A Free-Market Energy Blog

The Left Can Also Disown Cap-and-Trade (change a few words from Bob Herbert’s rejection of government health care and there you have it!)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 3, 2010

Posts at MasterResource have highlighted the Left’s growing Civil War on climate policy. James Hansen, in particular, has called for the rejection of (Enronesque) cap-and-trade, as well as for the failure of the Copenhagen approach to climate policy.

More recently, the Hard Left (Bill McKibben, John Passacantando, etc.) has heated-up over Joseph Romm’s dismissal of cap-and-dividend as “cap-and-divide.” Here’s the comment of longtime Greenpeace head Passacantando on Romm’s post:

Joe, as a longtime reader of your blog I find your hostility towards an innovative approach perplexing …. I don’t think a legislative alternative to what appears to be a dead approach … is in any way divisive. Cap and dividend (the CLEAR Act) is a smart policy alternative, a real Plan B, filling in the current vacuum.

Romm would have none of it (remember, he works for the ObamaTank, a.k.a

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Mobility versus the “Congestion Coalition” (freedom versus planning revisited)

By Randal O'Toole -- February 2, 2010

“Unrestricted mobility is every bit as important to American freedom and economic health than health care reform. I hope that the people who have fought socialized health care will work just as hard to fight the congestion coalition.”  – R. O’Toole

The United States is the most mobile nation on earth, with the average American traveling nearly twice as many miles per year as the average resident of any other country. That mobility, the vast majority of which is provided by automobiles, has produced enormous benefits, including higher incomes, lower cost consumer goods, better housing, and access to a wide variety of social and recreational opportunities.

Transportation touches everyone’s lives every single day, and most American have to deal with traffic congestion several times a week. So when Congress takes up the subject of federal transportation funding, which it does every six years, people ought to be as concerned as they have been in the ongoing health-care debate.…

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A Misstep and Signs of Despair at Climate Progress (climate optimism, anyone?)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 1, 2010

Joseph Romm heavily edits the comments at his top-rated energy/environmental blog, Climate Progress, a project of the Center for American Progress. (The more academic, one-post-per-day MasterResource is #14 of 2,800 “green blogs” as of 1/31/10 per Technorati, not too bad for being 13 months old.)

Dr. Romm will not publicly debate his distinguished opponents either, just as Paul Ehrlich refused to debate the late Julian Simon. Though thin-skinned and trigger happy, Romm has not attempted to rebut a four-part post at the Breakthrough Institute by Michael Shellenberger, Ted Nordhaus, et al., Joe Romm and Climate McCarthyism, a widely disseminated and discussed event on the Left. (Updates on the Romm series are available at the Breakthrough Institute blog.)

Nor will Romm show the courage of his convictions by betting on his predicted global warming trend, which has led some to speculate that Romm deep down is really a global lukewarmer.

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PR’ing Industrial Wind: Government and Media versus Common Sense

By Jon Boone -- January 30, 2010
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IPCC “Consensus”—Warning: Use at Your Own Risk

By Chip Knappenberger -- January 29, 2010
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Big Wind: How Many Households Served, What Emissions Reduction? (Part 2)

By Kent Hawkins and Donald Hertzmark -- January 28, 2010
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Big Wind: How Many Households Served, What Emissions Reduction? (A Case Study, Part 1 of 2)

By Kent Hawkins and Donald Hertzmark -- January 27, 2010
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Dear U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Why Attempt to Resuscitate a Brain Dead Climate Bill?

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 26, 2010
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“The Great Climate Debate” at Rice University: The Science is NOT Settled (Richard Lindzen and Gerald North to Revisit the IPCC ‘Consensus’)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 25, 2010
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Bootleggers and Baptists Tackle (Carbon) Prohibition

By Jerry Taylor -- January 23, 2010
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