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July 8, 2024
Schrödinger’s Climate Cat
In May, I testified before the Senate Budget Committee and summarized what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said about trends in drought. My testimony included the figure below showing a decrease in the areal extent of extreme drought conditions in the United States. I also included another figure that showed an increase in extreme drought conditions across the United States. Completing…
July 5, 2024
Reversing Course: The Need to Renew American Antitrust
America’s system of government is founded on the protection of freedom in all aspects of life, including business. This freedom has fueled the nation’s prosperity, transforming it into a beacon of opportunity that millions worldwide aspire to join. Yet, under the Biden administration’s misguided approach to antitrust, this economic freedom is now under threat. The Biden…
July 3, 2024
Separation of Powers and Division of Labor
On Friday June 28, the Supreme Court issued their 6-3 ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, overturning the deference to administrative agencies established in the Chevron v. Environmental Protection Agency ruling in 1984. So far opinions vary on how big a change this will ultimately be (courts have not been relying much on Chevron deference…
July 2, 2024
Climate Fueled Extreme Weather
It is now a ubiquitous cultural ritual to blame any and every weather event on climate change. Those hot days? Climate change. That hurricane? Climate change. The flood somewhere that I saw on social media? Climate change. With today’s post, the first in a series, I go beyond the cartoonish media caricatures of climate change,…
July 1, 2024
The ESG Proxy Advisor Game Starts to Crack
For many years “proxy advisory” services have been provided by a duopoly comprising two companies, Glass Lewis and Institutional Shareholder Services, with a combined market share of 97 percent engendered by blatant political favoritism. “Proxy advice” means recommendations to investors, retirement funds and large asset managers holding major stakes in public companies on how to vote on…
July 1, 2024
The Haphazard Road to Rural Broadband
I recently got a message asking me what I thought about this Washington Times article by Susan Ferrechio on the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. As part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act signed in November 2021, Congress set aside $42.45 billion to fund BEAD, whose goal was to help close the broadband gap. But Ferrechio’s article…
July 1, 2024
The End of Chevron Deference
In 1981, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under Administrator Anne Gorsuch (the mother of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch), decide to change how it defined a “source” of pollution under the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1977. An environmental group, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) petitioned the EPA in federal court arguing that there was a…
June 28, 2024
Securing the Web with Route Origin Authorizations
As part of the initiative to bolster cybersecurity defenses, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is championing the widespread adoption of Route Origin Authorizations (ROAs), a security mechanism to prevent cyber-attacks on the internet’s routing system. ROAs prevent unauthorized parties from hijacking IP prefixes or re-routing legitimate network traffic to malicious destinations. On June…
June 26, 2024
That’s AllotA Energy!
Later this week on Colorado’s beautiful Western Slope, I’ll be giving a keynote talk at an energy transition conference. The timing is perfect because I get to share some of my first analyses of the 2024 edition of the Energy Institute’s Statistical Review of World Energy — an absolutely indispensable resource that was just released a few…
June 24, 2024
The Lurking Dangers in State-Level AI Regulation
An ordinary bill signing became extraordinary last month when Colorado Gov. Jared Polis used the occasion to deliver a detailed critique of the bill he was signing, Senate Bill 24-205. The bill is one of the first pieces of legislation that regulates cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Still, Polis isn’t totally convinced that it’s ready for prime time:…