“[W]e must reject the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse. They are the heirs of yesterday’s foolish fortune-tellers — and I have them and you have them, and we all have them, and they want to see us do badly…. They predicted an overpopulation crisis in the 1960s, mass starvation in the ’70s, and an end of oil in the 1990s. These alarmists always demand the same thing: absolute power to dominate, transform, and control every aspect of our lives.”
“We will never let radical socialists destroy our economy, wreck our country, or eradicate our liberty. America will always be the proud, strong, and unyielding bastion of freedom.” (Trump, January 21, 2020)
Denunciation, even shock, came from the establishment media, including the Washington Post (“Trump Drops a Climate Bomb“) and the Los Angeles Times (“At Davos, Trump Rejects Climate Crisis“).…
“Niskanen’s @willwilkinson on the merits of @SenWarren. Yes people, you read that right. And I’m with him.” (Jerry Taylor, February 5, 2019)
The intellectual transformation of Jerry Taylor from libertarian (and libertarian enforcer) to shifty eclectic statist has been told elsewhere (here and here). Not surprisingly, his intellectual road to serfdom began with small steps and has grown to the point that fewer and fewer libertarians and conservatives trust his intellectual judgement.
Taylor’s statism has now attracted the gentlemanly ire of one of his advisory board members, Tyler Cowen, himself an eclectic but libertarian- leaning (he no longer describes himself as ‘classical liberal‘).
Professor Cowen recently wrote in “The Economic Policy of Elizabeth Warren” at Marginal Revolution (January 19, 2020):
…Jerry Taylor has made some positive noises about her on Twitter lately, as had Will Wilkinson in earlier times.
Being “free and green” requires just what classical liberals and conservatives want: defeat of the anti-capitalist, anti-technology, anti-energy agenda. Market pricing, not carbon taxes. Open international trade, not carbon tariffs. Avoidance of one-world government in the perilous, futile crusade to “stabilize” the planet. In short, no climate road to serfdom.
Bad incentives have created a peculiar situation in which alleged classical liberals and conservatives push climate alarm and open-ended governmental energy activism. I have called out several of my former free-market colleagues in this regard, including Jerry Taylor (here and here vs. his previous view here); Josiah Neeley (here vs. his previous view here); and Jonathan Adler (here vs. his earlier view here).
In each case, these individuals published prior analysis that can easily neuter if not refute their present views.…