[Ed. note: Dr. Grossman is author of the just-released U.S. Energy Policy and the Pursuit of Failure, an important and sobering tome with much insight about today’s debate.]
The U.S. government has claimed over the years one and one reason only for government intrusion into markets: Market failure. As a Carter administration document put it:
The first assumption for any commercialization activity by the government is that the market either has failed or will fail to make the optimum choice … [and] that the government policy maker can make a better selection than can the market.
Every administration has reiterated something like this. The Clinton administration made the point that the government needed to get involved in creating an 80-miles-per-gallon “supercar” because as the president claimed, “[T]here are a lot of things that we need to be working on that market forces alone can’t do.”…
Continue Reading“We were motivated by the public and political controversy fostered by alarming predictions of impending catastrophic anthropogenic global warming [at] NASA …. Many of us felt these alarming and premature predictions … would eventually damage NASA’s reputation for excellent and objective science and engineering achievement.”
The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) was established in 1990 in order to “assist the nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change.” Two reports have been released (2000 and 2009), and a third one is due out this year.
The whole (government) exercise from the beginning has been predictably politicized. The reports are a lawyer’s brief for climate alarmism and policy activism–complete with a call for expanded federal research dollars. But the lack of even-handedness with the physical science, no to mention the scientific method itself, has reached crisis proportions.…
Continue Reading“The energy and economic welfare of the United States and Mexico are intertwined by our shared geography, geology, and peoples. The Transboundary Hydrocarbon Agreement will help to tie our countries together and grow our economies.”
– Daniel Simmons, Testimony before House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, “U.S.-Mexico Transboundary Hydrocarbon Agreement and Steps Needed for Implementation,” April 25, 2013.
Mexico is America’s third largest trading partner and has been one of the largest sources of oil exports to the United States. Mexico is the largest recipient of U.S. gasoline exports and the second largest recipient of our natural gas exports.
The energy trade between the United States and Mexico is growing, especially for America’s finished petroleum and natural gas exports. Mexico’s heavy oil production is falling, but that means more spare refining capacity on the Gulf Coast if Canadian oil sands can be transported to the Gulf Coast.…
Continue Reading