Just as it seems presidential politics can’t get any weirder, with one candidate who has a better grasp of reality on his worst days than his challenger has on his best days, mutinies are erupting against the former rather than the latter candidate. Punditry simply isn’t up to shedding light on a contest without precedent and, consequently, without discernible rules. What happens will happen and it’s certain to prove a puzzle. Speculation is no more enlightening than the medieval conclaves debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Our time is better spent considering another conundrum: with a majority of voters worldwide reporting their alarm regarding climate change, why is it that renewable energy projects are being blocked across the globe?

Right here in Colorado, residents near Norwood in San Miguel County, west of Telluride, are resisting a square-mile solar array that would transfer electricity into the regional transmission grid. Both proponents and opponents profess to support alternative energy projects, just not this one. Not-in-my-backyard  resistance is of a different flavor than the property value worrywarts who resist everything from rehab facilities to Walmarts in their suburban neighborhoods. These rural residents, encompassing both ranchers and environmentalists, see the solar field proposed by a Seattle-based sustainable energy developer as an industrial-sized intrusion on their bucolic lifestyle. Fair enough.

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When I visited Alaska some years ago, the trans-Alaska pipeline transporting North Slope crude to west coast refineries looked like a science fiction project plopped down in the middle of a wilderness. For unknown reasons, horny unguiculatus like to gather and mate beneath the beam. At least they are happy. We have a presidential candidate spewing nonsense about windmills causing cancer. If this were true, the Dutch would all be headed for early graves after a thousand years pumping water off their farms with windmills. Not to mention the Danes, who now produce virtually all their electricity from these leviathans while exporting their engineering technology around the world. Denmark also enjoys the highest per-capita GDP in the industrialized world and competes with Finland for the happiest people on the planet. Colorado’s farmers and ranchers also seem happy with the royalty checks they receive for hosting windmills.

In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul recently canceled a “congestion-pricing” scheme to reduce the number of vehicles entering Manhattan each day. After nearly a decade of squabbling, agreement was reached to collect $15 from everyone entering the city and dedicating the resultant revenue stream to fund $55 billion of deferred maintenance plaguing New York City’s subway system. Not precisely a win-win solution, but close. So, why did Hochul pull the plug on this proposal? Commuter outrage, primarily expressed from the wealthy communities on Long Island.

Major cities that have imposed similar tariffs, like London, Sydney, Singapore and more encountered initial complaints as well — even experiencing occasional trucker blockades. Yet, after six months or a year, the public concluded the charges were a good thing. Alas, New York Democrats hope to reverse their loss of five congressional seats in 2022 this November and the governor was afraid to irritate suburban voters who will go to the polls in just four months. She promised to identify an alternative funding source for New York’s ailing transit system, but her proposed set of business levies was swiftly rejected by the legislature in Albany. Politico is reporting the delay is beginning to backfire for Hochul. Juggling political priorities can prove a tricky business.

It may be time for the environmental lobby to rethink its climate change strategies. There has been a propensity to promote the most effective interventions regardless of cost. The rush to electric vehicles is a premier example. Half the current owners of electric vehicles are reporting they plan to replace these purchases with combustion engine vehicles. The primary reasons are range and recharging challenges attributable to inadequate charging infrastructure. There are pocketbook consequences, even for drivers who love their EVs. In Colorado, with its challenging topography and empty spaces, hybrids make far better sense until charging ports can catch up with demand. In an effort to drive the EV market as an early adopter, the Colorado state fleet purchased several hundred electric pick-ups during the administration of former Gov. John Hickenlooper. They were meant to be deployed throughout the state, but eventually wound up bunched along the Front Range where charging was available.

Voters are being honest when they say they want to reduce CO2 emissions and help cool the planet, but at what cost? The European Union’s green initiative calling for the installation of heat pumps, rather than furnaces, in new housing has collapsed. With a few years of subsidies, the EU could probably drive down the cost of heat pumps, but they are an additional, upfront cost today. There are many relatively cost-free interventions, albeit producing smaller effects, that could be advanced without generating significant protest. Ratcheting down on industrial polluters, exempting homeowners for now, would also make good sense.

Pointing out the considerable costs of inaction may offer an even more fertile strategy. Homeowner insurance rates have far exceeded inflation in Colorado during the past decade, although these increases may be mistaken as part of the general inflation in prices. Increasing climate driven hail, fire, flood and storm damage have driven up premiums. Requiring insurers to label these added costs by breaking them out for homeowners could help persuade residents an ounce of prevention is often cheaper than a pound of cure. Postponing action off into the “long run” is the ultimate act of generational selfishness. As Keynes so aptly noted, “In the long run, we’re all dead.” Not our children or grandchildren, however. The 2024 Republican Party platform fails to mention the word climate. Why should they, when the CNN moderators at the great debate failed to ask a single question about climate?

Miller Hudson is a public affairs consultant and a former Colorado legislator.