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April 21, 2023
Earth Day 2023: Utterly Bereft of Ideas
Earth Day falls on April 22 — Lenin’s birthday, appropriately enough — so let us first recall the blessed memory of the official theme for Earth Day 2022: “Invest In Our PlanetTM.” “This is the moment to change it all — the business climate, the political climate, and how we take action on climate. It’s going…
April 17, 2023
OPEC Remains an Obstacle for Biden’s Green-Energy Fantasy
Can it surprise anyone that the multiple Biden–administration gambits intended to save the planet are proving perverse in every possible dimension? This is the case in particular for the fossil-fuel industry, both in the U.S. and internationally: In a nutshell, the administration seeks a long-term decline in investment and production on deeply dubious “climate” grounds, while at the same time begging foreign producers to increase output so as…
April 10, 2023
The EPA Regulatory Reconsideration of Fine Particulates
I betray no secret when I report that much regulatory policy has been deeply politicized, and that is a vast understatement when it comes to many EPA actions under the Clean Air Act. Consider the regulation — the promulgation of a new National Ambient Air Quality Standard — of fine particulate matter (“PM2.5”), which, under…
March 28, 2023
The Energy Transition Is a Delusion Indeed
The “energy transition” continues to receive thunderous applause from all the usual Beltway suspects, an exercise in groupthink fantasy amazing to behold. For those with actual lives to live and thus uninterested in silliness: The “energy transition” is a massive shift, wholly artificial and politicized, from conventional energy inexpensive (Table 1b and here), reliable, and very clean given the proper policy environment,…
March 28, 2023
Don’t Ban Oil Exports to China
Beltway silliness is as unavoidable as the summer humidity because rent-seeking groups, both economic and ideological, have powerful incentives to advocate legislation that would advance their interests at the expense of the economy in the aggregate. Nor is it difficult to find officeholders to make their arguments for them, even though, or perhaps because, they know better….
March 16, 2023
The SVB Bailout Will Have Unfortunate Long-Term Implications
Now that the bailout of the Silicon Valley Bank depositors at 100 percent rather than the nominal $250,000 limit has been announced, it is difficult to discern whether the primary motivation is avoidance of future bank runs by small businesses and the like, or an old-fashioned effort to reward the wealthy friends of the Democratic…
March 14, 2023
No One Is in Control
In 1878, a wave of yellow fever swept through the American South and spread out through the Mississippi River Valley. Along with cholera, “yellow jack,” as it was known—after the yellow quarantine flags displayed on ships afflicted by the contagion—had long been a scourge of the American South. As far back as the 1790s, Congress…
March 6, 2023
Biden’s Interior Department Keeps Dragging Its Feet on Offshore Leasing
Notwithstanding some recent declines, domestic crude oil prices in the U.S. are about 45% higher than when President Biden was inaugurated. Global crude oil prices are about 48% higher. U.S. gasoline prices are about a dollar higher per gallon. Indeed, between the inauguration and June 2022, gasoline prices more than doubled. These prices began to increase almost monotonically long before the…
March 3, 2023
Letter: Schumer’s “Free-Market” Defense of ESG Falls Flat
Note: This letter to the editor appeared in the Wall Street Journal on March 2, 2023, in response to the Journal’s March 1, 2023, op-ed titled “Republicans Ought to Be All for ESG.” Sen. Chuck Schumer argues in favor of a regulation explicitly allowing retirement-fund managers to include environmental, social and governance objectives as investment criteria,…
February 6, 2023
Balloons, Beijing, Biden, and Blinken
This post is in response to Press Coverage, Not the Spy Balloon, Forced Biden to Cancel Blinken’s China Jaunt by Andrew C. McCarthy Andrew McCarthy is absolutely correct in his observation that “the Biden administration postponed Blinken’s trip because the press began reporting that the spy balloon entered into American air space.” And he is correct that…