Are we watching a replay of King Canute commanding the waves to recede? That thought occurred to me while reading about the Biden administration’s latest step in advancing the president’s 2021 goal of having half of all new autos be electric by 2030. The analogy isn’t exact — current thinking is that Canute knew his courtiers were wrong when they said he could stop the incoming tide. And the king was apparently in his 30s, with no sign of cognitive impairment, at that moment by the seashore. But consider it anyway. The analogy was prompted by the Environmental Protection Agency’s...