they know how to micro-manage entire economies. Given the chance, these do-gooders will attempt to specify all uses of energy right down to what sort of light bulbs the citizens may use (we know this because the do-gooders have already taken this particular step).

Given that these do-gooders are now in possession of virtually all the levers of government, the best we can possibly hope for is that we can persuade them to confine their meddling to raising the price of energy, while permitting individual actors in the economy to make the actual choices of which measures to take in what order so as to maximize efficiency in the face of the higher price.

Our alternative is to watch the do-gooders pour perfectly good money — and a lot of it — into flower-powered cars and rubber made from plants other than rubber trees.

He might be right.

“Why don’t you just do it already?”

The simple answer is, of course, that wind energy is terribly expensive and inefficient.

I took a long look at wind energy a few months back and discovered that in most states (especially those where wind is abundant), electricity is so cheap that a wind turbine would take decades to earn back the investment in a free, unfettered market.

And that’s without the cost of ongoing maintenance.

Pickens doesn’t want to save our economy and promote energy independence. He was just first in-line for a bailout.

Recommended.