“As our grassroots activists would attest, the current energy crisis demands a radical rethinking of the administration’s current energy policy. Higher energy costs will soon ripple through the economy and increase the price of nearly everything Americans buy.” (AFP)
“The government should burn its ‘club in the closet.’ It is disingenuous to believe that smiling Biden, Kerry, Granholm, Regan, Haaland, et al. have any intention but harming the fossil-fuel industries they are pretending to like in a desperate political hour.” (RLB)
People want affordable, reliable, accessible energy now and in the future. They do not want expensive, unreliable, government-chosen energies.
This simple energy-for-the-masses message was reiterated in a recent letter from Brent Gardner, Chief Government Affairs Officer, Americans for Prosperity, to President Biden.
AFP is a 50-state multi-issue grassroot organization composed of “millions of voices across the country united by the principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence, who are committed to empowering every American to realize their American Dream and move our country forward together.”…
“This letter to Biden is a very mixed bag of legalize and subsidize. It is hardly free market; it is a testament about how some Republicans and conservative Democrats are playing the government welfare game in a time of political defensiveness.”
Classical liberalism explains and justifies voluntary transactions between consenting adults. The framework is private property rights, the rule of law, and government abstinence, or neutrality.
Applied to civilian energy, the government should not research, commercialize, subsidize, or penalize. Government should buy energy for its usage, not requisition it. Market transactions should not be subject to price controls, allocation controls, or differential taxation. Jawboning by government officials toward non-market ends should be avoided too.
This background is necessary to parse a March 10, 2022, letter to Joe Biden from two Republicans, one (Trumpian) Democrat, and one Independent.…
“Corporate policy makers entering the fray should be guided by two principles…. First, mandatory GHG programs should be rejected in favor of voluntary approaches…. Second, voluntary actions by corporations should not go beyond win-win ‘no regrets’ initiatives. Control practices that are uneconomic penalize either consumers or stockholders and politicize the issue of corporate responsibility.”
– Robert Bradley, “Climate Alarmism and Corporate Responsibility.” Electricity Journal, August/September 2000.
It was called corporate social responsibility (CSR). Today, it has morphed into Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG).
Upon the election of Donald Trump, the environmental Left redoubled its effort to politicize business on the climate issue. The subtitle to an early 2017 article in Yale Climate Connections, for example, “Business Leadership on Climate Seen as Key,” read: “With expectations of a much lower federal leadership role on controlling carbon emissions, key sectors of business community seen by some as maintaining momentum.”…