In October 1993, I published a pamphlet in Studies in Market-Based Energy Policy (#3) with the above title. On its thirtieth anniversary, I excerpt its major parts. So how does it read today–and compare to other writings of its time that were critical of fossil fuels? I report: you decide.
“From today’s [1993] vantage point, the energy-policy lesson has been half-learned. It is widely known that major command-and-control regulations do not work. The lessons of the 1970s energy crises have not been forgotten, and another energy crisis cannot be expected without price and allocations regulations.”
Executive Summary (pp. 1–2)
This primer on energy choices and market decision making has direct implications for energy policy. If voluntary choices in a free-market setting result in efficient outcomes, many current energy policies based on taxation, subsidies, and regulation can be critically questioned.…
“Why is a conservative pro-development governor pushing for policies that are counterproductive to natural resource development?”
“The Alaska Energy Security Task Force report does not mention maximizing the use of the abundant energy sources we have in our state today, such as coal, in-state refining, or the incentivization of production in the Cook Inlet where, according to the USGS, we are not in a natural gas shortage situation.”
Alaska grift is reaching new levels to comport with the Inflation Reduction Act (aka Green New Deal). Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy, all-in with Green Globalism, has appointed a energy security task force of cronies who lack real experience in or affinity with the state’s oil and gas sector. Instead of inciting investment in Alaska’s prolific resource base, Biden’s obstruction and subsidy bribery will risk making the state a federal enclave, with its top import being federal dollars.…
Ed. Note: Jane Shaw Stroup blogs at two websites: Jane Takes On History and Liberty and Ecology Blog. The post below can be accessed here.
Each year, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) has a dinner in Washington, D.C., honoring the economist Julian Simon, who died in 1998. Simon was a rare optimist in the fields of population and natural resources. He disagreed with most environmentalists of his day (especially in the 1980s through 1990s). They feared passionately that growing population would overwhelm agriculture and industry and that the world would run out of natural resources such as oil and minerals.
Instead, Simon thought that more births are a good thing and was sure that resources would not disappear. His upbeat views were widely disparaged.
Ecologist Garrett Hardin called him “Dr.…