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April 4, 2018
Analytics of Wealth Redistribution Through Fuel-economy Regulation
The Environmental Protection Agency announced on Monday that it and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would reinstitute the mid-term evaluation of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards — the fuel-economy rules — for model-year 2022-2025 light-duty vehicles. @3happytails via Twenty20 That mid-term review was truncated by the Obama administration a few days before leaving office. Amid the tiresome manifestations of…
March 6, 2018
Climate Lawsuits: What They Say, and What They Fail to Say
For years Congress has refused to impose limits on greenhouse gas emissions, and now the Trump administration is rolling back the Obama regulations. What are politically-ambitious blue-state politicians to do? The obvious answer: File a lawsuit, claiming that Big Oil has known for decades that increasing GHG concentrations would cause a climate crisis for which it is responsible,…
March 1, 2018
Carbon Taxes and My Friends Aparna Mathur, Adele Morris, and Zilly
Let us now recall the blessed memory of Godzilla, King of the Monsters. I know him as Zilly, as we have grown close over the years and the 30-plus movies that bear his name. Anyway, at the end of that original timeless classic of the silver screen, an “oxygen destroyer” reduced Zilly to a skeleton at the bottom of Tokyo…
February 1, 2018
A Washington State Carbon Tax: All Pain, No Gain
With respect to Washington governor Jay Inslee’s renewed proposal for a “carbon” tax on that state’s greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions, a number to keep closely in mind is: 2/1000 of a degree. That would be the global temperature effect in the year 2100 if Washington were to reduce its GHG emissions to zero immediately. That figure comes from the…
November 21, 2017
Finalizing Debt Deal Is First Test for Puerto Rico’s New Governor
Remember the Puerto Rico debt crisis? It was only last February that a deal had been worked out between the island government and the holders of debt issued by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), signed into law by Gov. Alejandro García Padilla. At $9 billion, this debt is one of the largest components of the $69…
November 2, 2017
The Union of Concerned Activists: Let the Lawsuits Begin!
They have failed to convince Congress—even Congresses controlled by the Democratic Party—to impose limits on US greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, despite decades of effort, political threats, and grandstanding. Given the election of Donald Trump, they are losing their efforts to use the regulatory bureaucracy—an interest group with powerful budgetary and ideological incentives to impose GHG emissions policies—as a substitute source of such policies in the face of…
October 20, 2017
Subsidizing Reliable Generation Capacity: Is Mark Perry or Rick Perry Wrong?
I take a back seat to no one in my condemnations of subsidies and other policy distortions of state and regional electric power markets, a stance that I have maintained for decades. And so one might assume that I would have applauded my friend and colleague Mark Perry in his recent criticism of Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s proposal to the Federal…
October 18, 2017
The Volkswagen Emissions Scandal and the Bureaucratic Pursuit of Power
Never let a crisis go to waste, say the politicos, a stance adapted for its purposes by the permanent regulatory bureaucracy: Never let a corporate scandal go to waste. That is what comes to mind as we behold the investigations and regulatory stances following in the wake of the Volkswagen emissions scandal that emerged in 2015, a…
August 20, 2017
The Volkswagen Emissions Scandal and the Urge for Collective Punishment
A rotten apple spoils the barrel, as the old saying goes, and because of regulatory politics and the incentives of agency officials, the spoilage often proceeds unimpeded even if the rotten one and the others occupy separate barrels. Witness for example the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal that emerged in 2015, a truly brazen act of business…
August 20, 2017
How Jeff Sessions Is Stopping the EPA’s Slush Fund
Principles are to be found in many places, a blessing in the Beltway where principles are needed on a daily basis. One such principle is enshrined in the appropriations clause of the constitution: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” And here is another principle not…