Maryland’s Low-Energy Chill

The increased cost of energy isn’t just a side effect of Maryland’s environmental agenda; for radical green policymakers, it’s the point, explains Myron Ebell, the director of energy and global-warming policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Already, consumption has decreased by 9.4 percent under O’Malley’s tenure, according to the Maryland Energy Administration.

“The purpose of [such green policies] is to make people poorer so they can’t use as much energy,” Ebell says. “They are making life very difficult for the lower-middle-class and working-class people and creating a greater divide between rich and poor, and despite the rhetoric that we need to reduce inequality, it’s really designed to do the opposite.”