Welcome back to the Ten Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal.

Joining me on the show today is

James B. Miggs. He's a new senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He's also a new contributing

editor of City Journal magazine. He's the co-host of the How Do We Fix It Podcast. He writes a tech

column for commentary and is the former editor of popular mechanics

among other publications. His coverage of energy, environmental policy, culture, and other topics

has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Slate, and many other publications.

And he's been writing a number of articles for City Journal in recent weeks on the state of the energy economy at a time of global turmoil.

So Jim, thanks very much for coming on the podcast.

Great to be back, Brian.

You know, as I note, you've been covering the energy world, not only for City Journal, but for other publications for a while

now, I think you would have to agree that this year is just an anomalous and striking year.

The price of oil and natural gas has gone through the roof. You know, there's a number of factors behind the energy inflation we're seeing, including

Russia's invasion of Ukraine, obviously.

But I wonder, you know, if you could just give us a brief survey of what you think is going on here.

Why is energy becoming so expensive?

And how did we get here? Yeah, you know, we are in the early

stages of what some analysts believe will be a global energy crisis of the kind we saw in the

70s, perhaps worse. And the war in Ukraine is a big part of it, but in a way it's something that has

just precipitated an intense demonstration of problems that were already in the works. And a lot of

those problems have to do with counterproductive energy policies, particularly in the Western world.

You've seen in Europe and in North America efforts to transition to renewable energy,

...