There John Kerry goes again, again. We reported yesterday on some of the climate tsar’s cringeworthy speech before the World Economic Forum at Davos, but that was only part of the story. We can report much more today — as the rest of his story gets worse and worse.  

First, I have to quote my hero Elon Musk, the smartest guy on the planet, who tweeted that “the WEF is increasingly becoming an unelected world government that the people never asked for and don’t want.” Amen to that.  

Now, back to Mr. Kerry. He just went all touchy feely E.T. on us, talking about an extraterrestrial force that brought people to Davos to save the planet. Of course, all these rich elites came in private planes that totally polluted the place.  

Mr. Kerry said during this bizarre speech: “You look at what’s happening with species, half the species of the planet have been already killed.” I don’t know what he’s talking about, unless he means the bird population, killed by giant windmills. Or the whale population, killed by offshore windmills. Or the species that haven’t been killed yet — but will be by all those private airplanes landing at Davos.  

Then he went through his pessimism about what hasn’t yet been done, and then he went through his attack on economic growth, which we reported yesterday, including his smearing of the Gilded Age, which was one of the greatest periods of entrepreneurial prosperity in history.  

Then he started chanting that the only way to stop global warming is “money, money, money” — he actually had nine money mentions in there — but he forgot to say that $5 trillion already has been spent on various renewable fuel policies and processes, all without moving the carbon needle.  

Trouble is, “money, money, money” nine times is just a bunch of government-to-government foreign aid, which has always been a failure, completely unaccountable, and has nothing to do with free-market capitalism — that is, the only tried and true engine of prosperity and carbon reduction.  

Because of his disdain for the private sector, Mr. Kerry will never understand that it’s private investment that creates the technologies that will reduce carbon. In fact, a new one has just surfaced with a breakthrough on direct carbon capture and carbon sequestration technology from a Swiss company that relies on free-market incentives to improve the climate, and doesn’t go all extraterrestrial on us.  

Growth solves a lot of problems, Mr. Kerry. The richest countries tend to have the lowest carbon emissions, but you will never understand that.  

Meanwhile, back here in the U.S., markets got a real shock today with some very bad, recession-looking numbers on the economy.  

Mr. Kerry and his boss, President Biden, have been spending money, money, money like it’s going out of style, with a touch of tax, tax, tax and a big heap of regulate, regulate, regulate.  

But both manufacturing and retail sales plunged in December, with November’s numbers revised downward as well. It’s not a pretty picture.  

For last year’s fourth quarter, manufacturing declined 8 percent at an annual rate, while business equipment, which is really the heart of the story, plunged nearly 13 percent annualized. Overall, retail sales for the past three months were down more than 4 percent annually, with core sales off 2 percent.  

The only good news was that wholesale prices also fell in December, and it basically flattened in the last three months, as the Federal Reserve is doing its job, despite opposition from Mr. Biden’s spendthrift fiscal policies.  

Stocks plunged more than 600 points on the bad news, which bodes poorly for corporate profits — the ultimate mother’s milk of stocks. I don’t want to get too pessimistic here, but the numbers are the numbers, and they’re not good numbers.  

It may well be that somebody’s going to have to rescue the economy this year. How about cutting spending and taxes and regulations for a supply-side recovery? “Money, money, money,” Mr. Kerry. Are you listening? 

From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business News.