R Street: Faking Freedom on Climate Change

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 28, 2017 6 Comments

“Classical liberals must expose the quixotic quest to ‘save’ or ‘stabilize’ the climate and must educate the public about what is really involved: a new, powerful government lever on economies and freedom, anywhere and everywhere. Socialist central planning for economies may be intellectually dead, but global climate planning is alive and well.”

“For classical liberalism, privatizing the subsoil to enlarge and democratize wealth from Mexico to Venezuela to Saudi Arabia to Nigeria is the number one energy issue, not climate change. Yet it goes uninvestigated and unmentioned at R Street and the Niskanen Center. It might be CO2-positive, after all, not something the climate funders want to promote.”

The toxic brew of climate alarmism and climate activism (aka forced energy transformation) is incompatible with the theory and practice of classical liberalism.…

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California Cap-and-Trade Cronyism: James Hansen Weighs In

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- December 21, 2012 5 Comments

“You don’t want [California’s] system with caps, where you have trading, you have derivatives, you have markets that then collapse and don’t actually reduce emissions much. That’s been tried in Europe, and it didn’t do much.”

– James Hansen, quoted in David Baker, “James Hansen Blasts Cap-and-Trade,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 5, 2012.

“Cap-and-trade’s complexity provides a breeding ground for special interests…. Why do those special interests deserve it anyhow?”

– James Hansen, “The People vs. Cap-and-Tax,” New York City, January 12, 2010.

NASA climate scientist James Hansen has long attracted criticism as the progenitor of modern climate alarmism. In recent years, Hansen has been prone to hyperbolic statements against fossil fuels, ignoring the moral imperative for abundant, affordable, and reliable mass energies (called progressive energy by Alex Epstein).…

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