“Greedy capitalism got the blame for Enron, but Enron was anything but a free-market corporation…. They were gaming the system, using politics for their own interests. That’s not free-market capitalism. That’s political capitalism.”

– Robert L. Bradley, Jr. Quoted in Leigh Brown Perkins, “Energy Surge: Robert Bradley ’77 Profile, Rollins College Magazine, Fall 2009.

The end of Enron was an unlikely new beginning for Robert Bradley ’77.

After 16 years at the energy giant, the last seven as a public policy analyst and speechwriter for CEO Ken Lay, Bradley found himself stranded when the company imploded in a firestorm of shady dealings. Like most people at Enron, he never saw it coming. “As with most Enron employees, my equity was in company stocks,” he said. “So I not only lost my job, I lost my financial cushion.…

“[Robert] Mendelsohn’s position is rather similar to yours…. He believes the impacts are not negative at all for the US and most of the developed countries. Most impact studies seem to be showing this. It leads us to think that a little warming is not so bad. Glad I have kept my mouth shut on this issue of which I know so little.”

– Gerald North (Texas A&M) to Rob Bradley (Enron), November 12, 1999

“I agree that the case for 2C warming [for a doubling of manmade greenhouse gas forcing in equilibrium] is pretty strong.”

– Gerald R. North to Rob Bradley, email communication, August 13, 2007.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal published my letter-to-the-editor rebutting Kerry Emanuel’s letter, which, in turn, was critical of his fellow MIT climatologist Richard Lindzen’s op-ed, “Climate Science in Denial.”…

Ed. note: This exchange in 2019 between Robert Bradley and climate scientist/activist Andrew Dessler regards adaptation as the key climate policy. It is reposted for its relevance in today’s debate over air conditioning (see yesterday’s post). “Climate mastery” via fossil fuels, as Alex Epstein has emphasized, is the natural, most rewarding public policy. [1]

“With the very unique situation of CO2 (a global externality of positives and negatives), government mitigation is doomed to fail. Sooner or later, you will have to admit that politics failed, that fossil fuels were just too good given the alternatives of non-use, renewables, nuclear.” (Bradley to Dessler #1, August 3, 2019)

“We have not only market failure but also analytical failure (imperfect you, me, others) and government failure, which is magnified by 190 or so governments.”

Ed note: The following repost of “BP’s Fall From Grace“(December 2010) by Kevin Mooney is testament to the energy realism of Exxon’s Lee Raymond over the image-over-substance approach of John Browne of BP and Ken Lay of Enron. The lesson is clear: false causes and political correctness result in wasted resources and ecological loss. Part III tomorrow (Part I was yesterday) concludes this week’s tribute to the top integrated oil major leader of his generation.

Once simply called British Petroleum, BP transformed its corporate identity into an international ‘green energy’ company with a sunburst logo and the tag line “Beyond Petroleum.” Environmental groups applauded when BP’s CEO gave credence to alarmist global warming assertions. Little did they know that the company’s rhetorical overtures to green causes deflected attention away from its reckless and irresponsible practices that jeopardized worker health and safety and ultimately resulted in death and devastation in the Gulf of Mexico.…