“While energy is needed to fuel a modern society, government should not be subsidizing any particular form of energy. We oppose all government control of energy pricing, allocation, and production.”
This week, the Green Party’s platform on climate and on energy was presented. Today, the Libertarian Party energy platform is reproduced. Adopted in July 2018, no changes were made at the 2020 Convention.
The LP platform is very brief compared to that of the Green Party. The general principle of private property rights, voluntary exchange, and the rule of law needs just a bit of elaboration. Beware of the prescriptive, in other words. Excerpts follow:
Preamble
As Libertarians, we seek a world of liberty: a world in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives and are not forced to sacrifice their values for the benefit of others.…
Continue Reading“In Green Party terms, acceptable energies are wind, solar, ocean, small-scale hydro, and geothermal power. Nuclear is out as much as oil, natural gas, and coal. So is ‘dirty clean energy,’ defined as ‘biomass incineration (trees, crops, construction debris and certain types of waste), landfill gas and many types of biofuels.'”
Yesterday’s post examined the Green Party’s climate platform for the 2020 election. The Green Party’s Emergency Green New Deal joins Biden’s Green New Deal and the OAC/Sanders Green New Deal, each is designed to eliminate fossil fuels and go to a new (really old) energy future.
In Green Party terms, acceptable energies are wind, solar, ocean, small-scale hydro, and geothermal power. Nuclear is out as much as oil, natural gas, and coal. So is “dirty clean energy,” defined as “biomass incineration (trees, crops, construction debris and certain types of waste), landfill gas and many types of biofuels.”…
Continue Reading“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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