“On the climate issue, RFF has become the intellectual arm of the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC), just as RFF board member David Hawkins (of NRDC) desires.”

Resources for the Future (RFF) was once a much more scholarly think tank than it is today. It did not assume but evaluated and debated energy economics and related environmental issues.

On climate change, in particular, RFF has gone into the tank of alarmism–and is now a full-fledged foe of the free-market-oriented energy policies underway in the Trump Administration. In fact, RFF has become the intellectual arm of the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC), just as RFF board member David Hawkins (of NRDC) desires.

Sad, sad. From its glorious beginning in the 1950s and 1960s–publishing treatises and shorter studies on resource availability–RFF went Malthusian in the 1970s, a story recounted by the late mineral economist Richard Gordon and myself elsewhere.…

Editor note: Professor Dolan kindly submitted this rebuttal to Robert Bradley’s post yesterday, “Hayek was not a Malthusian or Global Tariff Advocate (link to a carbon tax peculiar, errant).” Bradley’s post, in turn, was a critique of Dolan’s original piece, “Friedrich Hayek on Carbon Taxes.”

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I am happy to comment on the validity of the nine points you raise regarding Hayek and a carbon tax.

1. Hayek was suspicious of scientific ‘consensus,’ given the consensus of Keynesianism and central planning in his lifetime.

I agree with what you say about Hayek’s attitude toward the Keynesian consensus. However, my reading is that he distinguished between social sciences and natural sciences, and between the ability of people to offer informed judgement on fields in which they have specific expert training compared with fields in which they do not have such training.…

“Professor Dolan is invited to study the Hayek literature to see if any of the above nine points are not valid. The burden of proof is on him to try to square a classical liberal with disputed externality pricing, ‘tax-bads’ public finance, international tariffs, equity tax-dividend adjustments, and government planning.”

Yale economics PhD Ed Dolan recently attempted to link the classical liberal scholar F. A. Hayek (1899–1992) to a carbon tax in a piece published by the (misnamed) Niskanen Center. [1]

“Friedrich Hayek on Carbon Taxes” is more than unconvincing. It is shoddy. It fails to make its point and (purposefully?) neglects the obvious themes of Hayekian economics and political economy for a generic issue such as climate change.

Professor Dolan begins by admitting that Hayek never wrote anything on the subject.…

“Back in 1977 when the US Department of Energy (DOE) was established, a major part of its mission was to help protect American from the OPEC cartel. While the mission has changed in recent years towards mitigating ‘anthropogenic’ climate change, a trace of consumer focus still exists and should be reemphasized.”

“With a renewed focus on energy consumers and less on environmental cronyism, DOE can gain newfound respect from the American public and help drive a resurgent economy.”

On February 24, a Presidential Executive Order, Enforcing the Regulatory Reform Agenda, was signed by President Trump which, according to Bloomberg News, “will impose additional oversight on government regulations, designating officials within government agencies who will monitor rule-making and identify needed policy changes.”

Earlier on Wednesday, January 25, 2017, E&E Daily published an article titled “Barton, Perry to team up on plan to ‘revamp’ agency.”…