The broken window…. An elementary fallacy. Anybody, one would think, would be able to avoid it after a few moments’ thought. Yet the broken window fallacy, under a hundred disguises, is the most persistent in the history of economics. It is more rampant now than at any time in the past. It is solemnly reaffirmed every day by great captains of industry, by chambers of commerce, by labor union leaders, by editorial writers and newspaper columnists and radio commentators, by learned statisticians using the most refined techniques, by professors of economics in our best universities. In their various ways they all dilate upon the advantages of destruction.
– Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson, chapter 4.
Henry Hazlitt (1894–1993) was a journalist turned economist and philosopher and overall giant of free-market thought.…
Continue Reading[Editor note: This new white paper by the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council (ERCC) is summarized by director Scott Segal (full bio below). ERCC is a coalition of power companies that works with labor unions, consumers, and manufacturing and service businesses on clean air issues.]
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has now signed a proposal to advance a new maximum achievable control technology (MACT) standard for the electric utility industry, known as the Utility MACT.
Back in 1998, the EPA made a finding regarding the need to regulate mercury emissions from power plants. At the time, EPA made clear that there were no incremental benefits associated with addressing any other hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) from the power sector other than mercury. Specifically, no health benefits were found from addressing non-mercury HAPs such as acid gases.…
Continue ReadingRecently, Roger Pielke Sr., Senior Research Associate at the University of Colorado-Boulder in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (ATOC) at the University of Colorado Boulder, participated in the March 8, 2011 House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee Hearing, Climate Science and EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Regulation.
His succinct testimony, reprinted below, provides a viewpoint on climate change science that is (refreshingly) different from the somewhat limited one espoused by the IPCC. While the IPCC sports blinders that prevent it from seeing much beyond human emissions as being the primary culpable agent of climate change, Roger sees the much bigger, more complex, picture. And Roger suggests that a response considered for the big climate change picture would likely be much different from that being considered for human emissions alone.…
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