Halloween Thoughts from Obama’s Science Advisor

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 31, 2014

“Some form of ecocatastrophe, if not thermonuclear war, seems almost certain to overtake us before the end of the [twentieth] century.”

– John Holdren and Paul Ehrlich[1]

Doom and gloom—and falsity—hallmarks the long career of John P. Holdren, neo-Malthusian and President Obama’s initial and still science advisor. Halloween Holdren has been quiet with the outlandish in recent years–he does not want to embarrass his boss–but his many quotations beginning in the 1970s, never disowned, remain for the record.

Today is a good time to refresh memories of the man who just might be the scariest presidential advisor in U.S. history!

Read—but don’t be frightened. The sky-is-falling gloom of Holdren, his mentor Paul Ehrlich, and others is in intellectual and empirical trouble. From Julian Simon to Bjorn Lomborg to Indur Goklany to Matt Ridley to Marlo Lewis to Alex Epstein, the technological optimists have the upper hand in a debate that continues to rage.…

“Voltage Collapse and Blackout Conditions”: EPA’s Power Plant Rule Trashed by SPP

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 28, 2014

“As a result of the assumed EPA retirements with no resource additions, the SPP network was so severely stressed by large reactive deficiencies that the software used in the analysis was unable to produce meaningful results, which is generally indicative of voltage collapse and blackout conditions.”

– Southwest Power Pool, “Reliability Impact Assessment of the EPA’s Proposed Clean Power Plan,” October 8, 2014.

The states and their multistate organizations are weighting in against the Obama administration’s proposed new regulations aimed at reducing emissions from existing electric powerplants 30 percent from their 2005 levels by 2030. They are doing the math, and both cost and reliability are computing negatively.

Last week, MasterResource highlighted pushback from the Virginia State Corporation Commission, which stated: “As currently drafted, the carbon emission rates that EPA proposes for Virginia are arbitrary, capricious, and unlawful.…

‘Energy Independence’: A Dirty Dozen (Economist Grossman’s list)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 27, 2014

Open international borders create mutually beneficial trading relationships that promote peace and prosperity. Tariffs, quotas, and other forms of protectionism and nationalism create conflict and lower living standards for all.

In our imperfect world of state-owned energy companies, some being U.S. foes, the imperative is policy reform toward private property rights, market exchange, and the rule of law. This is the real sustainability issue, not the exaggerated issue of anthropogenic climate change from carbon-based energy usage.

Private ownership of the subsoil, and privately owned energy infrastructure otherwise, would create wealth compared to the current system of political elitism. Private, dispersed wealth, such as initially assigning mineral rights to surface owners, such as proposed by Guillermo Yeatts, whose views are summarized in my post, “‘Theft of the Subsoil’: Guillermo Yeatts on Latin/South America mineral-rights reform,” would increase personal power and civil society, while reducing state power.…