Imagine an alternative present. The details are in the next paragraph, but let me warn you up front it won’t be entirely self-consistent or believable. I’m trying to explain a liberal pathology here; you’re going to have to ride with it.

Imagine a world similar to ours today, except that they never discovered petrochemicals. No oil, coal, or gas. Instead, they (somehow) developed collectors to harvest wind and sunlight (it’s ok to leave this part vague.) They store the energy as compressed hydrogen and in electrochemical batteries. In this alternative present, battery tech is very good, because they’ve spent exorbitantly on research. Most of their batteries are about twice as efficient as a Duracell, and they have a million times more of them than we do.

And that’s all the baseline imagining we need to do. Let all that gel for a second, and pretend that it’s truth.

This is the kind of exercise the liberal mind does all the time, so much that the products of imagination become their paradigms. The difference is that you’ll know it’s an intellectual exercise, where the liberal believes it’s evidence of his intellect.

You all set with our hydro-solar-wind world? Then with our beliefs to stand firm on, we’ll now reason like competent humans. I told you this wouldn’t be consistent.

What is it like in here? Well, our cities are ringed by solar panels, not by forests and farms. In the heartland, agriculture takes a back seat to wind generators, and most of our metal is strung across the country on towers.

Hydrogen is the smallest molecule, and will leak past any unsophisticated barrier. Hydrogen will leak in the laboratory if the gear is not well maintained. It actually erodes and cracks steel. Death and injury from hydrogen fires in the green world are an everyday occurrence.

A third of our economy is devoted to battery production. One positive thing is that recycling is finally an economic necessity.

We are poor. We do not travel, nor do we consume luxuries. There is not enough productivity to offset what we have to expend to keep the lights on. We live in the most economically stratified society since Roman times.

Gosh, it’s a dystopia in there, with just renewable energy. Now, you and I know that nothing like a modern society could ever evolve without abundant energy, so that vision could never really materialize. But it’s a useful thought experiment, in the vein of something like Earth After People.

Now let’s pretend one more thing. Some farmer up in the Pennsylvania mountains was shooting his next-to-last twice-reloaded shotgun shell at some grub, and what do you know – bubbling up from the ground, smelly black oil. Sure seems to burn well. Wonder what they can do with it.

Those people are going to stumble all over themselves to use that stuff. Down comes all that hateful wire and windmills. They are going to be rich.