A Free-Market Energy Blog

The Injustice of “Environmental Justice”

By E. Calvin Beisner -- June 27, 2013

“Social justice is really simply injustice…. While true justice strives to conform to a universal, objective standard of right and wrong, according to which different behavior naturally leads to different outcomes, social justice strives for a changing, subjective, egalitarian outcome.”

“Last month, the EPA released for public comment an 81-pageDraft Technical Guidance for Assessing Environmental Justice in Regulatory Analysis,’” reports Cornwall Alliance Senior Fellow Dr. Steven F. Hayward:

The ‘technical guidance’ lays out a detailed framework for assessing the demographic and racial impact of regulations, such as how to identify minority populations at higher health risk. “Minority, low-income, and indigenous populations experience greater exposure and disease burdens that can increase their risk of adverse health effects from environmental stressors,” the guidance states.

Well, EPA got one part of that right.

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Peak Nonsense

By -- June 26, 2013

“The truth is that, just as so many did in the 1970s, a commodity cycle has been confused with a ‘new paradigm’ and (neo)Malthusian biases have cherry-picked data and made vague pronouncement (“the easy oil is gone”) with little more than some curve-fitting to support their conclusions.”

“We now have an elephant in the room, and its name is peak oil,” states Kjell Aleklett in an interview with James Morgan in ScienceOmega (June 10, 2013). Interviewer James Morgan adds: “Of course, it is possible to argue over the exact point at which global peak oil will arrive, but at some time in the not too distant future, we are going to have deal with this problem.”

And so here we go again on the trial of exhaustion theory, one step removed from the scientism of central planning where decline rates are projected and a social cost of depletion is calculated for an extraction tax.

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‘The Greening of Planet Earth’ (the 1992 video, updated in 1998, needs another update)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 25, 2013

“[M]any industry groups have maintained that putting carbon dioxide in the air would produce a general ‘greening’ of the planet. In fact, that’s the thesis of a famous 1992 video, “The Greening of Planet Earth,” which riled the environmental community more than just about anything else [because] … big-name scientists were willing to appear and argue that carbon dioxide will enhance global plant growth.”

– Patrick Michaels, Global Warming Produced a Greener, More Fruitful Planet, September 13, 2001.

Today, President Obama sounds the climate alarm and calls for more regulation of carbon dioxide (CO2). Throwing bad regulation after bad in the name of climate change is all about costs without commensurate benefits. Simple math shows that unilateral action by California or the U.S. or North American will not have a discernible influence on climate decades out.

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AWED Newsletter: June 24, 2013

By -- June 24, 2013
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Global Savings: Billion-Dollar Weather Events Averted by Global Warming

By Chip Knappenberger -- June 21, 2013
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Carbon Tax: Vote and Eviscerate (depoliticize, not repoliticize, energy)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 20, 2013
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American Lung Association’s Misguided Support for Wind Power

By -- June 19, 2013
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Frac Exaggeration, Wind Blindness: Southern Environmental Law Center’s Double Standard

By Charles Battig -- June 18, 2013
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FERC’s Wellinghoff: An Energy Technocrat Steps Down

By -- June 17, 2013
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Windaction News

By -- June 15, 2013
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