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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…
January 12, 2018
The Children’s Climate Lawsuit Against the Children
Litigation may be as American as apple pie, but some lawsuits are so destructive that they stand out even among the hugely expensive wreckage wrought by our legal system. The most prominent current example is the “children’s” climate lawsuit (Juliana v U.S.): A group of kids, including “future generations, through their guardian Dr. James Hansen,”…
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…
August 7, 2017
The High Cost of Unreliable Power
The climate obsessions of the Obama administration yielded a substantial myopia with respect to the other central goals of energy policy, the cost and reliability of the electric power system in particular. One obvious result of that single-minded focus was a concerted effort to ignore several unavoidable trade-offs, as the push proceeded for expansion of…
August 3, 2017
Wasteful Subsidies for Me and Thee, Not for That Fossil Guy Behind the Tree
Sometimes leftist environmentalists have a point. For instance, they argue that oil subsidies are wasteful and should be abolished. Unfortunately, they typically pollute their sound argument with gross inconsistency and unwarranted alarmism. Oil Change International, a group of mainstream leftist environmental pressure organizations, has published two recent papers complaining that the G20 governments, through international and national development…