Breaking news Saturday in Paris from the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change: National leaders described the agreement finally reached as “an historic…
By Benjamin Zycher | December 15, 2015
I. Introduction The 21st Conference of the Parties (COP-21), the latest installment of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, begins today in Paris amid a feverish effort to achieve “binding” commitments by no…
By Benjamin Zycher | November 30, 2015
Good things come to those who wait, and the waiting is minimal when it comes to the endless stream of entertaining silliness offered by the U.N. climate-change bureaucracy. On November…
By Benjamin Zycher | November 6, 2015
I kid, of course: Silence is the last adjective one would use about climate policy, except with respect to such minor parameters as the actual benefits of various policy prescriptions…
By Benjamin Zycher | September 29, 2015
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…
By Benjamin Zycher | August 14, 2015
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.…
By Benjamin Zycher | August 5, 2015
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.…
By Benjamin Zycher | August 4, 2015
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…
By Benjamin Zycher | July 16, 2015
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…
By Benjamin Zycher | July 7, 2015
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.…
By Benjamin Zycher | June 17, 2015
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,…
By Benjamin Zycher | June 10, 2015
‘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.…
By Benjamin Zycher | June 7, 2015
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…
By Benjamin Zycher | April 28, 2015
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…
By Benjamin Zycher | April 21, 2015
Should you, dear readers, doubt that the climate empire strikes back at even the mildest qualifications of greenhouse gas (GHG) orthodoxy, merely consider a recent draft essay by Clifford Asness and Aaron…
By Benjamin Zycher | March 25, 2015