“The Governors know that the federal PTC disproportionately benefits States with renewable mandates by distributing the high cost of their policies to taxpayers at large. They also understand that eliminating the PTC will impose the full burden of costly renewable mandates squarely on the States who enacted them. If California, New York, and Minnesota mandate large wind development, it’s appropriate they bear the full cost of their energy choices.”

The United States is in the midst of a fiscal crisis. If Congress and the White House are unable to reach agreement on spending by January 1, crushing tax increases and draconian budget cuts will go into effect sending the country’s already weakened economy into another destructive recession.

Against this backdrop, the 23-member Governors’ Wind Energy Coalition put aside their own states’ $2+ trillion deficits[1] to deliver a message to Congress — extend the wind production tax credit (PTC).…

“The PTC was created in 1992 to get the wind industry off the ground. Yet 20 years later, we have little to show for it.”

When it comes to rent-seeking by business, Concentrated Benefits + Diffused Costs = Government Growth.

In “Regulatory Failure by the Numbers,” a simple hypothetical was given:

“While the benefits of a regulation may be enjoyed by a relative few, the costs are often spread out among many. If the per person cost of a regulation is only a dollar or two, no one has a financial incentive to travel to Washington to lobby against it.”

Economists in the 19th century understood the problem created by this incentive asymmetry, and Michael Giberson found this in a 1935 book explaining the passage of the  Smoot-Hawley Tariff:

“Although .

[Ed. note: Part I on Monday examined the Green Party’s Green New Deal; today’s post examines the rest of the Green Party’s platform with energy and the environment. With Obama’s reelection, it should not be forgotten that the philosophy and positions below–although not feasible for wholesale implementation–remain end-states for John Holdren and other Administration officials].

In George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 1949, the Ministry of Truth had three slogans: “WAR IS PEACE,” “FREEDOM IS SLAVERY,” and “IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.” Enter the deep-ecology agenda, which is about controlling your resources and your life in the name of freedom for spaceship Earth.

Imagine Green Orwellian Freedom. Some of us would work in the public sector as green planners. More would work for government as enforcers, making sure the private sector is acting “sustainably.”…

[Editor Note: In “Speaking of Power” (October 2012), POWER editor-in-chief Robert Peltier takes issue with a recent analysis concluding that the EPA’s new CO2 rule for powerplants was inconsequential. Since his editorial was published, it was reported that a second wave of CO2 powerplant regulations are in the works.]

Cato Institute senior fellows Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren suggest in a recent Forbes blog that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) carbon pollution standard for new coal-fired power plants (Standard) is a meaningless skirmish in President Obama’s “war on coal.” But while the Standard may have no tangible impact on the industry in the future, it has great strategic benefit to the administration.

Going from Facts …

The blog posting, “President Obama’s Alleged ‘War on Coal’—Climate Change Edition,” correctly assesses the situation: First, the EPA’s recently proposed Standard covers only new coal-fired power plants built 12 months after the Standard goes into effect, perhaps in 2014, probably in 2015.…