Reprinted below is a letter-to-the-editor that I wrote to The Electricity Journal in response to an essay by Michael Shepard, “Turning the Climate Challenge into Business Opportunity” (The Electricity Journal, 1999, vol. 12, issue 10, pages 82-84).
The test of scholarship is how one’s arguments hold up over time. The state of knowledge changes as new evidence accumulates, so it is important to keep past work in the context of the year it was written (1999).
But what do we know now versus then? And how do you think this rebuttal reads 11 years later? (One data point: Robert Mendelsohn of Yale still believes in the conclusions of his work that I reference below as he communicated to me by email.)
… Continue ReadingDear Editors:
Michael Shepard guest editorial, “Turning the Climate Challenge into Business Opportunity,” is premised on such statements as “the climate problem is real” and “the imperative [is] to stabilize the atmosphere’s loading of greenhouse gases.”
At a time when energy realists need to take the high ground, corporations are bringing us low. Some of this is old fashioned rent-seeking; some greenwashing; and some just political correctness (as if California was the world).
For weeks, Siemens has been running full-page ads for wind technology. Last week Chevron and Weyerhauser, in full-page ads, agree “IT’S TIME OIL COMPANIES GET BEHIND THE DEVELOPMENT OF RENEWABLE ENERGY.”
The same slush is coming from GE, AES, BP, Shell, NRG, and a legion of corporations whose fundamental commodity is fossil fuel.
Do these multinationals really believe that wind and solar will put a dent in their fossil fuel market share? Or is something else afoot? One should note that nowhere does this renewable ballyhoo from today’s energy goliaths mention a word about saving the world from the devastation of climate change wrought by the consequences of fossil fuel use, although this was the tack Ken Lay took to steer Enron’s aggressive renewables course.…
Continue ReadingOn November 2, California voters defeated Proposition 23 by 61 to 39 percent, rejecting a suspension of of the state’s Global Warming Solutions Act, otherwise known as Assembly Bill 32 (AB32).
California in general bucked a national trend on Election Day with all but one statewide office going to the Democrats. As of this writing, the Attorney General race has the Republican Steve Cooley slightly ahead in the vote count, but no official call has been made.
Pundits and politicians are making much about the Proposition 23 vote, but what does it really say? Equally important is the national message to be taken from the proposition’s defeat.
It is not what is being portrayed by the otherwise humbled Left environmentalists.
Mainstream Hype
Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense Fund, said the Prop 23 defeat sends “a big signal” to the rest of the country and the world that Californians stand firmly behind the law, which would cut greenhouse gas emissions in the state to 1990 levels by 2020.…
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