One number is needed to illustrate the absurdity that is the Paris climate agreement: 0.17 degree Celsius. That is the temperature reduction in 2100 attendant upon the Paris greenhouse gas…
By Benjamin Zycher | November 12, 2019
Attorneys General are supposed to enforce the rule of law. They are not supposed to use lawsuits to achieve policy outcomes not enacted by the legislature. They are not supposed…
By Benjamin Zycher | November 11, 2019
I wrote recently about the new report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released as a “Summary for Policymakers” of “Global Warming of 1.5°C,” a deeply politicized document that makes the…
By Benjamin Zycher | November 1, 2019
“Renewable” electricity — predominantly wind and solar power — is all the rage, described by numerous commentators, politicians, pundits, journalists, and other such “experts” as cost-competitive, clean, and a major…
By Benjamin Zycher | October 12, 2019
My friend and former colleague Irwin M. Stelzer has written a short but interesting essay on climate policy, arguing that by asking the right question we will be oriented toward a useful…
By Benjamin Zycher | October 10, 2019
The House Subcommittee on Investor Protection, Committee on Financial Services, held a hearing earlier this month on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure rules and possible legislation requiring the Securities and Exchange…
By Benjamin Zycher | July 18, 2019
Various news reports and self-serving political pronouncements would have us believe that imposition of a tax on “carbon” — emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) — now enjoys growing support among…
By Benjamin Zycher | July 8, 2019
You can’t beat something with nothing, according to ancient Beltway wisdom, an outlook guaranteed to yield an inexorable increase in the size, cost, and destructiveness of government, even as it…
By Benjamin Zycher | May 6, 2019
When last we visited the topic of Nigerian energy markets and happenings, the reason that Nigeria simultaneously is energy-rich and energy-poor was illustrated by the ongoing tug of war between the Nigerian…
By Benjamin Zycher | April 30, 2019
President Donald Trump on June 1, 2017, announced that the US would exit from the international agreement on the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reached at the 21st Conference…
By Benjamin Zycher | April 29, 2019
Let us behold the “debate” over climate policy now unfolding at the European Union Parliament. Its most prominent feature is a serious effort to deny ExxonMobil (EM) the ability to lobby on climate policy…
By Benjamin Zycher | April 10, 2019
Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to meddle in energy markets. The latest tangle began when the federal government and a large number of state…
By Benjamin Zycher | March 25, 2019
Natural resources are an important component of national wealth, and the efficient allocation and use of those resources is an economic process yielding enormous benefits for ordinary people. Also axiomatic…
By Benjamin Zycher | February 28, 2019
The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade promises to continue the large economic benefits of the earlier North American Free Trade Agreement, but one threat to those benefits has emerged in the…
By Benjamin Zycher | January 23, 2019
Unintended consequences are a longstanding effect of public policies, an eternal truth seemingly invisible to one generation after another of policymakers eager to improve upon the economic arrangements emerging from…
By Benjamin Zycher | December 17, 2018