[Editor note: This recent post by Lea Giotto of Energy in Depth expounds on the controversial, sputtering involvement of the Niskanen Center and the Colorado climate lawsuit. Her title: “Contradictions Mount as Lawyer for Colorado Climate Lawsuits Struggles to Defend His Role.” For more on the policy shift of Niskanen founder Jerry Taylor from libertarian to climate/energy statism, see here.]
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When David Bookbinder signed up to help Colorado municipalities sue the energy industry for the impacts of global warming, he claimed his purpose was not about climate change. But when he recently attempted to defend his role with those climate lawsuits, the Niskanen Center attorney not only contradicted himself, but may have undermined the broader climate litigation campaign.
Bookbinder – who was previously a climate-focused attorney with the Sierra Club – took an unconventional approach in his latest defense of climate litigation: he penned a guest commentary for the Federalist Society, an organization that has provided a forum for many who express skepticism about the validity of these cases.…
” … [Alan] Krupnick pointed out that economic realities and state regulations may frustrate the administration’s efforts to boost fossil fuel production….”
So reads one highlight from the 2017 annual report of Resources for the Future (RFF), where wish and want are prone to color the opinions and technical analysis of the richly funded organization’s bevy of PhD economists.
Seen another way, do not expect key scientific and economic terms in the energy debate to appear in this annual report. Government failure–the very term that goes alongside market failure? It’s missing. Unintended consequences of government intervention? Not there. Global greening from carbon dioxide emissions/concentrations? No way. Global lukewarming re the growing gulf between model-predicted and recorded global temperatures? Not a hint of that.
RFF’s common denominator? Assume, don’t debate, fundamental questions that conflict with the funding agenda of problematic climate change.…
“This is potentially a $3 trillion tax,” [C. Boyden] Gray said, “which is pretty steep in the best of times, and poison in the worst of times.”
“… in trying to assemble a majority to pass it, Mr. Waxman and Mr. Markey dished out a cornucopia of concessions and exemptions to coal companies, utilities, refiners, heavy industry and agribusinesses. The original simplicity was lost, replaced by a bazaar in which those with the most muscle got the best deals.”
– John Broder, ‘Cap and Trade’ Loses Its Standing as Energy Policy of Choice, New York Times, March 25, 2010.
The carbon tax is less a cat with nine lives than a dead cat with nine causes. Higher immediate energy prices for one. Border tariffs, equity adjustments, federal control, global government makes five.…