“If the private sector won’t build wind turbines without the credit, it’s time for America to rethink its approach to wind power and renewable energy in general…. Congress should abandon the idea of reviving the federal Wind Production Tax Credit, because it actually undermines efforts to make wind competitive.”
– George David Banks, R Street Institute (2014)
Back in October 2014, R Street Institute senior fellow George David Banks wrote a piece, ‘How the Wind Production Tax Credit Undermines Wind Power.” Banks, who is no longer with R Street, also wrote free-market blogs/op-ed’s against EPA’s ethanol mandate and Obama’s Clean Power Plan.
Given R Street’s recent seminar/lovefest with wind power (see MR’s post from last week, Energy Statism: R Street Hits New Low), Banks’s op-ed has new relevance.…
Continue Reading“A new ethic is needed for corporate America, one where cronyism, obvious or subtle, is uncovered, reported, and criticized by the media and the public. Corporations will do the right thing under the new norms of a free, civil society.”
Corporations can practice Principled Entrepreneurship™ wherein “good profits” are derived from private property rights and voluntary exchange. Common ethical standards are respected in this quest as well.
Or corporations can practice contra-capitalism, mixing rent-seeking (cronyism) with philosophic fraud and imprudence.
A major corporation, ExxonMobil, and a major trade association, the Edison Electric Institute, used their financial and membership powers at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to go contra-capitalist on the issue of a resolution challenging the science behind Obama’s 2009 Clean Power Plan.
As described by Sterling Burnett at Climate News:
A resolution calling on the U.S.…
Continue Reading“White’s failure to give the politically correct answer to heat storage in the ocean pales in comparison to the response of EPA Director Gina McCarthy in Senate testimony in 2005 when asked: ‘Is the temperature around the globe increasing faster than was predicted, even 10 years ago?’ McCarthy’s answer: ‘I can’t answer that question’.”
“Having a well-experienced, pragmatic, and scientifically literate head of the CEQ has fallen victim to political correctness, anti-scientific dogma, and political bullying.”
The Trump administration’s announcement last month to withdraw the nomination of Kathleen Harnett White to head the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) gives yet another example of Voltaire’s commentary on the intersection of politics and, in this case, science: “It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authority is wrong.”
White currently heads the energy and environmental program at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.…
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