“It’s pointless to reduce carbon emissions inside Europe, to then import them from outside.” (Bruno Le Maire, Minister of the Economy and Finance, France)
“When I was our ambassador to the EU, I spent a lot of time on some very difficult trade issues. This could become the mother of all trade issues if not handled right.” (Richard Morningstar, Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center)
– Quoted in “How Europe’s Border Carbon Tax Plan Could Force the U.S. to Act on Climate Change,” Time, March 4, 2020.
Tariffs and quotas in the name of CO2 reduction, euphemistically called “border adjustments,” is the wolf at the international door. From the U.S. side, Joe Biden and other Democratic candidates have threatened such protectionism if elected. Part III of Biden’s Climate Plan states:
… Continue ReadingAs the U.S.
“The Green New Deal is a massive investment program, not an expenditure. The question isn’t how will we pay for it, but what is the cost of inaction, and what will we do with our new shared prosperity created by the investments in the Green New Deal.”
“The Green New Deal sets a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, at the end of this 10-year plan because we aren’t sure that we will be able to fully get rid of, for example, emissions from farting cows or air travel before then.”
It was an embarrassment–and, to my knowledge, the most ill-conceived energy proposal in the history of the United States by a wing of a major political party since the oil-industry nationalization proposals of the shortage 1970s (yes, Bernie was part of that).…
Continue Reading“[T]he American Institutionalist economist Clarence Ayres explained the exponential growth or proliferation of technical devices in light of the fact that ‘the more devices there are, the greater is the number of potential combinations.’
New and better technology, in turn, meant that natural resources were really ‘materials’ that could become ever more abundant as ‘natural resources are defined by the prevailing technology’ rather than what nature had made available to humanity.”
– Pierre Desrochers and Joanna Szurmak, “Seven Billion Solutions Strong.” February 7, 2020.
Boom! Add economist Clarence Ayres to the other Institutional-school economists explaining how economic progress is open-ended, and how progress sets the stage for ever more.
Such helps to explain, for example, the paradox of expanding ‘depletable’ minerals.
Simon and ‘Schools’ of Economics
Julian Simon reversed his thinking to realize that more people meant more resources and progress, not less.…
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