The Morning Brief

Yelling "fire" in a crowded grid

• The closure of Heathrow Airport, the fourth busiest in the world, for more than a day is an astonishing spectacle, in part because it is shocking that there is apparently no backup system to get the airport restored to service more promptly. This, at a time when Heathrow is going through yet another debate about expanding and adding more runways.

An authoritative account of the cause may be a while in coming, but in the meantime, expect someone to blame it on the “omnicause”—c’mon, you know what it is: Climate change! (Though half-credit if you said “racism.”) There will be rumors of terrorism, and even if it wasn’t (as is my hunch), it should alert us to the vulnerability of critical infrastructure to a terror strike.

And it ought to prompt us to inquire as to whether the overemphasis on building out green energy, which is already straining the grid in both the U.S. and in the U.K., has led us to neglect maintenance and modernizing our grid. I have a strong suspicion about the answer to this. Or look at it another way: this is a certainly quicker way to get to Net-Zero!

UPDATE: Sure enough, here’s a confirming piece of evidence:

• Related—my latest on how Trump is on his way to crushing the climate change madness:

It is possible that the Trump Administration is going to deal the death blows to the long-running climate change hysteria and government hostility to fossil fuels, not just in the United States but around the globe.

The Trump Administration has moved well beyond merely supporting increased oil and natural gas production. It has also launched steps to dismantle the foundations of anti-energy climate policy, in particular, a proposed reversal of the so-called "endangerment finding" that gave the EPA jurisdiction to regulate greenhouse gases, which were never explicitly included in any of the various Clean Air Acts passed over the last 50 years. Trump's EPA is also proposing to revise the EPA's flawed "social cost of carbon" analysis, which is used to justify costly green energy schemes.

More at the link above.

• Biden, the comeback kid? NBC News reports:

Former President Joe Biden has told some Democratic leaders he’ll raise funds, campaign and do anything else necessary for Democrats to recover lost ground as the Trump administration rolls back programs the party helped design, according to people close to him.

Biden privately met last month with the new Democratic National Committee chairman, Ken Martin, and offered to help as the party struggles to regain its viability amid polling that shows its popularity has been sinking, the people said.

Once you get up off the floor from being doubled over in laughter, note this droll reporting:

So far, Biden's overture seems to have fallen flat. Democrats find themselves adrift, casting about for a compelling messenger. Whoever that is, it's not Biden, many party activists and donors contend.

“Who’s going to want Joe Biden back in the game?” said a major Biden supporter, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk candidly about him.