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May 21, 2021
Fiction Vs. Reality on Fossil-fuel Subsidies
Some political targets are temporary, little more than props deployed in pursuit of a tactical advantage in the Beltway skirmish of the day. Others are permanent fixtures in the landscape, the foundations of an ideological worldview impervious to facts, reasoning, and the perverse outcomes that the attendant policy imperatives would engender. Prominent among the latter is…
May 12, 2021
Would a Phaseout of Hydrofluorocarbons Avoid Half a Degree of Global Warming?
In a recent “Daily on Energy” report for the Washington Examiner, Josh Siegel and Abby Smith reported: “This morning, the EPA unveiled a proposal to begin limiting potent greenhouse gas coolants known as hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs. It’s a significant step to curb climate change, as phasing down HFCs could help avoid roughly 0.5 degrees Celsius of warming.” The claim that…
May 6, 2021
Why the Federal Government Must Put More Money Toward Basic Science
A consensus is forming in Washington that the federal government is not doing enough to help American innovation. New research suggests that federal underinvestment is contributing to sluggish productivity and eroding America’s global competitiveness. Current public spending on research and development (R&D) stands at roughly $130 billion — dwarfed by the private sector’s more than $450 billion. This is…
April 30, 2021
The ‘temporary’ Biden Pause on Fossil-fuel Leasing on Federal Lands
During the presidential campaign Joe Biden offered the utterly incoherent promise to ban “new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters.” Soon after assuming the presidency, however, he stated clearly that “we’re not going to ban fracking” and, presumably, other forms of fossil-fuel production on federal lands. So, which is it? Answer: The “ban” will not…
April 22, 2021
Earth Day 2021: The Anti-human Core of ‘restore Our Earth’
It is Earth Day, the central religious holiday of environmental fundamentalism, and the official theme this year is “Restore Our Earth™,” purporting to focus on natural processes, emerging green technologies, and innovative thinking that can restore the world’s ecosystems. In this way, the theme rejects the notion that mitigation or adaptation are the only ways…
April 21, 2021
The SEC Demands a One-Size-Fits-All Climate “Risk” Disclosure System
Modesty is not a defining characteristic for numerous policy-makers in Washington, among them regulators asserting that climate “risks” are significant for individual firms and economic sectors—precisely how do they know?—and that, therefore, they must be reported so that investors can have more rather than less information. Allison Herren Lee, the acting Chairman of the Securities and…
April 15, 2021
Where We Are Headed: Making the US Poorer and OPEC+ Richer
The light at the end of the COVID tunnel is brightening, in substantial part as a result of the global inoculation effort, however slowly and unevenly. With this improving public-health outlook comes a prospective renewal of worldwide economic growth generally, and in industrial, commercial, and transportation sectors in particular. That would engender an expansion in the…
April 15, 2021
To Reshape Federal Science Funding, Lawmakers Should Look to the Past
With the end of the war against COVID-19 now in sight, the National Science Foundation has become a battleground in the fight over the future of federal science funding. Tucked away in President Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan is a $50 billion funding increase for the National Science Foundation (NSF) — over $40 billion more than the…
March 29, 2021
The Electrical Engineers Collide with the Climate Politicians
Having suffered for decades from natural disasters, perverse federal policies, local mismanagement and much more, the people of Puerto Rico are in need of reforms in many dimensions, prominent among them a modernized, efficient and reliable electric power system. And that need is more-or-less immediate, as the rickety commonwealth electricity system finally is operating, however…
March 1, 2021
The Electric-vehicle Campaign Comes to Minnesota
Electric vehicles are all the rage, in particular among public officials who do not have to face voters. Not so much among consumers, who know their individual needs and strive to make purchase decisions that satisfy them. These realities explain why the proponents of policies forcing ever more EVs upon the market prefer to implement such…