… Continue Reading“A dispassionate observer might be forgiven for concluding that FWS’s new proposal, which never even acknowledges the rationale for its earlier 30-year rule, is still designed actually to accommodate the wind energy industry, rather than to protect eagles.”
“ABC questions whether the sacrifice of millions of our Nation’s ecologically important birds and bats justifies building any large, commercial wind energy facility in an area with high concentrations of birds and bats.”
“Individuals who kill federally protected eagles or possess their parts can be fined as much as $250,000 per bird and spend up to two years in jail. The FWS’s revised rule, however, gives the wind industry a free pass to kill thousands of eagles with little or no consequence. What’s more, the public is not going to be able to find out how many eagles are actually being killed.”
The following questions and answers were posted by The Atlas Society in conjunction with their upcoming Atlas Summit next week. Other posts at MasterResource on the philosophy of Objectivism and its application to energy can be found here.
Elsewhere, Alex Epstein of the Center for Industrial Progress is fully engaged in the climate and energy debates, employing the philosophy of Ayn Rand and her belief that truth is objective, discernible, and applicable to matters of everyday life. Through the work of Bradley and Epstein, Rand’s voice from decades ago resounds in today’s discussions of man’s need for plentiful energy.
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1) Tell us who you are? What’s the couple of sentence summary of what you do and what you’ve done?
I am a classical-liberal intellectual, or at least a student of classical liberalism.…
Continue Reading“Politically-directed billions of dollars of subsidies for wind and solar power invite corruption and will likely drive energy prices higher, debt-loads deeper, and allow heavily-polluting older coal factories and power plants to continue operation when they would otherwise be replaced by cost-effective natural gas combined-cycle power. This is surely an unintended consequence for consumers, taxpayers, and the environment.”
Wind and solar power subsidies jolted and damaged European economies, especially Spain and Italy. China’s economy received a similar jolt in 2015. But did U.S. trade policy encourages Chinese government subsidies for not-quite-ready wind and solar power projects?
Consider this 2010 article on costly Spanish solar subsidies passed during the administration of socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero.
… Continue ReadingZapatero introduced the subsidies three years ago as part of an effort to cut his country’s dependence on fossil fuels.