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August 14, 2015
Solving the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority Debt Problem
Puerto Rico and its various government entities owe creditors $72 billion, an enormous debt that Gov. Alejandro García Padilla has described as “unpayable.” Over 11 percent of that total is owed by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), now in negotiations with its creditors to reduce and to stabilize its debts over the long…
August 5, 2015
President Obama’s Clean Power Plan: All Cost, No Benefit
On Monday President Obama announced the final “clean power plan” regulation for greenhouse gas emissions from electric generating plants, the centerpiece of the broader Climate Action Plan being implemented by the Environmental Protection Agency. Amid the many assertions about the looming climate crisis confronting “the planet,” about which more below, one central parameter was conspicuous by its absence. To wit: What…
August 4, 2015
Crude Oil Exports and the Price of Gasoline
Government policies virtually without exception create economic distortions, so that policy reform can yield results highly counterintuitive. That is the case with the emerging effort to end the current U.S. ban on the export of crude oil, enacted as part of the 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act. The ban was justified as a tool…
July 16, 2015
The Inconvenient Truth About Climate Policy
Climate change is a manmade crisis, and so the need to implement sharp reductions in greenhouse gas emissions is paramount. That summarizes the constant drumbeat of conventional wisdom, which raises an interesting question: If the Obama administration’s Climate Action Plan – a 17 percent reduction in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 – were to be implemented immediately, what temperature reduction…
July 7, 2015
Pope Francis, Environmentalists, and Economists on Human Stewardship of the Earth
The many dominant media reports on Pope Francis’ new papal encyclical letter, “Laudato Si’” (“On Care for Our Common Home”), make it clear that the encyclical represents an endorsement of the conventional (or mainstream environmental) view of anthropogenic climate change, with explicit papal support for “enforceable international agreements” (¶173) to deal with the purported attendant adverse future effects. And,…
June 17, 2015
Time to End Federal Interference with Free Trade in Crude Oil
The current ban on exports of U.S. crude oil was enacted as part of the 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act, and was justified on the basis of two fallacies. First: That the 1973 Arab OPEC oil “embargo” was the cause of higher oil prices and the gasoline lines and other market disruptions experienced in…
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…