“I know it’s a long shot, but there has to be someone telling the truth and showing a clear vision moving away from capitalism to an eco-socialist future that is just for everyone.”

– Gary Stuard (Green Party). Quoted in Kim McGuire, “Greens Steadfast on Environment.” Houston Chronicle, August 6, 2016, p. A4.

Milton Friedman once said: “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” The uncommonly wise economist also said: “Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.”

Let’s assume that the Green Party is made up a fair number of well meaning, non-corrupted (as in ‘crony capitalist’) individuals that really want the common person to have a good life and entrepreneurial opportunities.…

“The most powerful environmental policy is liberty, the central organizing principle of the American Republic and its people.”

– Republican Platform (below)

The Republican platform on the environment is factual and realistic. It focuses on real environmental issues and not the trumped up one of carbon dioxide (CO2) as a pollutant. It looks to science but also to political economy. “Science allows us to weigh the costs and benefits of a policy so that we can prudently deal with our resources,” the platform reads. “This is especially important when the causes and long-range effects of a phenomenon are uncertain.”

And better yet, also in reference to the global warming debate: “We must restore scientific integrity to our public research institutions and remove political incentives from publicly funded research.” Climate science researchers, it is time to go honest or go home.…

“Falling commodity prices in general are a good thing in a free market because, as economist Ludwig von Mises emphasized, the sole end of production is consumption. Consumption first, production second. Also the US is a net importer of both oil and natural gas, which means we consume more than we produce. So provincially speaking, the US gains more than it loses from well-to-pump or well-to-burner-tip price drops.”

Business consultant Carlos Lara and I produce a monthly financial publication, the Lara-Murphy Report, which highlights the Austrian School of economics in both academia and the financial markets. The January 2016 issue interviewed Rob Bradley of Houston, Texas, who was trained in Austrian-school economics and is a longtime historian of oil markets. This interview is reproduced below.

Robert L. Bradley Jr. is the founder and chief executive officer of the Institute for Energy Research (IER), a 501(c)3 educational foundation with offices in Houston, Texas, and Washington, D.C.…

“If good and evil are measured by the standard of human well-being and human progress, we must conclude that the fossil fuel industry is not a necessary evil to be restricted but a superior good to be liberated.”

“We don’t need green energy–we need humanitarian energy.”

“The 2016 election presents us with a once-in-a-lifetime energy opportunity–and energy danger. There is no middle ground. There can be no more standing down. It’s time to stand up.”

– Alex Epstein, “At CERAWeek Fossil Fuel Leaders Should Make A Moral Case For Their Industry,” Forbes.com., February 18, 2016.

For many years, make that decades, I have noted Daniel Yergin’s political bias at the annual CERA conference here in Houston. Nonindustry speakers have routinely been climate alarmists and anti-fossil fuel proponents, picked from both the government and the nonprofit sector.…