Ed. Note: The late Steven Horwitz addressed the climate-change debate and related policy issues in ways that remain highly pertinent to today’s debate. Yesterday, he argued that social science, not only physical science, was crucial for public policy. Today, Horwitz’s views on the carbon dioxide (CO2) tax are revisited.
“First, finding the right tax/fee/price is not a simple thing…. Bureaucratically set prices or fees do not have the same powerful incentives for careful behavior, nor will they ever capture as much knowledge, as do real market prices. Given that, political battles over those taxes and fees are inevitable, and with such battles out goes any semblance of economic rationality.”
To say that he was a quick study was an understatement. The late Steve Horwitz imparted a lot of common sense to a lot of areas, including the climate change and carbon tax debates.…
Continue ReadingEd. Note: Classical liberalism lost a prominent expositor with the death of Steve Horwitz (1964–2021). His 2012 piece below argues that physical science is only the beginning to determine climate policy. Nine years later, the public-policy debate is going Horwitz’s way with a greater appreciation of both analytical failure and government failure relative to “market failure,” pointing toward adaptation to weather/climate change, not activist mitigation of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. (Part II tomorrow examines Horwitz’s Austrian-school takedown of a carbon (CO2) tax.
“In fact, those who think they can go directly from science to policy are, as it turns out, engaged in denial – denial of the relevance of social science.”
Good analysis survives the test of time–and should be periodically revisited as such. Stephen Horwitz’s Global Warming Is about Social Science Too: Who’s in denial?…
Continue ReadingA major component of Senate Bill 3 was a requirement that electric companies weatherize their facilities to withstand future freezes…. Some researchers have put [this cost] at billions of dollars. (Houston Chronicle, below)
I hope that at least the free-market community realizes what central planning and renewables forcing have done to the Texas grid. Electricity provision in the state is wounded–and the great costs already incurred (and socialized to a large extent) only promise to grow in the future as more renewables ruin the economics of the conventional, reliable power generators, causing price spikes and shortages.
The latest was reported this week on the front page of the Houston Chronicle: “Costs of plant fixes may fall to Texans: Companies seeking to have consumers pay for the upgrades.…
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