“Economists may not know much. But we know one thing very well: how to produce surpluses and shortages. Do you want a surplus? Have the government legislate a minimum price that is above the price that would otherwise prevail…. Do you want a shortage? Have the government legislate a maximum price that is below the price that would otherwise prevail.”
– Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose (1979), p. 219.
Tomorrow (October 5, 2016), a book seminar will be held at Resources for the Future [register here] to revisit the lessons from the 1970s energy crisis. Panic at the Pump: The Energy Crisis and the Transformation of American Politics in the 1970s by Meg Jacobs will receive comments from three RFF scholars.
The Princeton historian and author usefully provides a good deal of archival documentation surrounding the ill-fated attempt by federal authorities to regulate the price and allocation of crude oil and oil products in the 1971–1981 era. …
“The energy agencies ‘have done a good job of describing the fix we’re in,’ says energy analyst David Greene of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Knoxville, Tennessee. ‘They’re recognizing that the non-OPEC world won’t be able to increase production much if at all.'”
“Consensus science” can be recognized when an author with a certain predetermined viewpoint interviews experts that only agree with him/her. While this is common in climate science in favor of alarms and policy action, it has also been prevalent with Peak Oil, the idea that the world will soon, if not already, reach a peak in oil production.
In “World Oil Crunch Looming?” Science writer Richard Kerr eight years ago surveyed the experts to find that a major crunch was looming, if not imminent. Consensus science is presented as each interviewed expert is in lockstep agreement.…
“President Bill Clinton in 1997 announced the Department of Energy’s Million Solar Roofs Initiative as part of the buildup to the international negotiation on climate change held in Kyoto, Japan. The goal’s date was 2010.… Yet after 40 years of government plans and incentives, the U.S. is not halfway to Bill’s one-million goal.”
“If solar was really cheap, dependable, and competitive, Hillary would not need to be touting solar as the energy future — or espouse special government favor either. Let-the-market-decide would be enough.”
The centerpiece of Hillary Clinton’s energy plan for Election 2016 is to boost the nation’s installed solar capacity seven-fold between the time she takes office and the end of 2020 (four years). Going from 20 gigawatts to 140 gigawatts would involve a half-billion solar panels on twenty-five million roofs.…