[Ed. note: An important front in the energy-policy debate concerns the moral case for rich, dense, plentiful, reliable energy that is handmaiden to industrial society. In addition to the post below, see the contributions of Alex Epstein at this site.]
The duplicity and hypocrisy of environmental pressure groups seem to be matched only by their consummate skill at manipulating public opinion, amassing political power, securing taxpayer-funded government grants, and persuading people to send them money and invest in “ethical” stock funds.
In the annals of “green” campaigns, those against biotechnology, DDT and Alar are especially prominent. To those we should now add the well-orchestrated campaigns against Canadian oil sands and the Keystone XL Pipeline.
Background
Oil has been seeping out of Northern Alberta soils and river banks for millennia.…
Continue Reading“My best advice to both candidates is to just leave the issue alone. Sea-level rise does not represent a national threat, and trying to do something about it through our energy policy would cause hardship without a discernible impact along our coasts.”
With the final presidential debate set for October 22 in Boca Raton, a group of Florida “city and county officials and scientists,” with help from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), have sent each candidate an open letter asking them to “address this issue” of sea level rise while they are in campaigning and debating in Florida.
This publicity play for climate crusaders will probably not work because …. facts are facts. There just isn’t much there to get away from real, here-and-now issues that have otherwise dominated most of the debates.…
Continue Reading“When government tries to pick losers and winners, it typically picks losers. Why? Because in a free market, consumers pick winners to leave the losers for government.”
– R. Bradley, Electric Car Verdict: Another Government-Subsidized Bust, September 26, 2012.
In Edison to Enron: Energy Markets and Political Strategies, I discussed some history regarding electric vehicles that has become pertinent given the bankruptcy this week of battery-maker A123 Systems.
The Wall Street Journal reported on this failure with the pull quote: “Obama’s green energy industrial policy turns up in Chapter 11.” Energy physicist Mark Mills wrote in Forbes: “A123 Bites the Dust Because They Forgot Their ABCs.”
Here is some history behind the rise, fall, fall, and fall of electric vehicles from Edison to Enron. Previously at MasterResource, the conversation between Thomas Edison and a young Henry Ford in 1896 was recounted.…
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