Americans Should Get Their Heads Out of the Clouds

Americans live in an idealistic world where, no matter what happens, we’ll still be able to go home at night and switch on the lights or pull into a filling station and gas up the family SUV.

Most folks — including many elected officials — don’t connect the dots. They somehow believe there are no consequences to killing a small biomass project in Vancouver, stopping a wind farm development because it spoils their view, taking a coal-fired plant off line, or opposing a natural gas or electric transmission line.

There‘s a smug attitude that we’ve always had all the energy we need, so we always w...