“What the commodity markets are telling us is that we’re living in a finite world, in which the rapid growth of emerging economies is placing pressure on limited supplies of raw materials, pushing up their prices…. [P]eak oil has arrived.”

“[R]esource constraints are becoming increasingly binding. This won’t bring an end to economic growth [but] … will require that we gradually change the way we live, adapting our economy and our lifestyles to the reality of more expensive resources.”

– Paul Krugman, “A Finite World,” New York Times, December 26, 2010.

Finiteness … fixity … depletion … rising cost … rising price.

The Hotelling Principle … The Limits to Growth … Jimmy Carter and James Schlesinger … Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren …

And a role for peak government to manage peaked commodities.…

The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested in improving national, state, and local energy & environmental policies. Our basic position is that technical matters like these should be addressed by using Real Science. It’s all spelled out at WiseEnergy.org, which is a wealth of energy and environmental resources.

A key element of AWED’s efforts is public education. Towards that end, every 3 weeks we put together a newsletter to balance what is found in the mainstream media about energy and environmental matters. We appreciate MasterResource for their assistance in publishing this information.

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Greed Energy Economics:

Wind energy development and perceived real estate values in Ontario

Wind Power is Intermittent, but Subsidies are Eternal

A rate design that recovers costs fairly from customers with rooftop solar

Where Will You Be When the Lights Go Out?…

“Voters and citizens all must tell Tom Steyer, the moneyed Left Foundations, taxpayer-inebriated scientists, green-energy cronies, Left politicians, and Crony Republicans that human-need philanthropy should replace the politics of pessimism and waste. It is time to end the futile climate crusade.”

– Robert Bradley, “Doubling Down on Climate Alarmism,” Forbes.com, December 1, 2014.

The free-market energy space these days is very crowded, quite unlike the old days when just a few of us were battling Big Government, Big Environmentalism, and Big Cronyism (think Enron). As one of the veterans, my blogs and op-eds now compete against a number of new voices, beginning with Alex Epstein and continuing with “America’s Voice for Energy” Marita Noon, and others. (Marlo Lewis, then as now, stands above as scholar-blogger.)…

“The costs of the PTC overwhelmingly outweigh the benefits. Lawmakers should prioritize American households over wind industry lobbyists.”

– Institute for Energy Research, The Case Against the Wind Tax Credit, November 24, 2014.

Last week, the American Energy Alliance (AEA), the advocacy arm of the Institute for Energy Research, began a grassroots initiative to engage lawmakers about the need to reject attempts to revive the wind Production Tax Credit (PTC), “a decades-old subsidy that props up the wind industry and lines the pockets of wealthy investors at the expense of the American taxpayer.”

The call-to-action via digital and social media advertisements involves nine states: Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Texas, North Carolina, Utah, California, and Louisiana.

“President Obama said his policies were on the ballot this November and the American people rejected them,” stated Tom Pyle, AEA President.…