A Free-Market Energy Blog

AWED Energy & Environmental Newsletter: February 10, 2014

By -- February 10, 2014

The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested in improving national, state, and local energy & environmental policies. Our basic position is that technical matters like these should be addressed by using Real Science. It’s all spelled out at WiseEnergy.org, which is a wealth of energy and environmental resources.

A key element of AWED’s efforts is public education. Towards that end, every 3 weeks we put together a newsletter to balance what is found in the mainstream media about energy and environmental matters. We appreciate MasterResource for their assistance in publishing this information.

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Greed Energy Economics:

London School of Economics: Property Values do Decline

23 Texas wind project lessors sue over noise, nuisance and property value

Noise, property values factor in wind forum discussion

Renewable Energy Goals Must Be Balanced with Economic Realities

CAP counts ‘indirect jobs’ in green energy, ignores them for oil and gas

Germany to charge renewable energy facilities for their own use of electricity

Germany’s energy revolution on verge of collapse

Europe Starts To Run, Not Walk, Away From Green Economics

DOE: Making it easier to use taxpayer funds

Governor LePage is right – wind farm subsidies are poor use of government funding

High Renewable Energy Costs Damage Vermont’s Economy

Some wind projects double-dipping on US tax benefits

Be Leery of Investing in Failing Green Solutions

Duke Energy to seek reduction in payments to NC homes with solar panels

Solar Panel Degradation

Another solar manufacturer goes under

Loss Of Production Tax Credits Brings Big Wind Chill

Fighting wind PTC expiration with Senator Wyden

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“The Triumph of Capitalism” (Socialism is Intellectually Dead, but Central Planning in the Mixed Economy Lives On)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 7, 2014

“Less than 75 years after it officially began, the contest between capitalism and socialism is over: capitalism has won… Capitalism organizes the material affairs of humankind more satisfactorily than socialism.”

– Robert Heilbroner, “The Triumph of Capitalism,” The New Yorker, January 23, 1989, p. 98.

A major event in the history of political economy thought occurred in 1989 when socialist economics writer Robert Heilbroner (1919–2005) renounced his belief in central planning in the pages of the New Yorker. For anti-market liberals, this made it official: socialism was out of the mainstream. Socialism could not plan a modern economy and was an open sesame for totalitarianism. Hayek said as much in his 1944 classic, The Road to Serfdom. A trusted voice on the Left confirmed it 45 years later.

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‘Theft of the Subsoil’ (Guillermo Yeatts on Latin/South America mineral-rights reform)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 6, 2014

“[There is] a general economic maxim: public [government] resources are really private, owned and exploited by a political elite, while private resources are really public, owned and managed by a multitude. Government-owned resources do not ‘belong to all of the people’ and allow ‘self determination;’ they belong to none or a very few.”

– R. Bradley, Foreword to G. Yeatts, Subsurface Wealth: The Struggle for Privatization in Argentina (Foundation for Economic Education, 1997), pp. xv–xvi.

The recent reform of Mexico’s Constitution to allow private investment (up to $20 billion in production-sharing agreements) still leaves state-owned PEMEX with a legal monopoly for oil and gas development inside the country. But it is a start at reform that may turn into a deregulatory, privatization dynamic.

More, indeed, awaits to open the energy sector internal and external competition and to foreign investment in any amounts:

1) Competition to PEMEX in all oil and gas areas should be legalized;

2) PEMEX shares be allocated to the country’s private citizens;

3) Subsoil mineral rights should be assigned–with deed of title–to the (private) surface owners of land.…

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Flat Temperatures, Still More Ills

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 5, 2014
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Revisiting the Charter of the U.S. Department of Energy (reasons to abolish the agency)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 4, 2014
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Modern Transportation and Food: How Carbon-based Fuel Kept the ‘Third Horseman’ in Check

By Pierre Desrochers -- February 3, 2014
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‘Social Cost’ of Carbon vs. Climate Science

By Chip Knappenberger -- January 31, 2014
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California Energy Update: Part IV

By -- January 30, 2014
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The Not Given State of the Union Address (Freedom 101 over ‘the road to serfdom’)

By Richard Ebeling -- January 29, 2014
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Obama’s Path to the ‘Road to Serfdom”

By Richard Ebeling -- January 28, 2014
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