“I have observed natural resource hearings for four decades. Never has such a pervasive, activist, elitist, anti-civilization mentality so pervaded our society as that on display at this hearing.”
Earlier this week, a hearing was held by the Seattle Port Authority about the impending arrival of Shell Oil’s offshore drilling equipment, which needs a docking for its Arctic mission this season. The hearing room was packed past overflow for what turned out to be a five-hour debate.
The result will not stop Shell from arriving at Terminal 5, although four of the five commissioners asked for delays as supported by Seattle Mayor Ed Murray. A summary of the testimony from a pro-energy, pro-Alaska perspective follows.
Alaska Witnesses
Many testified. All but one (i.e. a Mat-su area environmentalist who criticized Alaska’s position on natural resource development) represented themselves professionally, presenting actual facts and history relating to the century-old relationship between Seattle and Alaska.…
Continue Reading“Even in flush economic times, carbon taxes would be bad policy. When economies are already laboring under too much spending and are at diminishing-return levels of taxation, implementing a carbon tax would be a mistake.”
– Kenneth Green, Dissecting the Carbon Tax, The American, July 13, 2012.
Open-mindedness is a mark of scholarship. And some great lights of classical-liberal social thought in the 20th century changed their minds for theoretical/empirical reasons from a utilitarian perspective.
F. A. Hayek began as a democratic socialist. Milton Friedman started as a FDR New Dealer and Keynesian. [1] Friedman later in life even moved away from his (naive) view of a fixed-monetary rule where, as he once put it, a computer program could manage the money supply. [2] Turns out that ‘money supply’ is not a fixed, known quantity; turns out that money is a government monopoly subject to politics.…
Continue Reading“If there’s any chance at a rational policy on climate, two things must happen. First, intelligent laymen must take back the debate, by pushing currently out-of-bounds science back onto centre stage. They must stop letting ‘experts’ do their thinking for them. Second, political attacks on scientists must be stopped. Those must be pushed out of bounds.”
– Christopher Essex (Ph.D), Financial Post, February 26, 2015.
On June 11-12, 2015, in Washington, D.C., The Heartland Institute of Chicago, Illinois will host its Tenth International Conference on Climate Change, titled The New Science & Economics of Climate Change. “The debate over climate change is changing,” our conference brochure states. “Can you feel it?”
Yes, a growing number of scientists say the climate is less sensitive to carbon dioxide than previously thought. Most Americans do not believe global warming is a major threat.…
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