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All Research

Environmental Policy: Benjamin Zycher Responds to His Critics
Article
Law & Liberty

Environmental Policy: Benjamin Zycher Responds to His Critics

I thank Jonathan H. Adler, Patrick Allitt, and William Dennis for their thoughtful and informative commentaries on my Liberty Forum essay on reforming U.S. environmental policy, in particular with respect to the National Environmental Policy Act…

Nigerian Officials Learn the Hard Way About Where Money Goes
Article
RealClearMarkets

Nigerian Officials Learn the Hard Way About Where Money Goes

Hope springs eternal, a human inclination affecting romance, dieting, new year’s resolutions, and a good deal more. International investing is prominent among the activities often influenced by a hope that…

Politicized Law Enforcement and the ExxonMobil White Whale
Book
The Hill

Politicized Law Enforcement and the ExxonMobil White Whale

The latest lawsuit against ExxonMobil (EM), filed by Acting New York State Attorney General Barbara Underwood, is straightforward: Got that? Underwood actually is arguing that EM should not concern itself…

Washington State Initiative 1631: A Carbon Tax and Wealth Redistribution to Favored Interests
Article
American Enterprise Institute

Washington State Initiative 1631: A Carbon Tax and Wealth Redistribution to Favored Interests

The Washington State electorate on November 6 will vote on Initiative 1631, a “pollution” tax on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the stated goal of which is an annual GHG emissions reduction reaching…

Hearken Sinners: The End Is Near
Article
American Enterprise Institute

Hearken Sinners: The End Is Near

Dog bites man. Baby cries. Water flows downhill. And the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says climate catastrophe is imminent. The new “Summary for Policymakers” of Global Warming…

Subsidies to Power Plants Are No Substitute for a National-security Plan
Article
National Review

Subsidies to Power Plants Are No Substitute for a National-security Plan

In an effort to deal with the market and non-market forces inflicting economic losses on coal- and nuclear-power plants, the Trump administration is seeking through regulation to force state and regional grid…

Washington Post Climate Reporters Beclown Themselves
Article
American Enterprise Institute

Washington Post Climate Reporters Beclown Themselves

They have translated the climate policy equivalent of the Dead Sea Scrolls. They have uncovered the smoking gun of smoking guns. They have provided final and convincing proof that the Trump…

Reforming U.S. Environmental Policy
Article
Law & Liberty

Reforming U.S. Environmental Policy

Environmental protection can be an important government function, in particular because private incentives, as reflected in market prices, often do not capture the full social value of environmental quality, or…

A Critique of Mark Perry on the Trump Energy Policy
Article
American Enterprise Institute

A Critique of Mark Perry on the Trump Energy Policy

My AEI colleague Mark J. Perry has written a short essay arguing that “Trump’s Energy Policy Is Deeply Flawed,” the central themes of which are: These arguments are rather uncharacteristic of…

The Curbelo Carbon Tax as Wealth Redistribution
Article
National Review

The Curbelo Carbon Tax as Wealth Redistribution

Environmental policy as a tool of wealth redistribution is nothing new. The latest example is a proposal for a greenhouse-gas (GHG) tax just introduced by Representative Carlos Curbelo (R., Fla.).…

State Attorneys General and the Climate Litigation Game
Article
Investor’s Business Daily

State Attorneys General and the Climate Litigation Game

The central broad objective of the U.S. constitution is the protection of unpopular individuals and political groups from the whims and passions of the political majority of the moment. It…

The Senate Finance Committee Minority on the Trump Tax Cuts and Gasoline Prices
Article
American Enterprise Institute

The Senate Finance Committee Minority on the Trump Tax Cuts and Gasoline Prices

Demand and supply. Supply and demand. That fundamental analytic framework, simple and powerful as a tool with which to examine the sources of shifts in market prices, often is forgotten…

The Fuel Economy Standards in Beltway Conventional Wisdom
Article
American Enterprise Institute

The Fuel Economy Standards in Beltway Conventional Wisdom

I betray no secret when I report that reverence for the silliness embodied in conventional wisdom is a central characteristic of policy debates in the Beltway. No amount of evidence,…

No-cost Climate Litigation and the Law of Unintended Consequences
Article
The Hill

No-cost Climate Litigation and the Law of Unintended Consequences

Editor’s Note: This post represents AEI Resident Scholar Benjamin Zycher’s original content and does not include edits found on the publishing site, The Hill. To access that version of the…

BP and the Earth Day Prayers of the Rent-seeking Corporation
Article
American Enterprise Institute

BP and the Earth Day Prayers of the Rent-seeking Corporation

Earth Day is upon us yet again, and it is difficult not to notice its transformation into a vehicle for corporate virtue signaling: Full-page ads in national and local print…