“Under [Ken] Lay’s direction, Enron would restart the solar industry [in 1995], rescue the US wind industry [in 1997], and help legitimize the climate issue.”
“Enron saw green in green energy. Wind and solar as primary energies had new public policy rationales and powerful political constituencies. Specifically, global warming from fossil-fuel usage (via the enhanced greenhouse effect) was the new neo-Malthusian scare, and post–Gulf War concerns over energy security put petroleum on the defensive. Even more than this, renewables had public cachet for an energy company, particularly one that prized publicity and promoted a momentum stock.”
– Bradley, Enron Ascending: The Forgotten Years, pp. 530, 528, respectively.
Rent-seeking … strategic uses of government intervention…. corporativism. Many terms have described business lobbying within political capitalism where the political means replaces the economic means to financial success The result is bad profit, defined by classical-liberal entrepreneur Charles Koch as corporate income not created but politically obtained and thereby lost to the creators in the economic system.…
“We still have much to learn about and learn from Enron’s remarkable history to understand its meaning for twenty-first-century American capitalism.”
—Malcolm S. Salter, emeritus professor, Harvard Business School; author of Innovation Corrupted: The Origins and Legacy of Enron’s Collapse (2008)
This week, Scrivener Publishing and John Wiley & Sons begin shipments of a book that I have been working on for many years, along with my research assistant/editor Roger Donway. We searched and searched for this or that. We debated paragraphs, sentences, even words. And we never cut a corner for what is easily, between the two of us and copy-editor Evelyn Pyle, a 10,000-hour book. [1]
Enron Ascending: The Forgotten Years, 1984–1996 is Book 3 in my tetralogy on Political Capitalism inspired by the rise and fall of Enron.…
“On behalf of our communities, and the estimated 5.4 million Californians who live within a mile of one or more oil and gas wells, we ask you to take the next step in bold climate leadership: phase out fossil fuel production in California by ending the issuance of permits for new fossil fuel projects, instituting a 2,500-foot public health setback for oil and gas facilities, and committing the state to 100% renewable energy.”
– Elected Officials to Protect California, “Urge Governor Brown to Commit to Phasing Out Fossil Fuel Production in California,” August 2018.
The climate crusade is losing badly. But in California, where emotions trump reason and Statism trumps economic freedom, it is double-down time.
Frustration is at an all-time high with the keep-it-in-the-ground climate crusade encountering marketplace and multi-level political problems. …