“What’s the worst that can happen?” asked Secretary of State John Kerry the other day as he promoted the Obama administration’s plans to make the cost of energy skyrocket.

Speaking to graduating students at Boston College, Kerry denounced anyone who has any doubt that the administration is completely correct in every detail on predicting the Earth’s climate a century from now. The administration wants to impose massive taxes and mandates to force Americans to stop using affordable, reliable sources of energy capable of fueling a modern economy. The president wants to use executive orders to compel Americans to switch to “renewable” forms of energy that are far costlier when they're even feasible at all.

Suppose, Kerry said, that global warming turns out not to be as bad as the worst-case scenarios – that the ongoing 15-year halt in global warming goes on still longer, or that warming continues to be less than earlier predictions, for example – and we still carry out the policies his president wants. “What’s the worst that could happen?” he asked. “We put millions of people to work transitioning our energy,” he said, and “we give ourselves greater security through greater energy independence.”

The Wall Street Journal answers his question admirably:

“The ‘worst that can happen’ is that we spend trillions of dollars trying to solve a problem that we can't do anything to stop; that we misallocate scarce resources in a way that slows economic growth; that slower growth leads to less economic opportunity for Boston College grads and especially the world's poor, and that America and the world become much less wealthy and technologically advanced than we would otherwise. All of which would make the world less able to cope with the costs of climate change if Mr. Kerry is right.”

Americans pointlessly wasting trillions of dollars as our government makes everything we all buy much more expensive is a pretty bad result. Sen. Kerry might not notice that the cost of fueling his limo skyrockets, but everyone else who isn’t so sheltered will certainly feel the effects of his cavalier attitude.