A Free-Market Energy Blog

Green Party Platform: Climate Change (Part I)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 6, 2020

“Enact a Fee & Dividend system on fossil fuels to enable the free market to include the environmental costs of their extraction and use…. The carbon fee [tax] will initially be small, a dime per kilogram of carbon [1000x = $100 per metric ton], to avoid creating a shock to the economy. The fee will be increased by 10% each year….”

“[The US will] pay for adaptation to climate change in countries with less responsibility for climate change. Provide a carbon neutral development path for those countries that can no longer be permitted to develop in the same way we did—by burning cheap fossil fuels.”

The Green Party does not seem so radical anymore. Back in 2016, their climate/energy plank could be derided as soured pie-in-the-sky. But since the Green New Deal (GND) of 2019, it is pie in the face.…

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Democrat Socialists Rejecting Biden’s Move to Middle (Green Party bump?)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 5, 2020

“By refusing to embrace a fracking ban, Biden is following the well-trodden liberal path of rhetorically acknowledging the threat posed by climate change, while rejecting the measures necessary to actually deal with it. If he really believes, as per the language on his own official website, that ‘climate change is the greatest threat facing our country and our world’ he and other liberal politicians should start behaving like that threat is real.” [- Luke Savage (below)]

Joe Biden Is Wrong. Believing in Science Means Banning Fracking” by Luke Savage is a rare rebuke against the pro-fracking stance of Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden for private lands. Climate alarmist Andrew Dessler gave Biden a pass (maybe there is not a climate emergency after all!), as has far Left climate group 350.org,…

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“The Soft Case for Soft Energy” (Jerry Taylor’s past wisdom speaks to us today)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 1, 2020

“We find that the arguments marshaled to support the hypothesis that a transition to a soft energy economy is inevitable are riddled with economic errors and are thus less than compelling. Moreover, we can’t help but note that past predictions by soft energy advocates about the future of the energy economy have proven wildly incorrect.”

– Jerry Taylor and Peter VanDoren (1999)

Twenty-one years ago, Jerry Taylor and Peter VanDoren of the Cato Institute published a journal article, “The Soft Case for Soft Energy,” in a special issue of the Journal of International Affairs, Fueling the 21st Century: The New Political Economy of Energy (Fall 1999). This article remains sound and prescient, with political energies continuing to be government-dependent versus their superior rivals.

This 11,000-word, 101-footnote essay is the longest and most comprehensive of Jerry Taylor’s career–and the most notable journal article he has published.…

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The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (‘clean energy’ bonanza makes more stimulus unnecessary)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 30, 2020
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‘The Crisis of Interventionism’ (Mises’s wisdom 80 years ago speaks to government-forced energy transformation today)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 29, 2020
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Hunter Biden: Where are the Environmentalists? (fossil-fuel cronyism anyone?)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 28, 2020
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Climate Hustle 2 (‘Are They Trying to Control the Climate Or You?’)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 25, 2020
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Global Carbon Taxation for Redistribution (“last opportunity” for “game changing”)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 24, 2020
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Remembering Fair Reporting on Climate (Houston Chronicle circa 2010)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 23, 2020
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Oil & Gas In History: Some September Remembrances (from Civil War tax to OPEC founding)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 22, 2020
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