In recent years, I have been working on a book trilogy inspired by the rise and fall of Enron, easily a top-ten event in the history of commercial capitalism. I worked at Enron for 16 years and knew Ken Lay (a nice, albeit subtly flawed, man) well. No, I did not know the extent of the company’s problems (very few did), but I should have known more. Still, I was very critical of the company’s political business model and in particular, Enron’s climate alarmism and investments in (uneconomic, unreliable, unprofitable) wind power and solar power.
Book 1 in the trilogy, Capitalism at Work: Business, Government, and Energy (2009), spends several chapters on best business practices and sustainable corporate culture under capitalism proper–and the perils for the same from political capitalism.…
Continue ReadingWith little fanfare, an earthquake has rippled through the United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP). Three significant members, two of them being integrated oil majors, are no longer planning the cap-and-trade (aka, cap-and-tax) game. And if energy affordability and reliability is a metric, expect more companies to bolt. Social corporate responsibility, anyone? After all, there is no climate gain from a unilateral U.S. cap by the alarmists’ own math.
Here is the background. According to its website, USCAP is “a group of businesses and leading environmental organizations that have come together to call on the federal government to quickly enact strong national legislation to require significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.” Others of a less charitable bent would characterize them as central headquarters of the U.S. Climate-Industrial Complex, a group of corporate rent-seekers (the bootleggers), made whole by the environmental scaremongers (the Baptists) hell-bent on slapping the United States into a carbon rationing scheme.…
Continue ReadingAnother defender of limited government (and sound science) has petitioned U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reopen the regulatory process that led to EPA’s controversial endangerment finding, arguing that new information casts doubt on the scientific integrity of the determination. The Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a Sacramento, Calif.-based group that defends individuals against large, intrusive government, filed an administrative petition with EPA last week that challenges the agency’s finding on procedural grounds. The petition to the EPA is available at PLF’s web site.
According to the filing, EPA must reopen the proceedings surrounding its determination that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare, in light of recent controversy over e-mails released from prominent climate scientists whose work formed the very foundation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s 4th assessment on climate change (2007).…
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