Op-ed in Today's Wall Street Journal

Catastrophic failures inevitably follow from politicians’ insistence on ignoring reason, logic, truth and economics.

Photo by Karsten Würth on Unsplash

Writer’s note: This op-ed was published by the Wall Street Journal today, September 22, 2022. If you are unfamiliar with Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” movement, please check out my book, “Confucius Never Said.” 

The green movement’s rush to transform the energy economy while ignoring the laws of nature and economics calls to mind China’s ruinous Great Leap Forward. By 1957, Mao Zedong had grown impatient with his country’s slow industrial development relative to the West. He sought to transform China quickly from an agricultural society to an industrial powerhouse through forced industrialization and agricultural collectivization.

Steel production was a priority of the Great Leap Forward. Mao wanted China to surpass the U.K. in steel output within 15 years. Across the country, including in the village where my father lived, people tried to contribute to this goal by building small backyard furnaces. Each village had a production quota to meet, so everyone—…