October 10, 2024
The Clean Energy Transition’s Voter Problem
The future of the clean energy transition is cloudy. It’s well-known that there are disagreements—wide disagreements—between Republicans and Democrats about our energy future. But less well-known is the bedrock of public opinion on America’s energy supply, the importance of a rapid transition away from fossil fuels, and the general salience of the climate change issue….
September 16, 2024
Is Joe Biden the “Drill, Baby, Drill” President?
My AEI colleague Roger Pielke Jr. argues in a recent post that “Joe Biden Is the ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ President,” by virtue of the time trend for U.S. oil production on federal lands (onshore and offshore) for 2008-2023. In summary, Pielke reproduces the data on oil production from federal lands as reported by the U.S….
July 30, 2024
Observations on the Pomerleaus’ New Argument for a Carbon Tax
Summary My colleagues Kyle Pomerleau and Shuting Pomerleau propose a “carbon”(greenhouse gas emissions) tax as a fiscal tool with which to finance an extension of theindividual income tax reductions implemented in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Theyargue that such a tax would improve aggregate economic efficiency, in particular byreducing the purported negative externalities…
July 17, 2024
Sen. Whitehouse’s Attacks on Fossil Energy Producers Are Incoherent
It might seem difficult to take positions on a prominent issue diametrically opposed and equally preposterous. But Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a man whose Pavlovian opposition to the U.S. fossil energy producers has led him into incoherence rare even by Beltway standards, has achieved just such a magical trick. Whitehouse, the chairman of the Senate…
May 29, 2024
Managers of Large Public Retirement Funds Need to Grow a Backbone
Oh, what a tangled web they weave when first the managers of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and the New York State Common Retirement Fund practice to have it both ways. The problem is the demand from the environmental Left that the retirement funds divest from fossil fuel producers. On the one hand, the fund managers have legally enforceable fiduciary…
May 14, 2024
Another Day, Another Mindless Attack on Fossil Energy Producers
It is another day ending in “y” in the Beltway, and with it we have another “climate crisis” attack on the oil and gas companies — the very ones that produce efficient energy for the great mass of Americans and, indeed, the world. The latest example of this game of pin the climate blame on the energy…
May 14, 2024
Letter to the Editor: From Green Innovation to Climate Socialism
In an otherwise useful reminder of why the much-ballyhooed “transition” to unconventional energy won’t happen anytime soon—because the massive attendant costs can’t be borne by most of the world’s people confronted by the difficult realities of eking out a living—Bjorn Lomborg (“When the Only Problem Was Climate,” op-ed, May 9) nonetheless tries to have it both…
May 7, 2024
How Serious Are They? Colorado Leftists Sold Out Their Climate Commitments for a Paltry $140M
That the environmental left is relentless is not news, but the current machinations on policies intended to suppress fossil energy production in Colorado are fascinating. Under a compromise being negotiated between Gov. Jared Polis (D), the state’s oil and gas producers and the environmental left, production fees estimated at $140 million per year (based on future crude oil and…
April 28, 2024
We Must End the Litigation Doom Loop
A federal judge recently issued an injunction to block the approval of a powerline that would have connected 161 renewable energy projects to the electric grid, providing more clean energy to consumers in Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin. This is the second time this project, known as the Cardinal-Hickory transmission line, has been blocked by an injunction in…
April 22, 2024
Earth Day 2024: How Plastic Can the Enviros Get?
It is Earth Day 2024, an annual exercise in self-applause that always is too much fun because of the inanities, hypocrisies, mendacities, and sheer stupidity of the Earth Day slogans, arguments, propaganda, and exhortations. And also because of the embarrassing spectacle of long queues of corporate officials and public relations gasbags desperate to advertise their environmental bona fides so that the green alligators might eat them last. The Earth Day slogan for…