A Free-Market Energy Blog

U.S. EPA Goes Unconstitutional: Time to Rein in a Rogue Agency

By -- March 30, 2010

Synopsis: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, by pulling its punches in the Massachusetts v. EPA Supreme Court case, granting California a waiver to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles, and declaring greenhouse gas emissions a danger to public health and welfare, has positioned itself to regulate fuel economy, set climate and energy policy for the nation, and amend the Clean Air Act – powers never delegated to EPA by Congress. It is time to rein in this rogue agency. The Congressional Review Act Resolution of Disapproval introduced by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) is the way to do it.

When did Congress tell the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to license California and other states to adopt non-federal fuel economy standards within their borders? When did Congress tell EPA to act as co-equal or even senior partner with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in setting fuel-economy standards for the auto industry?…

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Data Dredging for Dollars, EPA Style

By Kenneth P. Green -- March 29, 2010

As a person who likes to stay abreast of our ever-expanding government in my areas of specialization (energy and environment), I periodically survey the website of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to see what they are funding with my taxpayer dollars.

Imagine my surprise when I encountered a novel Request for Proposals at their National Center for Environmental Research seeking to recruit people at non-profit institutions to dredge through EPA’s databases in order to gin up new new things for the agency to worry about and possibly regulate.

Specifically,

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as part of its Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program, is seeking applications proposing to use existing datasets from health studies to analyze health outcomes for which the link to air pollution is not well established, or to evaluate underlying heterogeneity in health responses among subgroups defined by susceptibility or extent and/or composition of exposure.

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Jimmy Carter Was Better than This! (Why can’t Democrats embrace a free energy market?)

By R. Dobie Langenkamp -- March 27, 2010

As a Democract, I have asked myself how it is that the current administration could be so consistently wrong on energy policy. There was a time in the days of Bob Kerr, Lyndon Johnson, Sam Rayburn, and Bennett Johnson that energy policy was bipartisan. In fact, those Democratic wheel horses from the great Southwest made sure that the policy–particularly as regarded oil and gas– was somewhat rational.

Carter Was Pro-Drilling Compared to Obama

The last Democratic President to acknowledge the need for exploration was Jimmy Carter, under whom I served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Oil and Gas. Carter pushed both an offshore 5-year leasing plan and production from the Naval Petroleum Reserves. I know–I was in charge of both.

So despite the Windfall Profits Tax and much hyperbolic rhetoric, President Carter had a foot, or at least a few toes, in the pro-production camp.…

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Rare Earth and Lithium Supplies Cloud Renewables

By Ken Maize -- March 26, 2010
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Biofuels as America’s Biggest Loser (with apologies to NBC)

By William Griesinger -- March 25, 2010
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A “Solution” to the “Energy Situation”? (Glenn Schleede Responds to a Critic)

By Glenn Schleede -- March 24, 2010
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Howlin’ Wolf: Paul Ehrlich on Energy (Part III: Conservationism)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 23, 2010
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Coerced Energy Efficiency in Texas: Government Conservationism Isn’t Market Conservation

By -- March 22, 2010
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Howlin’ Wolf: Paul Ehrlich on Energy (Part II: Failed Predictions)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 20, 2010
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Reconsidering the Dessler/North Op-Ed on Settled Alarm, Climategate-as-Distraction (Part III in a series)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 19, 2010
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