Editor Note: This morning, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hear testimony about energy from a philosophical perspective. Alex Epstein is a panelist at the hearing, Examining the Role of Environmental Policies on Access to Energy and Economic Opportunity. Other speakers are Father Robert A. Sirico, President, Acton Institute; Major General (Ret.) Robert Scales, Senior Military Analyst; Michael Breen, President & CEO, Truman National Security Project; and Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson II, Director, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
His opening comments as submitted follow (subtitles have been added).
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The energy industry is the industry that powers every other industry. To the extent energy is affordable, plentiful, and reliable, human beings thrive. To the extent energy is unaffordable, scarce, or unreliable, human beings suffer.
And yet in this election year, the candidates, especially the Republican candidates, have barely discussed energy.…
Continue ReadingA simple principle of economics is that value is subjective. Prices, and thus profit and loss, come from the (subjective) value that market participants place on goods and services. So if costs are greater than the revenues of a product, then economic value is lost; if revenues are greater than the cost, economic value is created.
Enter recycling, which has turned (even more so) into an economic loser in the current era of low commodity prices. What this means is that the cost of sorting and transforming trash into useful products is less than the revenue–and recycling should not be done.
And as the distinguished resource scholar Pierre Desrochers has explained, [1] recycling has been a loser for decades:
… Continue ReadingDomestic waste recycling has long been a money loser ever since plastics came along.
“Citing the iconic U.S. inventor and businessman Thomas Edison, who is credited for building the first modern power station on lower Manhattan’s Pearl Street in 1892, [Secretary of State John] Kerry said Edison would view today’s deployment of clean energy technology as evidence that ‘an energy revolution that he dreamt about is actually underway’.”
– Daniel Cusick, “Kerry Decries ‘Politics, Sheer Politics’ of Climate Denial,” ClimateWire,
John Kerry probably has a speechwriter. And that speechwriter is no doubt trying to come up with some new angle to make an energy/climate point for the boss.
But if Kerry thinks that Edison was dreaming about wind and solar to generate (intermittent) electricity, I would at least like to know about the source. The dreaming might have been speechwriter/Kerry for Thomas Edison, not Thomas Edison for speechwriter/Kerry.…
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