Why does New Orleans’ little do-gooder charity, the Alliance for Affordable Energy, push the most expensive power sources and fight the cheapest? It’s dancing on the money strings of Big Green and feeding at the taxpayer trough at the same time, of course. With a half-million-dollar budget, it operates anti-fossil fuel campaigns and a U.S. Labor Department “Green Corps” grant training local disadvantaged youth to work on environmental restoration projects.

The alliance was created in 1985 by a group of typically sincere and reasonably well-to-do benefactors, some rich enough to have their own private foundations. They earned a good bang-for-the-buck reputation because their volunteer activists didn’t need a day job.