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June 10, 2015
Puerto Rico’s Debt Crisis and the Siren Song of After-the-fact Bankruptcy
Sometimes debt burdens become deeply burdensome. And if you’re the debtor, wouldn’t it be nice to find a way to avoid hard decisions by reneging on past agreements on repayment, that is, to change the rules after much of the game has been played? A bill before Congress, the “Puerto Rico Chapter 9 Uniformity Act…
June 7, 2015
The EPA’s ‘Clean Power’ Mess
‘Flexibility” is the advertised hallmark of the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed Clean Power Plan, which by 2030 would reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants by 30% from 2005 levels. The central feature of the plan is a forced shift away from inexpensive coal-fired power. Not to worry, says EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy: “With EPA’s…
April 28, 2015
The Carbon Tax, and Economists as Experts and Politicians
A colleague from the American Enterprise Institute hosted a well-attended event on Earth Day last week, promoting an edited volume in which a number of authors advocate the implementation of a “carbon” tax. That tax is assumed to be, first, an efficient substitute for the emerging framework of regulations aimed at constraining the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG), and, second, part…
April 21, 2015
Earth Day and the Celebration of Suffering
In honor of this 45th anniversary of the first Earth Day, let us recall the wisdom of Dogbert, that noted political philosopher and sage observer of the human condition: “You can’t save the earth unless you’re willing to make other people sacrifice.” As the old saying goes, truer words were never spoken. Earth Day brings each year…
March 25, 2015
The Enforcement of Climate Orthodoxy and the Response to the Asness-Brown Paper on the Temperature Record
Should you, dear readers, doubt that the climate empire strikes back at even the mildest qualifications of greenhouse gas (GHG) orthodoxy, merely consider a recent draft essay by Clifford Asness and Aaron Brown on the recent temperature record and attendant implications for policies to reduce GHG emissions. Titled “It’s Not the Heat, It’s the Tepidity,” the immediate…
February 18, 2015
The Kyoto Protocol: 10 Years of Triumph
Amid the tolling of church bells and the joyous shouts of aspiring bureaucrats, the Kyoto Protocol was adopted in December 1997 under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and officially was implemented 10 years ago this week. Under its terms, the parties committed to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) 5 percent below…
February 10, 2015
The Climate Comintern Speaks
“This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history. This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change…
February 5, 2015
The EPA on Keystone XL: Ideology Trumps Analysis
The State Department Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (FSEIS) on the Keystone XL pipeline, published a year ago, concluded, reasonably, that the pipeline would have virtually no impact on global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or climate effects even under the most extreme assumptions. After all, the pipeline would transport 830,000 barrels per day of heavy oil-sands crude from…