My hope as a physicist is that our representatives make energy and environmental policy decisions based on sound science. So far that has not been the case. The main reason for this is that we are engaged in an epic battle between scientists and lobbyists for those with financial or political agendas.
Right now the scientists–the group with the better case for sound public policy–are losing.
I used to think that trying hard and being right was enough. Foolish me! Everything today is really about public relations. The Internet has spawned the perfect storm. Within a few minutes we can now send messages that are read by millions of people. At the other end, recipients are in overload, due to a steady bombardment of these messages. It is very hard for almost everyone to separate the wheat from the chaff.…
Continue Reading[This important press release from the Institute for Energy Research yesterday is reprinted for MasterResource readers this weekend.]
Politics, not science drove offshore drilling ban, 40K jobs sacrificed
Washington, DC – In the days following the Gulf oil spill, President Obama requested that the Secretary of the Interior conduct a 30-day review of the offshore drilling program in the United States and issue a report with recommendations. This report was to be “peer reviewed” by a team of seven engineers recommended by the National Academy of Engineering.
The team of engineers reviewed, approved and signed off on a version of the 30-day review that was presented to them by the Administration. However, after they signed their names to this document, a significant change was made – a change that led to the 6-month suspension of deepwater exploratory drilling.…
Continue Reading(with Luciano Lavecchia)
Mr Lavecchia is a fellow and Dr. Stagnaro the research and studies director at Istituto Bruno Leoni. This post follows the release of their recent analysis for Italy showing that for every ‘green’ job created by government, 4.8 ‘gray’ jobs are lost in the private sector.
Tradeoffs: if you chose this, you can’t chose that. In economics this is called opportunity cost, which is the next-best alternative to what is actually chosen.
The proverb in popular culture for this is “you can’t have the cake and eat it, too.” The Italian translation is “you can’t have a full barrel and a drunk wife.”
Apparently, politicians are less familiar with such a everyday-life concept. To some extent, they are right: they can get a full barrel and a drunk wife at the same time, provided that taxpayers and/or future generations will pay for it.…
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