“The Obama Administration brought out the worst in RFF in the last eight years. Will the Trump era of new energy/climate thinking be intellectually respected and debated under RFF’s new president, Richard Newell? One can only hope that RFF does not become Fortress RFF.”
“RFF’s blockade against critics of climate alarmism/forced energy transformation is a sad case of intellectual back-of-the-bus, separate-water-fountain discrimination.”
“RFF has trenchantly avoided a real debate over the ‘social cost of carbon’ (SCC). Yet the assumptions behind the Obama Administration’s SCC are highly disputable, and reasonable assumptions can flip the sign from positive to negative (as in CO2 has net benefits) to eviscerate any case for pricing CO2.”
Maybe it is only because they have to.
Resources for the Future (RFF), founded in 1952, describes itself as “an independent, nonpartisan organization that conducts rigorous economic research and analysis to help leaders make better decisions and craft smarter policies about natural resources and the environment” that is “committed to intellectual excellence and practical solutions.”…
“Added Paul Sadler, executive director of the Wind Coalition, in the New York Times: ‘He [Perry] has been a stalwart in defense of wind energy in this state — no question about it.’”
– Quoted in Kate Galbraith, “As Governor, Perry Backed Wind, Gas and Coal.” New York Times, August 20, 2011.
MasterResource, which plays no (crony) favorites, has been critical of Rick (‘all-energy-things-to-all people’) Perry. Sort of sounds like a politician on the move who wants to fill his political coffers with green money too.
With the news that former Texas Governor Perry is the secretary-designate for the US Department of Energy, I share some quotations from past posts at MasterResource on his pro-wind tenure in Texas. Comments welcome.
…“Arguably, Mr. Perry’s most interesting energy efforts have related to wind power, which has boomed under his administration.
“‘You let me name the people doing the analysis, and I can get you any outcome you desire.’ Cordato told a Cato Institute that cost-benefit analysis for demand-side management programs is essentially a bogus enterprise, doomed to failure, regardless of how carefully the analysis is performed.”
Great wine ages well. In this case, the nectar has no expiration date.
Some twenty-one years ago, a “libertarian economist” from Campbell University got attention in the energy press by popping a sacred cow of market-failure economics, social cost/benefit analysis as a basis for government intervention in markets. The occasion was a Cato Institute/Institute for Energy Research conference, “New Horizons in Electric Power Deregulation,” held on March 2, 1995, in Washington, DC.
In my dusty files, I recently found this writeup from The Quad Report (April 1995) that is reprinted below.…