“Speculative incremental harm from a multi-decade global phenomenon has a classical liberal option: civil society charity. Uber-wealthy climate-related foundations can evaluate the harms to poor island villagers from sea level rise (as an example). But keep politicized science, global judicial activism, and backdoor Big Brother out of it.”

By 2004, after Jonathan Adler reversed positions to endorse climate policy activism, the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) published a dialogue where Professor Adler defended his tort approach to address anthropogenic climate change with several classical liberals. Excerpts from “Global Warming: A Dialogue” follow.

This discussion is an edited version of comments made in December 2004 on the Free Market Environmentalism (FME) Roundtable list-serve. Jonathan Adler prodded his colleagues to forget, for just a minute, the debate over the impacts of warmer temperatures or whether humans are contributing or not.…

“‘People are willing to pay a premium for environmental goods,’ Mr. Dables said. “It’s one thing to buy a box of soap and pay 20 percent more; I don’t know anyone who wants to pay 20 percent more for a car.”

It has taken a basket of mandates and subsidies to get battery-driven vehicles (EVs) on the road in the last decade. Start with a $7,500 per vehicle tax credit. Continue with automobile dealers having to get credits from electrics to meet their corporate average fuel economy standards (CAFE) obligations. Add-in never-ending taxpayer-financed R&D from the US Department of Energy and a lot of jawboning by the Presidents from Clinton to Obama to Biden.

Think back to the 1990s, when natural gas vehicles and methanol-powered vehicles were in play. Electric vehicles had interest too.…

“Color me confused…. Henry Groppe Jr. missed badly with natural gas in the crucial 1980s. I thus invite anyone to challenge my account.”

Last month I visited the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum (highly recommended!) located in Midland, Texas. The exhibits and educational features–in room after room–were exemplary. I learned much and will continue to learn with each visit.

To my surprise, I saw a wall-size tribute to energy consultant Henry Groppe Jr., describing him as a successful, unique seer into the future of oil and gas. This surprised me. In my book Edison to Enron: Energy Markets and Political Strategies (2011), I covered the history of Transco Energy Company, of which Groppe was a board director and consultant with the ear of Transco CEO Jack Bowen. My story was quite different.…

“The systemic opposition of the locals to massive solar arrays and wind farms has created a new class of environmentalists. They live in and support greenery over government machining their living space. In contrast, the Washington, D.C. ‘environmentalists’ lobby and push from their concrete jungle. Going green and private property rights are aligned against Big Brother.”

The exchange (on Facebook) began with a post by Kevon Martis on the community pushback regarding a 1,000+ MW solar installation in Sanilac County, Michigan (see picture below). “Proposed Solar Farms Cause Community Concerns” reported concerns over water drainage (a recurring issue), and lower property values. Incessant noise and other issues can cross property lines in the case of industrial solar also. This is one battleground of many hundreds, of which nearly 300 wind/solar projects have been rejected or delayed in the U.S.…