“I withdrew our country from the job killing and very expensive Paris Climate Accord. Last year coal exports were up 92% compared to 2016. 92%, do you believe that? You’re shipping it all over the world. To Vietnam. I was in Vietnam and they said, ‘We get coal from Ohio. We get coal from West Virginia. It’s the finest coal in the world.’”
MasterResource has documented the energy/climate views of President Donald Trump both before and after his election in 2016 (here). The historic nature of his views requires constant updates, particularly with the other side declaring war against oil, gas, and coal and waging lawsuits against fossil-fuel companies.
Here are his words from the Cincinnati, Ohio rally earlier this month:
” … the limited assurance of these public accountant’s sustainability letters provides, in certain respects, even less assurance than detailed agreed-upon procedure letters…. [T]he limited assurance letters in these sustainability reports contain very little detailed information and only reach vague, double-negative conclusions regarding the findings.”
– Michael Kraten, “Sustainability Reports and the Limitations of ‘Limited’ Assurance.” The CPA Journal (July 2019).
A recent feature for The CPA Journal (July 2019) unmasks the most politicized area of modern accounting, sustainability accounting. [1]
Following are excerpts from an essay by Michael Kraten (PhD, CPA, CSVP; professor of accounting and chair of the accounting, finance, and economics department at Houston Baptist University), “Sustainability Reports and the Limitations of ‘Limited’ Assurance.”
“Few U.S. industries sing the praises of free enterprise more loudly than the oil industry. Yet few industries rely so heavily on special governmental favors.” (Milton Friedman, 1967)
In honor of his 107th birthday, MasterResource reprints a 1967 essay by Milton Friedman, “Oil and the Middle East,” which nicely summarized the political power and cronyism of the domestic oil industry at the time. [1] Far from just historical, the animus created by pro-crony policies over a half century came home to roost in the 1970s when Northeast politicians and others imposed price controls and new taxes on the industry. That animus exists today under the hubris of climate policy.
Background
From the 1920s through the early 1970s, the political power of the domestic oil industry (primarily independent oil producers versus the integrated majors) succeeded in having the major oil states (excepting California) artificially restrict (‘prorate’) production to ‘market demand.’…