Upon a Congressional declaration of “the public interest” and to “promote the general welfare,” the Department of Energy Organization Act of 1977 centralized the federal government’s energy functions. The new agency was premised on five beliefs:
DOE’s rationale of market failure and government success has flipped. Today, it is government failure and market success. Oil and gas are more abundant now than 37 years ago; oil imports are decreasing to levels thought impossible just a decade ago; politically correct renewable energy remains uneconomic (note the wind industry’s dogged pursuit of the production tax credit); and mandated conservation has present costs and speculative future benefits (hence the coercion).…
Continue Reading“Anti-petroleum activists would have us give up on long-distance trade and the food security inherent to the reliance on multiple suppliers based in a wide variety of geographical locations. Far from keeping the third horseman at bay, their carbon dioxide obsession will bring him back with a vengeance.”
Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The Long Winter (1940) is generally regarded as the most historically accurate book of her Little House on the Prairie series. It tells the story of how her family and the other inhabitants of DeSmet, South Dakota—but then the Dakota Territory—narrowly avoided starvation during the severe winter of 1880-81. That year, after a lean harvest, a series of blizzards dumped more than 11 feet of snow and immobilized trains on their tracks, in the process cutting off the settlers from the rest of the United States.…
Continue Reading“The determination of the social cost of carbon (SCC) as made by [federal agencies] is discordant with the best scientific literature on the equilibrium climate sensitivity and the fertilization effect of carbon dioxide—two critically important parameters for establishing the net externality of carbon dioxide emissions…. The [federal government] should act not just to revise the current determination of the SCC, but to suspend its use in all federal rulemaking.”
– Patrick Michaels and Chip Knappenberger (Center for the Study of Science, Cato Institute). “Comment on ‘Technical Support Document, Technical Update of the Social Cost of Carbon for Regulatory Impact Analysis Under Executive Order 12866’,” January 27, 2014.
Federal legislative attempts to price and regulate carbon dioxide have failed. Cap-and-trade, which passed the House in 2009, died the next year in the Senate.…
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