Search Results for: "1970s"
Relevance | DateClimate Exaggeration: Trashing Science to Trash the GOP (Florida under water is a ruse)
By James Rust -- October 1, 2014 1 CommentThe September 24, 2014 New York Times (NYT) had an article by reporter Gail Collins, “Florida Goes Down the Drain—The Politics of Climate Change.” A more inflammatory title for the same article appeared in the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution three days later, “Florida soggier as GOP ignores climate change.”
Reading the articles shows the obvious intent to inject climate change into the November Florida elections—in particular the Governor’s race between incumbent Republican Governor Rick Scott and Democrat candidate Charles Crist. Ms. Collins portrays Governor Scott as uninformed about climate change issues with regard to sea level rise. He is not.
This article’s patent exaggerations should be of concern to all rational citizens, not only voters. Sound science versus Malthusian alarmism is an issue not only for the 2014 elections but also for 2016 and beyond.…
Continue ReadingMilton Friedman Day (some energy quotations on the occasion of his 102nd birthday)
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 31, 2014 1 Comment“Economists may not know much. But we know one thing very well: how to produce surpluses and shortages. Do you want a surplus? Have the government legislate a minimum price that is above the price that would otherwise prevail…. Do you want a shortage? Have the government legislate a maximum price that is below the price that would otherwise prevail.”
– Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), pp. 219.
“It is a mark of how far we have gone on the road to serfdom that government allocation and rationing of oil is the automatic response to the oil crisis.”
– Milton Friedman, “Why Some Prices Should Rise,” Newsweek, November 19, 1973.
Milton Friedman is best known for Monetarism, a school of economics that effectively challenged fiscal-side Keynesianism.
“More People, Greater Wealth, More Resources, Healthier Environment” (Part I: 1994 Julian Simon essay reprinted)
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 24, 2014 No Comments“Adding more people causes problems, but people are also the means to solve these problems. The main fuel to speed the world’s progress is our stock of knowledge, and the brakes are a) our lack of imagination, and b) unsound social regulations of these activities.
The ultimate resource is people – especially skilled, spirited, and hopeful young people endowed with liberty – who will exert their wills and imaginations for their own benefit, and so inevitably they will benefit not only themselves but the rest of us as well.”
– Julian L. Simon, essay of February 28, 1994 (below).
This is the economic history of humanity in a nutshell: From 2 million or 200,000 or 20,000 or 2,000 years ago until the 18th Century, there was slow growth in population, almost no increase in health or decrease in mortality, slow growth in the availability of natural resources (but not increased scarcity), increase in wealth for a few, and mixed effects on the environment.…
Continue ReadingZycher: Just the Facts, Mr. Steyer
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 21, 2014 3 Comments“[Tom] Steyer has proven himself a master at working the system, first to amass a fossil-fuel fortune, and now to bask in the applause of the environmental left even as he feeds at the green energy subsidy trough…. Thus has he descended into a display of crass dishonesty shameless even by Beltway standards.”
– B. Zycher, “He’s Explaining, and He’s Losing.” The Hill, July 18, 2014.
It’s good to have Benjamin Zycher, Ph.D economist and longtime energy scholar, at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
He continues the intellectual tradition carried on, most recently, by Stephen Hayward and Kenneth Green. And this tradition goes back to when AEI led the fight against oil and gas price and allocation controls in the dark 1970s. Twenty-five studies in their National Energy Project (1974–76) and Studies in Energy Policy (1976–85) helped make up for Resources for the Future taking a Malthusian left turn.…
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