Solid analysis passes the test of time. I subject myself to this test regularly. So, on the 25th anniversary of my Cato Policy Analysis The Increasing Sustainability of Conventional Energy, I ask you the reader to see how my arguments from Earth Day 1999 stand up.
The executive summary and conclusion follow.
Environmentalists support a major phase‐down of fossil fuels (with the near‐term exception of natural gas) and substitution of favored “nonpolluting” energies to conserve depletable resources and protect the environment. Yet energy megatrends contradict those concerns. Fossil‐fuel resources are becoming more abundant, not scarcer, and promise to continue expanding as technology improves, world markets liberalize, and investment capital expands.
The conversion of fossil fuels to energy is becoming increasingly efficient and environmentally sustainable in market settings around the world. Fossil fuels are poised to increase their market share if environmentalists succeed in politically constraining hydropower and nuclear power.…
The perverse effort of some “free market” and “classical liberal” intellectuals to promote centrally planned electricity markets at wholesale (thus indirectly at retail) is a very curious example in the history of energy thought. Lynne Kiesling and Michael Giberson (see yesterday) are the guilty.
In AI and Economic Calculation (Substack), Kiesling explains the basics of the central-planning debate but ducks the elephant in her room, the centrally planned wholesale power market.
I have emphasized to Lynne Don Lavoie’s critique of noncomprehensive planning that went alongside his work on comprehensive planning, challenging her to forthrightly apply his argument to her beloved mandatory open access/Independent System Operator/Regional Transmission Organization (MOA/ISO/RTO) framework. The “knowledge problem” she champions reflects badly from her own mirror, if she would only see (impartial observer needed).…
“Giberson and Kiesling are all in with the Biden Agenda of the Production Tax Credit for industrial wind; the Investment Tax Credit for solar; pricing CO2, even if that means international ‘border adjustments.’ Two ‘classical liberals’ accepting rather than debating/criticizing climate alarmism and forced energy transformation? They should explain themselves rather than dodge, deflect, pretend.”
He steadfastly refuses to define what a free market is in electricity–and what the end state is for a classical liberal. Bonded with Lynne Kiesling, another pretend classical liberal when it comes to electricity, Michael Giberson can only claim to try to make the politicalized system better. And that is getting harder and harder to do.
Here is my latest exchange with Giberson on social media where he makes a specious argument that a regulated gasoline market at wholesale is analogous to a centrally planned electricity market.…