“[T]here is a second main factor that spawns new economic fallacies every day. This is the persistent tendency of men to see only the immediate effects of a given policy, or its effects only on a special group, and to neglect to inquire what the long-run effects of that policy will be not only on that special group but on all groups. It is the fallacy of overlooking secondary consequences.”
– Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson. quoted here.
At Cafe Hayek, economist Donald Boudreaux, Professor of Economics at George Mason University, wrote an open letter to Fox News host Bill O’Reilly’s opposition to exporting U.S. oil to other countries. O”Reilly has a populist streak, and he is prone to seeing the seen and not the unseen when it comes to economics, a sin indeed to economics as a science.…
“Advocates of renewable energy feel cornered by the gridlock in Congress and waning interest in climate change. But arguing that renewable energy is the best way to address economic or security concerns isn’t the way to prevail. It just focuses the debate on issues where fossil fuels are almost sure to win.”
– Severin Borenstein, “Making the Wrong Case for Renewable Energy,” Bloomberg, February 13, 2012.
Severin Borenstein, Professor of Business and Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, and director of the U.C. Energy Institute, is firmly in the camp of climate alarmism and public policy activism. In a recent op-ed, Borenstein argues that, absent the climate-change argument, the environmentalists are intellectually adrift trying to argue for their (politically correct) renewable energies–wind and solar (but not ethanol and hydroelectricity, mind you). …
[Editor note: This November 29, 2011, post is updated in light of the admission yesterday by climate activist Peter Gleick that he is the source of the stolen Heartland Institute documents. Gleick’s malfeasance continues the authoritarian, anti-intellectual behaviors exhibited by neo-Malthusians, most infamously revealed by Climategate, but also including the treatment of the late Julian Simon by Paul Ehrlich.
Updates on what is now being called GleickGate can be found on popular climate websites, including those of Andrew Revkin, Judith Curry, Watts Up With That, Climate Depot, and Climate Audit.]
I read all about it at Judith Curry’s blog (Breaking News: Gleick Confesses) and added this comment (now 250 and counting) at the midnight hour:
Wow–surely Peter Gleick understands that feedback effects are in dispute, and the difference influences the sign of the externality in terms of what some climate economists say (Robert Mendelsohn at Yale, for one).