“If all the policies instituted in 1975 in the previous figure are delayed until the year 2000, the equilibrium state is no longer sustainable. Population and industrial capital reach levels high enough to create food and resource shortages before the year 2000.”
– Donella Meadows et al. The Limits to Growth. New York: Universe Books, 1972, p. 169.
The New York Times headline screamed: “Trump Administration’s Strategy on Climate: Try to Bury Its Own Scientific Report.” Reporter Coral Davenport began her piece:
The Trump White House, which has defined itself by a willingness to dismiss scientific findings and propose its own facts, on Friday issued a scientific report that directly contradicts its own climate-change policies.
That sets the stage for a remarkable split-screen political reality in coming years. The administration is widely expected to discount or ignore the report’s detailed findings of the economic strain caused by climate change, even as it continues to cut environmental regulations, while opponents use it to mount legal attacks against the very administration that issued the report.…
“Home to half the world’s population, Asia accounts for three-fourths of global coal consumption today. More important, it accounts for more than three-fourths of coal plants that are either under construction or in the planning stages — a whopping 1,200 of them….”
– Somini Sengupta, The World Needs to Quit Coal. Why Is It So Hard? New York Times, November 24, 2018.
It’s a fossil-fuel world. Dense, storable, portable mineral energies are winning despite much government-directed misdirection at home and abroad. And the Paris global climate accord, three years old next month, is reeling as a result.
Every now and then, the anti-fossil-fuel media owns up to the harsh reality of consumers choosing the most economical, convenient energies. This was the case of a recent New York Times feature, The World Needs to Quit Coal.…
“A federal investment tax credit was enacted just as the project was being completed, adding 10 percent to the rate of return. Accelerated depreciation in the same law further sheltered profits from income taxes. Thank you, political capitalism.”
“Cogen Technologies would go on to become one of the very top independent power developers in the nation. The sale of CTI’s major asset to Enron in 1999 (McNair took cash, not stock) would make McNair one of Houston’s wealthiest men and provided the means to buy an NFL football team for his hometown, a deal that was also made possible by a new taxpayer-supported stadium, in no small part the result of an intense lobbying effort by Ken Lay and Enron several years before.”
Last Friday, the owner of the Houston Texans, Robert C.…