[Editor Note: In time for Global Divestment Day, MasterResource is pleased to reproduce this letter to Stanford University president John Hennessy from Kathleen Hartnett-White, Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Dated May 30, 2014, this letter remains highly relevant today. (Ms. Hartnett-White is speaking tonight at the sold-out event at the University of Houston, “Private Profit vs. Public Good: Do Energy Companies Have a Social Responsibility?“)
“Stanford’s decision to divest in coal is a symbol for the elite that regrettably reflects indifference to the poor across the world who have never seen a light switch.”
Dear President Hennessy,
I am an Honors graduate of Stanford holding B.A. and M.A. degrees in the Humanities and served as Chairman of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) for six years.…
“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. To the naive mind that can conceive of order only as the product of deliberate arrangement, it may seem absurd that in complex conditions … adaptation to the unknown can be achieved more effectively by decentralizing decisions and that a division of authority will actually extend the possibility of overall order. Yet that decentralization actually leads to more information being taken into account.”
– F. A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (1988), p. 76
Whenever the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is confronted with evidence that its proposed regulations will kill jobs, risk blackouts, or otherwise harm economic growth, it typically seeks refuge in its own estimates of the amazing public health benefits the proposal will have.…