Coal: "Externalities" Can be Positive, Not Only Negative
By Chip Knappenberger -- March 7, 2011A new study from the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the Harvard Medical School, Full Cost Accounting for the Life Cycle of Coal, estimates that the negative externalities of coal-fired electricity generation are two-to-three times as great as the actual price of the electricity itself. Wow–so much for the cheap price of electricity from coal itself being a social good. And forget that decades of ever more stringent air and water regulation has internalized the so-called social cost of coal-fired power plants. And forget that carbon dioxide (CO2) has positives, not only negatives, for the biosphere.
So forgetting all this, and taking the report’s analytics at face value, it is concluded that the FULL COST of coal makes “wind, solar, and other forms of nonfossil fuel power generation … economically competitive.”…
Continue ReadingThe Michael Lynch Power Hour Interview
By Alex Epstein -- March 4, 2011[Editor note: Alex Epstein of the Ayn Rand Institute is one of the bright young lights of energy rationalism. His four-part post at MasterResource, Energy at the Speed of Thought, can be found here (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4).
“Man does not live on a raft with one bottle of water. He lives on earth, which gives him infinite resources—and it is up to him to get them. His proper conduct and morality must be based on this fact.”
– Letter from Ayn Rand to Rose Wilder Lane, in Michael Berlinger, ed., Letters of Ayn Rand (New York: Dutton, 1995), p. 354.
The most recent episode of “Power Hour”–my monthly interview podcast on energy issues–featured oil forecaster Michael Lynch, President of Strategic Energy & Economic Research, who examined the controversial theory of Peak Oil.…
Continue ReadingJohn Holdren: White House Malthusian
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 3, 2011If there is one quotation by Obama’s new science advisor that every American should hear, it is this:
“A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States. . . . Resources and energy must be diverted from frivolous and wasteful uses in overdeveloped countries to filling the genuine needs of underdeveloped countries. This effort must be largely political” (italics added).
– John Holdren, Anne Ehrlich, and Paul Ehrlich, Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions (San Francisco; W.H. Freeman and Company, 1973), p. 279.
Holdren’s deep-seated belief of the human “predicament” as a zero-sum game–America must lose for other countries to win–was also stated by him two years before:
… Continue Reading“Only one rational path is open to us—simultaneous de-development of the [overdeveloped countries] and semi-development of the underdeveloped countries (UDC’s), in order to approach a decent and ecologically sustainable standard of living for all in between.