Wisconsin declares emergency – temps so low the state suspended trucker safety rules.

Photo above - record snows have disrupted traffic continuously this month.

Before someone starts yapping: No, Wisconsin is NOT a red state, despite what internet disinformation sites may claim. The governor of Wisconsin is Tony Evers, a democrat for 46 years. He formerly was a public school employee. His running mate was a “community organizer”.

But let’s give props to Governor Evers. He put public safety first. The gigantic freeze covering most of the USA has made it problematic for truckers to deliver gasoline, diesel, propane, kerosene, and heating oil . . . (see link below).

Truckers are probably ecstatic. The usual rules on “continuous hours behind the wheel” and avoiding rush hour bottlenecks are suspended until further notice. As they should be.

There’s a couple of directions I could go here. First, the dome of cold air tormenting America, and snowstorms shutting down places like Atlanta's airport is NOT an artifact of global warming. It’s normal weather. But this is a column on economics. So let’s pull at that thread.

The real emergency in Wisconsin could be people freezing to death because they have no heat. Long line at the pumps are bad too, but not a tragedy. Some people might say “just buy and electric car and plug it in each night”. Except that energy experts are now warning “don’t do that. We’ll just have to build more giant power plants.” Especially since the sun doesn’t shine at night, wind turbines tend to freeze solid in winter, and most people live thousands of miles away from tidal or geothermal sources. Perhaps we got ahead of ourselves with those ginormous EV tax rebates. Which were invented to keep UAW assembly line workers on the job. Well, can we still reconsider those rebates as part of the upcoming DOGE attack on crazy, unnecessary spending programs?

Converting Wisconsin homes to “all electric heating” isn’t the answer either. The typical January day in Madison is a high of 28 and a low of 14. Electric baseboard heaters and plug in supplemental room warmers would drive anyone's power bill to the moon. Heat pumps don’t work when it gets that low either – they use resistance coils to make heat in times like that.

There is no magic bullet here. My suggestion is we rely on free markets to provide energy, and not a crazy cornucopia of subsidies on electricity, propane, Liquified Natural Gas, liquified hydrogen, solar panels, wind turbines, ocean tidal turbines, geothermal turbines, nuclear reactors, and experimental fusion reactors. Some of these are eventually going to be big winners. I just don’t want to see the national debt go even higher while the government fantasizes that they can make all of them work.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

Evers declares energy emergency to get trucks of propane, fuel oil through Wisconsin

Tony Evers - Wikipedia