“Climate change is likely to increase the frequency of warmer winters and low snowpack.”
– Ben Chou (Natural Resources Defense Council), “California Needs Proactive Ways to Deal with Drought,” EnergyNewsData.com, April 3, 2015.
“Nature makes drought; man makes water shortages. Government water conservation policies, misinformed by the environmentalist ideology of the NRDC, are worsening the water shortage.” (below)
Ben Chou’s March 31, 2015 column on the Natural Resources Defense Council’s “Switchboard” website, cross posted on April 3rd at EnergyNewsData.com, requires rebuttal if we are going to deal with the California drought empirically and not ideologically.
Chou correctly writes that California’s April 2015 snowpack is indicative of the amount of water that can be carried forward into the hot summer months. Even so, water supplies are measured in California over a 5- and 10-year meteorological cycle.…
Continue Reading“It is encouraging that eco-modernists ‘reject the planning fallacy of the 1950s.’ However, they still ’embrace a strong public role in addressing environmental problems and accelerating technological innovation.’ So their rejection of top-down development and innovation is only partial.”
The New York Times has published a remarkable article. Remarkable for the Times, that is. It has taken to task the United States and other developed countries for engaging in heavy-handed eco-imperialism.
The impetus for the article is a new infrastructure development bank being created by China that will begin operations at the end of the year. Such a bank could, as noted by the Times, rival the World Bank and other development banks controlled by the United States. Indeed, the Obama administration initially encouraged countries not to join the bank, arguing that it could undermine the World Bank. …
Continue Reading“The PTC was intended to be a temporary subsidy for a fledgling industry, but has morphed into a massive handout for large corporations, many of which are foreign owned—all at the expense of the American taxpayers. It’s a textbook case of corporate welfare…. It’s past time for the wind industry to sink or swim on its own merits.”
– Thomas Pyle (American Energy Alliance), “PTC Elimination Act Protects American Families,” April 22, 2015.
This week, Representatives Kenny Marchant and Mike Pompeo introduced H.R. 1901 to eliminate the Production Tax Credit (PTC), a subsidy for qualifying renewable energy (mainly wind power) that has been extended time and again since its enactment in 1992. The bill would tighten eligibility requirements for new wind projects, terminate the inflation adjustment provision saving taxpayers about 35 percent, and repeal the underlying statute to end all credits for existing projects by 2025.…
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