This summer, we had the entertaining spectacle of scions of the Rockefeller family joining with environmental activists such as Greenpeace to urge a change in ExxonMobil’s corporate governance, including redirecting their investment towards green technologies. Part of their argument was that research ‘proved’ that the world would need these new techologies and that they would be economically viable soon.…
Continue ReadingWhen I passed around my critique of William Nordhaus’s case for a carbon tax, a typical complaint was that I wasn’t a climate scientist, and so I had no business saying that some of the IPCC projections were possibly biased towards the alarmist side. Of course no one likes to be criticized, but I understood that it was a perfectly fair objection to raise. As an economist, I really wasn’t qualified to cast aspersions on the models of Jim Hansen and such.
So it is with great amusement that I watch the extreme global-warming crowd react to minor expressions of doubt coming from their previous allies in the context of a “green recovery.” Many economists who are completely sold on manmade climate change–and even think that it is important for the federal government to take quick action to curb the problem–are merely pointing out that the Obama Administration efforts to link this issue with the recession may be inefficient. …
Continue Reading“Oh how David Koch wishes he could have donated more to the arts and medical science and less to political causes. In this regard, when will the Left demand that private foundations stop propping up climate alarmism and redirect their donations to, say, pediatric research?”
In “David Koch Steps Down from Business and Conservative Political Group,” New York Times writer Jeremy Peters misses a very important common denominator in the business and political philsophy of David Koch and Charles Koch. This error is common and cannot be corrected enough.
Below, I comment on three quotations from Mr, Peters’s article.
“Using their powerful political group, Americans for Prosperity, they ramped up their political giving during the presidency of Barack Obama, whom Charles and David saw as seriously misguided and driven by a socialistic agenda that threatened the free-market, libertarian philosophy they espoused.…
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