Rational Narrative

We received notice from San Diego Gas & Electric this week that our heating costs will “more than double” in January over what we experienced in December. This is due, they told us, to price increases in natural gas, which is in turn caused by extremely cold weather being experienced throughout the United States this winter.

SDG&E does not produce any natural gas, but purchases it on the open market from campaniles which do produce it and, in some cases, from pipeline companies.

Notice that SDG&E did not attribute any of this cost increase to inflation. This is because the government has controlled inflation and because, in any case, the government has declared that natural gas and all other forms of energy are exempt from inflation.

(Okay, I was engaging in snark there. Of course inflation is far from being controlled and prices for energy increase at the same time that prices for everything else do. The government, however, does not include energy prices when calculating inflation because they are “too volatile.” What, government computers cannot keep up with the pace at which energy prices change? They must use very old computers. Maybe beads on strings.)

Nor, we are told, is the price increase due to availability issues caused by shipping American natural gas to Europe to replace Russian natural gas which we cut off by means of sanctions. (And, of course, by blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipelines.)

Sending our allies in Europe into the dark ages because we don’t like Russia seems counterproductive to me, but at least we are making a lot of money out of the deal by selling gas to Europe at high prices to replace the low priced Russian gas that we won’t allow them to buy.

Why Europe doesn’t just tell us to pound sand and continue buying Russian gas is unclear. Maybe they are afraid we’ll “impound” (steal) their money the same way we “impounded” (stole) Russia’s money.

So with inflation and shortages due to export ruled out, we are left with an unusually cold winter as the reason for price increases. That cold winter, we are told, is caused by “climate change” along with warmer oceans and melting of the polar ice caps.

If you are having a hard time reconciling colder winters with warmer oceans and melting ice caps, you are not alone. You are insisting on what’s known as a “rational narrative,” which means you are definitely not a Democrat.