“In terms of sunk cost and opportunity cost, Trump is the one for liberty. Job #1, after all, is to defeat Biden/Harris or Harris/Biden.” (Bradley, below)

“But these are extraordinary times, and perhaps ‘all things considered, the other guy’s worse’ is a profound compliment. That’s why this libertarian is voting for Donald J. Trump, and recommending that my fellow opponents of the welfare-warfare state do the same.” (D. Dowd Muska, below)

It is fair to say that Donald Trump has upended politics and the Republican Party in the last five years or more. But he has also fractured the libertarian movement too, with some turning into Never Trumpers, even Trump Haters, namely David Boaz, gatekeeper at Cato, and Tom Palmer of Atlas Network.

In contrast, I appreciate the many openings Trump has provided to free-market groups coast-to-coast, border-to-border.…

“No fracking, no fracking, no fracking. All of a sudden [Biden] gets a nomination, he says, ‘There’s got to be fracking.’ For Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Texas, North Dakota … your energy jobs are gone if they get in. Just remember I said it.”

– Donald Trump, “Donald Trump White House Rally Speech Transcript October 10: First Event Since COVID Diagnosis.”

Consistency applies to Donald Trump and his energy positions unlike his rival. As such, the American Energy Alliance, the advocacy arm of the Institute for Energy Research, has endorsed Trump for reelection.

But there are disappointments and room for improvement with Trump energy policy. Ethanol’s continuing grip on the transportation market continues under his watch. Protectionism that reaches the energy industry (steel pipe for pipelines, for example), should be relaxed.…

“Climate change, for many conservatives, is associated with fringe environmentalism and a political nemesis, [Al] Gore.”

“Climategate showed us what was behind the curtain,” said Robert Bradley…. There’s a whole lot of alarmism and a whole lot of scientific intolerance toward other views.”

– Eric Berger, Houston Chronicle, January 24, 2010.

Think back ten years ago, when a federal cap-and-trade bill passed the House and was before the Senate. And Climategate was just a few months old.

Today? Cap-and-trade remains dead as federal policy, and proposals for a carbon tax are not being pushed by Biden/Harris (Harris/Biden?) in the current debate. Climagate? Its ten-year anniversary last year brought forth numerous retrospectives, apologetic, critical, and harshly critical.

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All this brings me to a January 2010 piece by Eric Berger of the Houston Chronicle, Climate Change Activists Work to Regain Momentum.…

“Despite the relatively small size of the … Global Warming Policy Foundation, Institute of Economic Affairs and the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), as well as the German Europäisches Institut für Klima und Energie (EIKE), the Austrian Economics Centre (AEC), Institut Économique Molinari (IEM) in France, Instituto Juan de Mariana (IJM) in Spain and the Liberales Institut (LI) in Switzerland…. [they] nevertheless have a ‘remarkable’ level of political influence.”

“The study found that groups on both sides of the Atlantic consistently use the same rhetoric, drawing heavily on libertarian, free-market ideology… and their influence is ‘still growing’.”

Desmog blog has a peculiar methodology of stating a number of facts about disliked individuals and organizations as if this record is prima facie evidence of wrongness and duplicity.

In fact, the same record can be (and is by me) used to make just the opposite point–guilty as charged and proud of it.…