America’s Energy Scorecard (Let freedom ring!)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 27, 2015

Editor note: The advocacy arm of the Institute for Energy Research (IER), the American Energy Alliance (AEA), has launched a new analysis and advocacy program, The American Energy Scorecard. A description of the new initiative from AEA follows.]

Energy is the lifeblood of modern society. It touches every aspect of American life— fueling our transportation systems, powering our offices, and heating and lighting our homes. Affordable, abundant, and reliable energy empowers us to grow and prosper. In fact, energy is the single most important mechanism for alleviating poverty and promoting prosperity.

It is in the spirit of promoting energy prosperity that the American Energy Alliance has launched the American Energy Scorecard, the first and only free-market congressional energy accountability scorecard.

The American Energy Scorecard educates lawmakers about the most important energy votes of the year and empowers the American people to hold their elected officials accountable for the decisions they make in Washington.…

David Legates Makes Sense to Me (climate ‘contrarian’ on the firing line)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 26, 2015

“U. of Delaware Refuses to Disclose Funding Sources of Its Climate Contrarian,” read the headline from Inside Climate News. “Citing academic freedom, the president and provost decline a congressional request for funding disclosures surrounding the work of Professor David Legates.”

That would seem to be good news … until the next paragraph ominously refers to Legates as “a known climate contrarian” (known, no less). The piece continues:

Legates previously served as Delaware’s state climatologist, a role he said he was fired from in 2011 after refusing to resign. Three years earlier he was asked by then-Gov. Ruth Ann Minner to stop using his official title while espousing climate denial. “Your views on climate change, as I understand them, are not aligned with those of my administration,” Minner wrote to Legates at the time.

Gov. Jerry Brown: Remember John Husing (debate over the moral high ground)

By Wayne Lusvardi -- March 25, 2015

“[T]he buildup of carbon coming from coal and petroleum and other sources … is going to create these droughts and much, much worse. And that’s why to have the leader of the Senate, Mr. McConnell, representing his coal constituents, … risk, the health and well being of America, is a disgrace.… President Obama is taking some important steps. And to fight that, it borders on immoral.”

– California Gov. Jerry Brown, Meet The Press, March 22, 2015.

“The inter-state political war against global warming is over wealth effects, not health effects. As John Husing summed up the inversion of morality in such public policies:’Bluntly, it does our region little good if we create a pristine environment but let people increasingly die of the diseases and behaviors fostered by poverty’.”

– John Husing, PhD, economist, “Public Health, Socio-Economics, and Logistics” (October 2013)

Recently, on the Sunday morning weekly TV news-interview program Meet The Press, the Democratic Party called upon Governor Jerry Brown of California to snuff out a groundswell of opposition in the U.S.…