“Make no mistake. The intellectual polarization in the Age of Trump is widening. Progressives are all in, and intellectual norms and fair dealing are out. Whether it is Michael Mann in climate science or Nancy MacLean in social science or Justin Gillis in the media, the ends justify the means.”
I subscribe to the New York Times because I want to understand opposing views as well as my own in the area of political economy. I like to think that I can argue my opponent’s position better than he or she can argue mine. That’s what you have to do with a politically incorrect conclusion that you are convinced is intellectually correct. (I take my craft seriously ….)
Two articles in yesterday’s Times were particularly disappointing. One was a book review of Nancy MacLean’s very dishonest Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America.…
MasterResource is in its ninth year.
The first post was December 26, 2008. We have published 2,265 posts and have others in the queue. Google just about any energy policy term/issue and ‘MasterResource’ and something interesting should pop up.
This is the last period of summer for a lot of folks and families with school just ahead. Your founder and editor needs a little break.
I’ll be in the Texas Hill Country for a bit.
Thank you for your readership!
We will resume on Monday August 21st.
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“On the climate issue, RFF has become the intellectual arm of the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC), just as RFF board member David Hawkins (of NRDC) desires.”
Resources for the Future (RFF) was once a much more scholarly think tank than it is today. It did not assume but evaluated and debated energy economics and related environmental issues.
On climate change, in particular, RFF has gone into the tank of alarmism–and is now a full-fledged foe of the free-market-oriented energy policies underway in the Trump Administration. In fact, RFF has become the intellectual arm of the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC), just as RFF board member David Hawkins (of NRDC) desires.
Sad, sad. From its glorious beginning in the 1950s and 1960s–publishing treatises and shorter studies on resource availability–RFF went Malthusian in the 1970s, a story recounted by the late mineral economist Richard Gordon and myself elsewhere.…