“Our politicians should be seizing all eight of these opportunities. Instead, they are squandering them.”
Alex Epstein, who has emerged as perhaps the most important energy voice of 2016, has said:
“The 2016 election presents us with a once-in-a-lifetime energy opportunity–and energy danger. There is no middle ground. There can be no more standing down. It’s time to stand up.”
Back in January, Epstein, published an energy manifesto for this election year. In case you missed it, here are his eight policy areas with prescriptions.
1. Jump-start the American economy
Our challenge: We have been mired in recession or near-recession for a decade—and without the energy industry it would be much, much worse.
Our opportunity: The same industry that has kept us out of desperate trouble can bring us to new heights, by producing and selling energy around the world.…
“After this Waxman/Markey bill reached 3500 pages in length I stopped counting. Every lobbyist who could raise his arm to write a paragraph got it stapled into the bill. Legislators were paying off the people who paid them off. That’s the way our Washington politics seems to work.”
– James Hansen, “Canadian Common Sense.” May 16, 2016.
As U.S. states and foreign jurisdictions contemplate or implement cap-and-trade regimes as their preferred way to price carbon dioxide (CO2), it is good to see James Hansen raise his voice–again–on the issue. One only wishes that Hansen, the father of the global warming scare twenty-six years ago, would come out for market adaptation over cap-and-trade as his second-best option.
Hansen is upset that politicians are telling him to forget his carbon tax (fee-and-dividend) idea.…
“I will not support or endorse a carbon tax!”
– Trump Tweet, May 13, 2016
“A Donald Trump presidency would be an environmental disaster.”
– League of Conservation Voters, May 5, 2016
The other side is screaming already. The presumptive Republican nominee for the next president of the United States is proving himself to be better than some Republicans, and even a few self-styled libertarians, in his wholesale rejection of climate alarmism and its public-policy corollary, government-forced energy transformation. (For Trump’s broader energy views, see here.)
Trump’s unequivocal policy follows another development: the rejection of a carbon tax as trade bait for abolishing climate regulation (see Robert Murphy’s post, Vox Admits There Will Be No Carbon Tax Deal).
Right and left–CO2 emission taxation deserves a speedy burial at the (misnamed) Niskanen Institute, where libertarian scholarship seems to be missing.…