Editor note: A 2008 exchange at Rossputin.com included these comments from (then) Cato Institute senior fellow Jerry Taylor and his brother James Taylor. Their arguments continue to stand today, defying Jerry’s peculiar conversion to climate alarmism/forced energy transformation.
Jerry Taylor:
“… let me note that there are very good reasons for people (not just libertarians) to be skeptical of expert scientific consensus regarding environmental doom given the track record of that community.”
“Consensus from [the alarmist] community once told us that industrial chemicals were the cause of a modern cancer epidemic; that population growth would outpace food production and usher in a Malthusian apocalypse; that mineral scarcity would soon turn off the industrial engines of the Western world; ad infinitum.”
“Conspiracy theories are not necessary to explain the proliferation of such views – information cascades and professional biases will do nicely.”…
“What is needed is universally affordable air conditioning, which means inexpensive power to run the units. The Green New Deal and, specifically, a carbon tax, whether during the summer cooling peak or the winter heating peak, is a death wish for humane, comfortable living.”
Red, white, and blue Americans should stay comfortable this summer and not heed calls for voluntary A/C conservation. Ditching self-interest is a step on the road to energy serfdom where “carbon guilt” is adjunct to mandatory policies. Citizen voters should be clear: affordable, plentiful free-market energy comes before sacrificial political energy.
Media Spin
The mainstream media, pushing climate alarmism doubly as an anti-Trump meme, is focused on heat waves and the irony of increased CO2 emissions from more air conditioning.
“Historic heat wave is double whammy for climate change,” reads The Hill.…
At 41, [James Rogers] was named CEO of PSI Energy Inc., a small, financially troubled Indiana utility. Breaking ranks with others in the electric-power industry, he supported legislation putting caps on sulfur-dioxide emissions. “Some of my guys thought I was drinking the environmental Kool-Aid,” he said later. “But I said, ‘Let’s shape this, let’s make some money.’”
– James Hagerty, “Jim Rogers, Head of a Coal-Burning Utility, Crusaded Against Global Warming.” Wall Street Journal, December 20, 2018.
“I made money on sulfur [dioxide], and I’ll make money on carbon [dioxide].”
– James Rogers. Quoted in Eric Pooley, “The Smooth-Talking King of Coal–and Climate Change.” Bloomberg Businessweek, June 3, 2010.
James Eugene “Jim” Rogers Jr. (1947–2018) was a notable political capitalist (rent seeker) of the late 20th/early 21st century electricity market.…