“Back to the greenwash misdirection…. Why not add U.S. DOE secretary Jennifer “Please get your rig count up” Granholm to the list? How about the wind and solar developers who really don’t care about the damage they cause around them? How about the whole biomass industry?”

Paul Watchman is an amiable chap I have gotten to know on social media. Patient and polite, seems open-minded and respectful of opposing views, including mine toward Net Zero.

Watchman has many titles and positions in the climate debate, including Special Legal Adviser at UNEP Principles of Sustainable Development Net Zero Insurance Underwriters Alliance. This Honorary Professor of Law at the University of Glasgow is deep in the intellectual climate vanguard. [1]

“Greenwashing Day”

In a post titled “Greenwashing Day,” Watchman cuts loose on what he sees as a lot of fake greenery in the Net Zero cause.…

Business as a force for government intervention into the economy is evident with one of the major global economic issues of recent times, climate change. Wind companies, solar companies, energy-efficiency companies, carbon capture and storage investors, etc. Their bread is buttered by special government favor, whether a direct payment from the public treasury or a tax credit or a regulatory preference.

Rent-seeking by business is a contra-capitalist practice, long exposed and criticized by free market economists and classical liberals. But there are two other related practices that classical liberalism has long warned against and censored.

One concerns strategic deceit by a business to outside parties, whether stock analysts or direct investors. In the spirit of Ayn Rand, this can be called philosophic fraud. This syndrome is present with companies that are overhyped and desperately trying to keep the music going.…

“The [U.S.] oil industry was a half century old when the depletion allowance and other special tax favors were introduced regarding the relatively new area of business taxation…. The North also taxed crude oil during the Civil War, so there is an offsetting example of a penalty, not a subsidy.”

A half-truth by wind and solar advocates is, ‘the fossil-fuel industries have long had subsidies, so we should have it too.’ This tit-for-tat needs historical clarity to show the difference between consumer-driven industries that really do not need tax breaks (and should not have received them) versus industries that are dependent on special government largesse to exist and grow.

In one of my LinkedIn exchanges with a climate alarmist/forced energy transformationist, my critic stated:

Rob Bradley It would appear you have never read The Prize, which for someone in the oil and gas industry is inexcusable.

Ed. note: The third part in this series covers IER as a full-time organization, which occurred in 2002, some 13 years after its founding (in 1989). Part I covered the history of the Institute for Humane Studies–Texas, the forerunner to IER. Part II reviewed the formation and early history of IER in Houston, Texas.

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Q1. Roger Donway: The last interview explained your dual life as a full-time employee of Enron Corp. and the president of the “think bucket” IER. How did IER emerge full time?

A1. Robert Bradley Jr.: My Enron life ended a day after the company declared bankruptcy on Sunday December 1, 2001. I was part of the mass layoff the next day. Some 4,000 of us were let go where we were told to clear out our desks and leave.