When asked if a carbon tax was preferable to EPA regulations on greenhouse gases, David Kreutzer, a research fellow with the Heritage Foundation who sat on yesterday’s panel, described the question as a trap.
…It’s like asking me what’s the most humane way to execute innocent people …. When conservatives talk about a carbon tax, the headline says, “Conservative supports carbon tax,” So I’m not going to be drawn into this fantasy world where we speculate on what might happen when we know it won’t, when it gives people ammo to misrepresent what I said.
So no, a carbon tax is not preferable to EPA regulations.
– Evan Lehmann, “Conservatives Attack Each Other Over Carbon Tax Plans,” ClimateWire, July 18, 2013.
“[Ken] Green delighted his mostly conservative audience by comparing a carbon tax to a vampire who must be staked, beheaded and sprinkled over water — ‘preferably holy water’.”
“When the history of the global warming scare comes to be written, a chapter should be devoted to the way the message had to be altered to keep the show on the road. Global warming became climate change so as to be able to take the blame for cold spells and wet seasons as well as hot days. Then, to keep its options open, the movement began to talk about ‘extreme weather’.”
– Matt Ridley, “Nobody Even Calls the Weather Average,” July 9, 2013.
There is no link between global warming and Sharknado, tweats U.S. EPA. But this summer, global warming has been blamed for firefighter deaths, more thunderstorms, and poor lobster catches. The litany of abnormalities that is so big and broad that contradictions, not only prima facie absurdities, abound.…
“The oil and gas boom has revealed a shortage of skilled labor. Some educational institutions are responding. But should the industry itself enter into the educational field and form for-profit training programs? Such would further remove the need for government (taxpayer) education, a win-win for the economy.”
Julian Simon said it first and best: the scarcest resource is human capital. His proof? The rising cost of labor relative to other inputs, even so-called depletable resources. And such is a mighty tribute to capitalism, as David Boaz noted.
A recent article in the Houston Chronicle, “San Jacinto College’s fast-track pipefitting fabricator program responds to industry need“ (Cheryl P. Rose, June 28, 2013) made me think of Simon, the hydrocarbon-energy boom, and the purpose of education.
We will soon have the Internet capability of getting a world class education at virtually zero marginal cost.…