“Mr. President, America is the world’s energy superpower. It is time we started acting like it again.”

We live in ironic political times when it comes to petroleum, a pillar of the master resource of energy. But consumers know and like their best energies, prominently including gasoline and diesel at the pump.

When citizen voters fuss about key petroleum products, politicians take off their ‘green’ masks and bow to reality. Remember Al Gore in his 2000 presidential run when motor-fuel prices became an issue? The author of Earth in the Balance stated:

I have made it clear in this campaign that I am not calling for any tax increase on gasoline, on oil, on natural gas, or anything else. I am calling for tax cuts to stimulate the production of new sources of domestic energy and new technologies to improve efficiency.

“The doomsters’ favorite subject today is climate change. This has a number of attractions for them. First, the science is extremely obscure so they cannot easily be proved wrong. Second, we all have ideas about the weather: traditionally, the English on first acquaintance talk of little else.”

“The fact that seasoned politicians can say such ridiculous things [about reordering civilization] – and get away with it – illustrates the degree to which the new dogma about climate change has swept through the left-of-centre governing classes….”

– Margaret Thatcher, Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World (2002).

Boris Johnson is in a tight spot with his failing energy policy, so the climate lobby is out to shore him up. Stated Carbon Brief:

A scientific briefing that UK prime minister Boris Johnson says changed his mind about #globalwarming has been made public for the first time, following a freedom-of-information (FOI) by Carbon Brief.

Business as a force for government intervention into the economy is evident with one of the major global economic issues of recent times, climate change. Wind companies, solar companies, energy-efficiency companies, carbon capture and storage investors, etc. Their bread is buttered by special government favor, whether a direct payment from the public treasury or a tax credit or a regulatory preference.

Rent-seeking by business is a contra-capitalist practice, long exposed and criticized by free market economists and classical liberals. But there are two other related practices that classical liberalism has long warned against and censored.

One concerns strategic deceit by a business to outside parties, whether stock analysts or direct investors. In the spirit of Ayn Rand, this can be called philosophic fraud. This syndrome is present with companies that are overhyped and desperately trying to keep the music going.…

The Enron story has more twists and turns that a spy thriller. The company’s rise and fall was the corporate novel that Ayn Rand did not write–or need to write in retrospect.

Let history know that just-convicted Elizabeth Holmes, founder and CEO of defunct Theranos, is the daughter of a former Enron vice president, Christian Holmes, who peddled an environmental services product that never got off the ground.

Father and daughter … Enron and Theranos … imaging over reality. Whatever the level of connection, of causality, it happened. It is a footnote to history.

Elizabeth Holmes’s fraud was exposed by John Carreyrou reporter for the Wall Street Journal, who went on to author Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup. Regarding father Chris’s venture at Enron, I reprint my description from Enron Ascending: The Forgotten Years (2018).…