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October 10, 2019
Has Irwin Stelzer Asked the Right Question on Climate Change?
My friend and former colleague Irwin M. Stelzer has written a short but interesting essay on climate policy, arguing that by asking the right question we will be oriented toward a useful set of policy prescriptions given the substantial uncertainties about the underlying facts and projections of anthropogenic warming. His arguments, which reflect closely those he articulated…
July 18, 2019
Using the Money of Investors to Promote the Theory of Man-made Warming
The House Subcommittee on Investor Protection, Committee on Financial Services, held a hearing earlier this month on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure rules and possible legislation requiring the Securities and Exchange Commission to mandate ESG standards for all publicly-traded firms. This would include a requirement that companies disclose in their annual reports the financial and business…
July 8, 2019
The Confusions of the ‘conservative’ Carbon Tax
Various news reports and self-serving political pronouncements would have us believe that imposition of a tax on “carbon” — emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) — now enjoys growing support among Republican policymakers and conservative observers, a political premise advertised at a decibel level vastly higher than actual political reality would support. That reality is straightforward:…
May 6, 2019
Once the GOP Rolls out Climate Policies, It Endorses All the Assumptions of the Left
You can’t beat something with nothing, according to ancient Beltway wisdom, an outlook guaranteed to yield an inexorable increase in the size, cost, and destructiveness of government, even as it forces the opponents of “something” gradually to adopt the assumptions of the proponents, and to descend into a process of negotiating with themselves. The latest…
April 29, 2019
The Paris Agreement and the Costly Pursuit of the Trivial
President Donald Trump on June 1, 2017, announced that the US would exit from the international agreement on the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reached at the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), held in Paris in December 2015. A final exit cannot take place…
April 10, 2019
Only Approved Climate Change Views Need Apply
Let us behold the “debate” over climate policy now unfolding at the European Union Parliament. Its most prominent feature is a serious effort to deny ExxonMobil (EM) the ability to lobby on climate policy and other related matters with members of the parliament. This effort to redefine debate as non-debate will be voted upon by the parliament at the…
December 17, 2018
Other People’s Money: ESG Investing and the Conflicts of the Consultant Class
Unintended consequences are a longstanding effect of public policies, an eternal truth seemingly invisible to one generation after another of policymakers eager to improve upon the economic arrangements emerging from market competition and individual choices. Witness, for example, a regulation implemented by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2003, intended to reduce the scope of supposed…
November 29, 2018
Observations on Volume 2 of the Fourth National Climate Assessment
Over the Thanksgiving weekend the Trump administration released Volume 2 of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, eliciting the usual array of apocalyptic predictions from the media about the fate of mankind should we fail to impose sharp limits on the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG). Herewith, a few observations on this report. The report assumes one particular scenario for…
November 9, 2018
Environmental Policy: Benjamin Zycher Responds to His Critics
I thank Jonathan H. Adler, Patrick Allitt, and William Dennis for their thoughtful and informative commentaries on my Liberty Forum essay on reforming U.S. environmental policy, in particular with respect to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Chevron doctrine of judicial deference to executive agency statutory interpretations in the face of legal ambiguities. I learned much from their observations, to each…
October 29, 2018
Politicized Law Enforcement and the ExxonMobil White Whale
The latest lawsuit against ExxonMobil (EM), filed by Acting New York State Attorney General Barbara Underwood, is straightforward: Got that? Underwood actually is arguing that EM should not concern itself — or its investors — with (1) the aggregate effect of GHG policies on prospective worldwide demand conditions for its energy products, and (2) the…