A Free-Market Energy Blog

Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions: Recent Newsletter

By -- November 21, 2012

The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations who are interested in improving national. state and local energy & environmental policies. Our basic position is that: 1) we do have energy and environmental issues, and 2) these technical matters should be resolved by using genuine science.

Instead our energy and environmental policies have essentially being written by those who stand to economically or politically profit from them. As a result of our current methodology, anything genuinely science-based in these policies is usually inadvertent and accidental.

A key element of AWED’s efforts is to educate the public. Towards that end we send out a newsletter every 2-3 weeks, and this attempts to put some balance into what the mainstream media is conveying about energy and environmental matters.

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Wind PTC: Facts vs Fluff

By -- November 20, 2012

“AWEA says that Congress should provide a tax credit for high-income earners to pay less than their “fair share,” while middle-class taxpayers borrow $12+ billion from China to subsidize an expensive, unreliable, environmentally destructive, alternative energy source, based on unsubstantiated claims, that will actually result in net job losses! Exactly why is that a good idea?”

Last week, head wind lobbyist, Denise Bode (AWEA), waxed eloquently about why extending the wind Production Tax Credit (PTC) is a splendid scheme that some of our legislators are supposedly supporting.

This immediately brings to mind Upton Sinclair’s insightful observation: “A man cannot be expected to understand something when his income depends on his not understanding it.”

Put another way, when a salesperson says their product is the cat’s meow, be careful that you don’t get caught in the claws.…

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Environmental Battles Under Obama 2

By -- November 19, 2012

“America can continue paying billions in subsidies annually to finance “green” technologies and agenda-driven science. Or we can generate hundreds of billions a year in royalties and taxes, create millions of jobs, and rejuvenate our economy by applying commonsense regulation to the Big Three consumer-chosen energies–oil, gas, and coal.”

The United States is now Balkanized into five distinct voting blocs, notes Joel Kotkin (two blue, two red, one blue?red). Other political analysts see the nation bifurcating along “makers” and “takers” lines, while still others say 50.6% of the popular vote is hardly a mandate.

In any event, when American voters reelected President Obama, they also returned his wide-ranging agenda at the EPA, Interior, Energy, and Justice departments for “fundamentally transforming” our nation from its limited-government roots. And not in the name of sound science and realistic tradeoffs between market failure and government failure. 

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Governors Demand Wind PTC to Cover State Costs

By -- November 16, 2012
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'Imagine' A New York World of Hydraulic Fracturing (and economical clean energy, sustainable jobs)

By Steve Everley -- November 15, 2012
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Eighty-Eight to Congress: 'Let the Wind PTC Expire!' (challenging Big Wind, Big Government, and Big Environmentalism)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- November 14, 2012
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'Trends Can Change' (Mises): The Context (Part II)

By Richard Ebeling -- November 13, 2012
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Open Thread Monday (for veterans of the energy policy wars)

By administrator -- November 12, 2012
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'Trends Can Change': Ludwig von Mises (1951) Speaks to Us Today

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- November 9, 2012
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Political Economy 101: Some Quotations to Ponder

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- November 8, 2012
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