“This is a massive, massive decision.  It essentially repeals the Chevron decision back in the middle ’90s which simply said, if congress is ambiguous in its law, we will defer to the federal regulatory agencies who will then decide. They will make their own laws. They will make their own rules. I think a new… Continue Reading

“British economist A.C. Pigou was instrumental in developing the theory of externalities. The theory examines cases where some of the costs or benefits of activities ‘spill over’ onto third parties. When it is a cost that is imposed on third parties, it is called a negative externality. When third parties benefit from an activity in… Continue Reading

“In a time of global energy instability featuring an embargo on Russian energy, the EU’s wealthiest nations have embraced coal as a savior like the Peanuts character Linus grasping his blanket. … If the European nations, with superior economies and living standards, have the right to utilize fossil fuel to meet their energy needs, there… Continue Reading

“A ‘Pigouvian’ tax is set at a level where the damage from distorting the economy, which any tax inevitably causes, is offset by the rectification that it brings about. Such a tax is generally considered superior to having the government centrally determine measures to redress inadvertent damages resulting from production. This is because it incentivises… Continue Reading

“There is a ‘green-rush’ on rare earths pushed by the so-called ‘climate friendly’ technologies of solar, wind, and battery power that require a menagerie of minerals to harvest ‘free’ energy. The world’s main motivation for tearing apart the sea floor is the pursuit of electric vehicles. Far from ‘loving the oceans’, the production of eCars… Continue Reading

“The American Petroleum Institute (API) has represented the larger integrated oil companies since its founding just over a century ago. … API supported state-level market-demand proration in the 1920s and 1930s forward, and today it supports government subsidies for what its members can do in the name of climate change, such as carbon capture and storage.… Continue Reading

“One fundamental cause is that public agencies and officials succumbed to pressure by environmental groups who pushed for fire-management policies that take a reactive posture (fire suppression), rather than a proactive stance (fire prevention and active management). Although the hope was to preserve land in its ‘natural state,’ this approach set the stage for horrific… Continue Reading

“Utopian energy is an imagined form of energy that’s abundant, reliable, inexpensive, and also clean, renewable, and life-sustaining. But utopian energy is as much a fantasy as a utopian society. Seeking the fount of perfect energy allows us to pretend there aren’t real-world tradeoffs between, say, banning fossil fuels and helping people in impoverished nations… Continue Reading

“If COVID has taught us anything, it is that the technocratic class has little compunction about restricting freedom. Moreover, once they grab power, they are very reluctant to give it back. But our would-be overlords have one big problem. The pandemic that they argued justified restrictions on individual liberty will eventually ebb. So, the search… Continue Reading

“Woe is the Science Establishment. They’re wringing their hands and gnashing their teeth because a reputable poll from the University of Chicago found that only 48 percent of the public has a ‘great deal of confidence in the scientific community.’ Unsurprisingly, the distrust is not evenly divided throughout society. According to the poll, 64 percent of Democrats expressed… Continue Reading

“[D]on’t buy into the myth that electric vehicles are ‘zero-emission.’ Electric vehicles are built using fossil fuels, and manufacturing batteries is an especially dirty business.  Only 20% of the electric power source is from renewable energy sources (but again, remember it takes fossil fuels to construct renewable sources of energy).  The remaining 80% of the power… Continue Reading

“In Australia and California, which are both prone to bush fires, the plant and animal life have evolved over hundreds of years to adapt to wildfires. This does not support the claims that the fires in Australia are because of CO2. Everyone demands proof that this is not caused by CO2 instead of demanding that… Continue Reading

“The last major refinery to be built in the US was in 1977. And by major, I mean more than 100,000 barrels a day. There’s been some small ones put in, and some specialty ones here and there. But by and large, because of environmental pressure, the US has not made a new refinery at… Continue Reading

“As president, Obama declared, ‘I am a firm believer that climate change is real and that it is impacted by human behavior and carbon emissions. As a consequence, I think we have an obligation to future generations to do something about it.’ Of course, to Obama and other ruling elites, ‘doing something’ means imposing expectations on… Continue Reading

“Several of the rivers in and around Yellowstone Park experienced record-breaking flows [last] week[.] … [T]here are two main elements behind the Yellowstone flooding:  (1) the melting of an extreme snowpack and (2) heavy localized rain.   And to make this happen in such an extreme way, a lot of moving pieces had to come together.”… Continue Reading

“[On] June 16, CEI submitted two comment letters to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on its proposed rule: ‘The Enhancement and Standardization of Climate-Related Disclosures for Investors.’ The letter prepared by CEI colleague Richard Morrison is here. The letter prepared by Heritage Foundation data scientist Kevin Dayaratna, CEI colleague Patrick Michaels, and your humble… Continue Reading

“Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scores—a social credit framework for sustainability reporting—are being used as the primary mechanism to achieve the shift to a stakeholder model. They measure both financial and non-financial impacts of investments and companies and serve to formally institutionalize corporate social responsibility [including climate alarmism]. … In August 2019, The Business Roundtable… Continue Reading

“According to most forecasters, oil and gas will continue to be a large component of the world’s energy mix in the next decades even in the most conservative estimations. … Canada’s federal government plans to cap the greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas industry—without creating a corresponding permit market—on top of its already… Continue Reading

“[S]takeholder capitalism [is] the idea that companies should focus less on profit (shareholder capitalism) and more on workers, communities and social and environmental issues such as climate change[.] … Milton Friedman, the Nobel prize-winning economist and a key proponent of shareholder capitalism, warned that corporations that sought to pursue [so called] socially desirable ends ‘would… Continue Reading

“Anyway, you have to love how [UC Santa Cruz] gift us two new over-certainty generating ideas. The first was to label points in history ‘Coolhouse’ which were much warmer than they are now, accepting the plot as true. … Their second method was to plot the most panicked predictions of future 2020-like points (and not… Continue Reading

“For a serious dose of reality from an unexpected source, I highly recommend the 2022 Annual Energy Paper, released by none other than JP Morgan in early May. The author is a guy named Michael Cembalest, identified as Chairman of Market and Investment Strategy[.] … When the demand is there and the product works, it… Continue Reading

“I’m not talking, by the way, about the unproven hypothesis that man-made CO2 is the predominant cause of the mild warming since, say, 1875, or that continued warming might cause problems. That’s at least a contestable proposition. I’m talking about the surrounding gabble. The ten years to extinction trope, which is constantly updated to ten… Continue Reading

“In short, the Biden administration sees domestic mining projects, such as the one at Thacker Pass, as essential to help it achieve its clean energy goals but groups such as Deep Green Resistance see it as an impediment to saving the earth.” This was originally posted here at the Epoch Times on June 11, 2022. Continue Reading

“In twenty-first-century America, ordinary people are at the mercy of well-paid, unelected government experts who wield vast power. That is, we live in the age of the technocrats: people who claim to have special wisdom that entitles them to control, manipulate, and manage society’s institutions using the coercive power of the state.” This was originally posted… Continue Reading

“The environmentalist solution to global warming is…the massive violation of economic freedom and the imposition of massive economic sacrifice, in the insane belief that the way to cope with the destructive forces of nature is to deprive man of his means of coping with them, as though he, and not nature were the cause of… Continue Reading