Almost 40 years ago, the last “green” president, Jimmy Carter, went on national TV and glumly told the nation from the Oval Office: “We could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade.”

This prediction wasn’t just foolish. It turned out to be tremendously expensive to taxpayers, with billions of dollars poured down a rat hole of green energy programs that never worked—including the “Synthetic Fuels Corporation,” which was going to provide an economical substitute for scarce oil.