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…
By Benjamin Zycher | April 15, 2021
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…
By Benjamin Zycher | March 29, 2021
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…
By Benjamin Zycher | March 1, 2021
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…
By Benjamin Zycher | January 23, 2021
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…
By Benjamin Zycher | January 21, 2021
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…
By Benjamin Zycher | January 7, 2021
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…
By Benjamin Zycher | December 15, 2020
Joe Biden has pledged to rejoin the Paris climate agreement on the first day of his administration, a promise unambiguous and therefore certain to be fulfilled, notwithstanding the essential absurdity of the Paris agreement narrowly and of climate policies more…
By Benjamin Zycher | November 19, 2020
I betray no secret when I note that Donald Trump is not a man of policy sophistication. It is obvious that he is uninterested even in details that are crucial;…
By Benjamin Zycher | October 28, 2020
During the September 29 presidential debate, Democratic candidate Joe Biden asserted that he does not “support the Green New Deal.” It “is not my plan.” Instead, he supports “the Biden Plan,…
By Benjamin Zycher | October 15, 2020
Let the hysteria begin. The Trump administration has finalized a reform of the federal rules on emissions of methane, the major component of natural gas, from oil and gas production. The existing rules were implemented by the…
By Benjamin Zycher | August 18, 2020
The Trump administration proposed last month a reform of the regulations implementing the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act, for decades a source of massive delay and cost increases for federal projects, yielding actual environmental harm because of…
By Benjamin Zycher | August 6, 2020
Opposition to infrastructure investment for the production and transport of conventional energy is de rigueur on the environmentalist left, a stance widely justified as an important bulwark for the protection of…
By Benjamin Zycher | August 6, 2020
In a recent New York Times review of Bjorn Lomborg’s new book, “False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet” (Basic Books,…
By Benjamin Zycher | August 4, 2020
This comment letter responds to a request from the Environmental Protection Agency for comments on its June 11 proposed rule “Increasing Consistency and Transparency in Considering Benefits and Costs in…
By Benjamin Zycher | July 29, 2020