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September 24, 2021
The Proposed Methane Fee: An All-downside Proposal
The Methane Emissions Reduction Act of 2021 has been proposed as a “pay-for” – a source of revenue – in the reconciliation infrastructure package. It would impose a “fee” on methane emissions from natural gas and petroleum production systems and related processes, but not on such emissions from agricultural and other operations. Accordingly, it is…
September 20, 2021
What We Really Know About Climate Change
The sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) continues a long history of alarmist predictions with the deeply dubious statement that human-caused climate change has now become “irreversible.” President Biden and many others have called climate change an “existential threat” to humanity; and Biden claimed in his inaugural address to have heard…
August 28, 2021
The Dubious Senate Proposal to Bail out Nuclear Powerplants
Costly economic distortions are an inexorable result of government bailouts for specific industries, the justifications for which are almost always deeply dubious. Consider section 3203 of the proposed Senate Energy Infrastructure Act. It would establish a $6 billion credit program over four years starting in fiscal year 2022 for nuclear electricity plants “projected to cease operations…
August 13, 2021
Should US Policies Transfer Our Wealth to OPEC+?
Incoherence is nothing new in the Beltway, but it’s still quite something to see the Biden administration simultaneously pursue new constraints on U.S. production of fossil fuels as a central component of its “climate” policies, while at the same time attempting to avoid the adverse price effects of that production stance. The administration on August 11…
August 2, 2021
Unmasking Scientific Expertise
In early February 1976, two cases of swine flu were discovered at Fort Dix in New Jersey. The Center for Disease Control identified the virus as Hsw1N1, similar to the one that caused the 1918 pandemic. Serologic testing indicated that the virus had spread to more than 200 recruits. The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices soon…
July 21, 2021
Green Infrastructure: Pass It and Then We’ll See What’s in It
With the August recess imminent, the congressional Democrats are desperate to spend huge sums of other people’s money, and “infrastructure” is as useful a rhetorical vehicle for that purpose as any. With their innumerable constituencies’ long wish lists hardly a secret, an infinitely elastic definition of “infrastructure” is a virtue born of necessity, one manifestation of…
July 13, 2021
Litigation Against Fossil Producers Is Litigation Against Energy Consumers and Voters
Supply and demand form the oldest and most powerful framework we have for analyzing price shifts for goods and services. Increase the cost of supplying a given good, and — presto! — its price will rise, imposing economic costs not only upon the producers but emphatically upon the consumers of the good. Which brings us to…
July 7, 2021
It’s Deeply Unserious to Suggest Global Warming Caused the Miami Condo Collapse
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm late last month “suggested it is possible climate change led to the partial condominium collapse in Miami, FL,” adding that “we don’t know fully” if it did or not, “but we do know that the seas are rising.” Yes, the seas are rising, as they have been for many centuries; the issue is…
June 21, 2021
Liberalism Is Not Enough
In both ends of the political spectrum, it seems liberalism has become démodé. From the traditionalist right, R. R. Reno of First Things proclaims, “[w]e’re afflicted by a liberal monoculture” characterized by a “double-pronged project of cultural and economic deregulation” that has eroded the solidarity needed to hold society together. From the left, Jacobin‘s Nicole Aschoff criticizes what she sees…
June 21, 2021
Is It Time for a US Department of Science?
The Biden administration made history earlier this year by elevating the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy to a cabinet-level post. There have long been science advisory bodies within the White House, and there are a number of executive agencies that deal with science, some of them cabinet-level. But this will be the first time in…