They range from the Dutch Tulip Mania in 1636; the British South Sea Bubble in 1720; the hyper-inflation in the Weimar Republic in 1923 and in Zimbabwe in 2008; the Y2K scare; stock market booms and busts; and evil eras of murderous madness like those of the Bolsheviks in Russia, the Red Guards in China, and Pol Pot in Cambodia.

Today we have a modern madness, less dramatic but more insidious, that affects the whole affluent West.  It is a phobia about hydro-carbon energy, which is now blamed for every natural disaster, and a parallel worship of everything "green."

"Green energy" is a relic from a bygone era when most humans lived or worked on farms and relied on animal power, windmills, sailing ships, solar energy, and biomass.  Subsidizing, mandating, and promoting its use in modern urbanized industrial society is a con worthy of every shady salesman of past manias.

Weather-dependent "green energy" suits some applications, but it is unreliable and destabilizes electricity grids.  It is destroying industry and jobs and harming consumers while disfiguring the landscape and having no measurable effect on global temperature.

Manias always end badly.  Suffering electricity-consumers will eventually revolt, and we will abandon the modern green mania.  But as Churchill once said, "How much greater the cost for each day's delay?"