“[New York Governor] Hochul’s shift could become a blueprint for Democrats across the country as they desperately try to convince voters they’re aggressively tackling cost-of-living concerns — including energy bills — ahead of the midterm elections.” – Politico, March 7, 2026
Next time you hear that climate policies are affordable or that wind and solar save money, look out the window. What are consumers saying? What are politicians under affordability pressure saying? No quantity of studies or fearmongering about climate can refute what is happening in the real world. Energy prices, energy economics, matter.
NY Governor Kathy Hochul
Democrat politicians today are retreating from heady climate goals of the past. Consider this article in Politico, “‘Hurting peoples’ pocketbooks’: Hochul pushes to pare back landmark climate law.”
“The New York governor is pushing for changes to the state’s landmark climate law because of affordability concerns, reflecting a national clash between high energy prices and environmental goals,” Marie French reports, adding:
… Continue ReadingIt’s a major shift for Gov.
“Sadly, in Paul Sabin’s account, the main villain turns out to be the morally upstanding Simon who, fifteen years after his death, is blamed for creating policy logjams and fueling uncivil discourse. In the meantime, Paul Ehrlich keeps issuing ‘important warnings’ such as a recent prediction that humans might soon have to resort to cannibalism to survive the ecological apocalypse.”
The background and story of the famous bet between catastrophist biologist Paul R. Ehrlich and optimist economist Julian L. Simon was first told in some detail over twenty-five years ago by journalist John Tierney in the pages of the New York Times Magazine. The bet, ostensibly on the future prices of five commercially important metals – copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten – provided a platform upon which two opposing worldviews, that of Ehrlich’s depletionist catastrophism and Julian’s optimistic resourceship, confronted each other.…
Continue ReadingThis reprint from a collection of essays at Julian Simon.com is published in connection with the recent death of Paul R. Ehrlich (1932–2026). This piece was finalized in Simon’s treatise, The Ultimate Resource 2 (1996), pp. 604–607. Simon’s relative politeness to his adversary is a tribute to open, honest, and respectful debate (versus the infamous Ehrlich approach).
“When you launch a space shuttle you don’t trot out the flat-earthers to be commentators. They’re outside the bounds of what ought to be discourse in the media. In the field of ecology, Simon is the absolute equivalent of the flat-earthers.” (Paul Ehrlich, quoted below)
For economy of treatment of the matter of attack rhetoric, let’s focus on just one critic, Paul Ehrlich, who has directed a great deal of colorful language in my direction (see also his comments in the Afternote to Chapter 15, and my interchange with him in Simon, 1990, Selection 43).…
Continue Reading