Ed. Note: This week marks the 55th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s 90-day wage and price order of August 15, 1971. With extensions, maximum prices caused oil shortages beginning in 1972. More shortages with the Arab Embargo of October 1973 ensured passage of the Emergency Petroleum Allocation Act of 1973, which continued federal price and allocation controls until President Reagan’s decontrol order in early 1981. This post adds to the historical record of one of the greatest peacetime energy policy failures in U.S. history.
A while back, Alex Tabarrok with Tyler Cowen recorded “Oil Shocks, Price Controls and War” at the Marginal Revolution website. They advertised it:
Our second podcast on the 1970s titled Oil Shocks, Price Controls and War is now available! Here’s one bit:
…Tabarrok: …Sheikh Ahmed Yamani, in a famous statement, he was the oil minister for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, he’s a leader of OPEC, he says on October 16th, this is 10 days after the war begins, “This is a moment for which I have been waiting for a long time.
“Our psychedelic-climate leaders are active today, creating change and doing compelling transformational work in this space.”
Yes, this group exists. I found out when Emily Atkin of Heated endorsed it with her statement:
Personally, when I take mushrooms, the last thing I want to do is think about climate change. But that’s apparently what I should be doing…. Psychedelics for Climate Action, or PSYCA, argues that the use of mind-altering substances and Indigenous plant medicines—like ayahuasca, psilocybin, ibogaine, ketamine, and LSD—can inspire people to help solve the climate crisis.
The PSYCA’s webpage asks: “With countless climate solutions, why are we in a crisis?” The pitch: “Join a community of 12,000 raising & expanding consciousness to discover pathways forward.”
“A Network for Mycelial Change” includes “entrepreneurs, change makers, creatives, explorers, philanthropists, authors, doctors, scientists, speakers, investors, researchers, marketers, professors, catalysts, environmentalists, artists & more.”…
Ed. Note: The post reproduces the introduction and conclusion of a new report by the Institute for Energy Research (IER), The Pacific Premium: Why Gasoline Costs More in Democratic-Controlled States. The bottom line: in Democratic-controlled states, state fuel taxes, carbon mandates, and regulations add on average 55 cents per gallon at the pump.
“For policymakers, that is the actionable point: the levers that explain the gap are specific and identifiable, and the largest of them, state fuel taxes and transportation carbon taxes, pass through to consumers nearly dollar for dollar.”
When gasoline prices climb, drivers everywhere start asking the same question: what’s really behind the pain at the pump? The answers are rarely simple. Shifting global oil markets, OPEC decisions, wars and sanctions disrupting supply, refinery outages, pipeline constraints, seasonal weather and demand swings can all play a role.…