“New Mexico has one of the highest poverty rates in the country. Higher energy prices are in effect a regressive tax that places low-income households in the state in peril.”
Energy policies that originate from a political or quasi-religious agenda—propelled by climate zealots, misinformation, and obliviousness to basic economic principles—are on trial in the new political environment. Such policies sacrifice the public good to benefit special interests wed to rent-seeking.
While this commentary focuses on New Mexico, its urgings are applicable to other jurisdictions that currently have or are considering government-driven energy policies featuring mandates and subsidies that encourage consumers to transition away from fossil fuels.
Three Hard Truths
Three truths should determine energy policy in New Mexico.
1. No climate benefit. Whatever action the state takes to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has a negligible effect on climate change. …
“Strange bedfellows (akin to Baptists and Bootleggers) support government-promoted electrification: electric utilities and environmentalists.”
“Because a gas ban has virtually no effect on global climate and is likely to increase energy costs for consumers, one would have to look far to find a governmental action that is so intrusive, imbalanced and detrimental to society’s welfare.”
Political attempts to curtail gas supply and demand have met with limited success. Methane rules, drilling restrictions on public land, and opposition to new pipelines have incrementally slowed the growth of natural gas in the United States. But the radical anti-fossil-fuel lobby and their government allies want much more: moratoriums on new gas service and bans on natural gas usage and appliances.
Bans by municipal jurisdictions with (presumably) the legal authority to do so are in the news.…
“Probably more than anything, the legacy of past energy policies is advancing special interests – the energy industry, climate activists and environmentalists, governmental activists, and others – rather than the general public.”
“Why then do we even need an energy policy? After all, we don’t have a computer policy, a clothes policy, or a food policy. Experience has shown that the country would be better off without one.”
The Green New Deal is just the latest in the long line of despicable energy policies proposed or implemented in the U.S. One has to go back to the 1970s (when I first entered the energy-policy debate) to find energy thinking this far off the track.
Why the demand for aggressive governmental intervention given its counterproductive promise and results (supply/demand distortions from mispricing; subsidies; unintended consequences).…