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
Over the Thanksgiving weekend the Trump administration released Volume 2 of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, eliciting the usual array of apocalyptic predictions from the media about the fate of mankind should we fail…
By Benjamin Zycher | November 29, 2018
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…
By Benjamin Zycher | November 9, 2018
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…
By Benjamin Zycher | November 2, 2018
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…
By Benjamin Zycher | October 29, 2018
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…
By Benjamin Zycher | October 29, 2018
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…
By Benjamin Zycher | October 22, 2018