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May 21, 2021
Fiction Vs. Reality on Fossil-fuel Subsidies
Some political targets are temporary, little more than props deployed in pursuit of a tactical advantage in the Beltway skirmish of the day. Others are permanent fixtures in the landscape, the foundations of an ideological worldview impervious to facts, reasoning, and the perverse outcomes that the attendant policy imperatives would engender. Prominent among the latter is…
April 30, 2021
The ‘temporary’ Biden Pause on Fossil-fuel Leasing on Federal Lands
During the presidential campaign Joe Biden offered the utterly incoherent promise to ban “new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters.” Soon after assuming the presidency, however, he stated clearly that “we’re not going to ban fracking” and, presumably, other forms of fossil-fuel production on federal lands. So, which is it? Answer: The “ban” will not…
April 22, 2021
Earth Day 2021: The Anti-human Core of ‘restore Our Earth’
It is Earth Day, the central religious holiday of environmental fundamentalism, and the official theme this year is “Restore Our Earth™,” purporting to focus on natural processes, emerging green technologies, and innovative thinking that can restore the world’s ecosystems. In this way, the theme rejects the notion that mitigation or adaptation are the only ways…
April 15, 2021
Where We Are Headed: Making the US Poorer and OPEC+ Richer
The light at the end of the COVID tunnel is brightening, in substantial part as a result of the global inoculation effort, however slowly and unevenly. With this improving public-health outlook comes a prospective renewal of worldwide economic growth generally, and in industrial, commercial, and transportation sectors in particular. That would engender an expansion in the…
March 29, 2021
The Electrical Engineers Collide with the Climate Politicians
Having suffered for decades from natural disasters, perverse federal policies, local mismanagement and much more, the people of Puerto Rico are in need of reforms in many dimensions, prominent among them a modernized, efficient and reliable electric power system. And that need is more-or-less immediate, as the rickety commonwealth electricity system finally is operating, however…
March 1, 2021
The Electric-vehicle Campaign Comes to Minnesota
Electric vehicles are all the rage, in particular among public officials who do not have to face voters. Not so much among consumers, who know their individual needs and strive to make purchase decisions that satisfy them. These realities explain why the proponents of policies forcing ever more EVs upon the market prefer to implement such…
January 23, 2021
Climate Policy Is the Purview of Congress, Not the Courts
The Supreme Court on January 19 heard oral arguments in a case (BP PLC v Mayor and City Council of Baltimore) that addresses an exceedingly narrow topic: whether or not the “federal officer jurisdiction” doctrine should direct climate lawsuits by states and municipalities against energy producers into state or federal court. Most such lawsuits attempt to…
January 21, 2021
The Case for Climate Change Realism
There is a long and infamous history of world leaders marking humanity’s “last chance” to avoid the ravages of man-made climate change. In 1989, for instance, the director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program warned that rising sea levels would cause entire nations to disappear if the global-warming trend were not…
January 7, 2021
End Discrimination in Bank Lending
The opposition to “discrimination” by political activists has not prevented them from applauding constrained access to capital by such politically unpopular businesses as producers of fossil fuels and firearms or operators of for-profit colleges and private prisons. The list of disfavored economic sectors will only grow over time as government engages in ever-more economic favoritism. This…
December 15, 2020
Biden’s Incoherent Proposal to Ban Fossil Fuel Leasing on Federal Lands
During the election campaign, President-elect Joe Biden pledged to end new oil and gas leasing and permitting on federal lands (including federal waters); that is, to ban on those lands the discovery and development of fossil energy resources by private companies, and to end approvals of specific drilling proposals that result from leasing rights. Biden further pledged to…