[Editor note: This excerpt from Bradley’s next book, Edison to Enron: Energy Markets and Political Strategies, is part of a five-chapter history of Samuel Insull, the father of the modern power industry.]
President Obama just returned from Copenhagen empty handed. His hometown will not get the 2016 Olympics, or as a representative of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s (NRDC) Chicago operation advertised it, the “Blue Green Olympics.”
Given the science, economics, and politics of the global warming, aka climate change, it can be hoped that Obama–and the heads of all governments around the world–come away ’empty handed’ in Copenhagen in December. No town, city, province, or country should be burdened with energy rationing when consumer-driven, conventional energy has become more sustainable, not less.
The real global issue is economic recovery and growth, which means expanded private property and enhanced market institutions to promote sustainable growth in place of abject poverty and economic underperformance.…
Continue ReadingMasterResource continues to progress in its inaugural year. Our free-market energy blog has a top stable of primary writers, and we continue to attract quality guests that desire a unique home for their commentary.
MasterResource is a scholarly advocacy blog dedicated to energy/climate issues. One question we all ask ourselves is: how will this post appear tomorrow, next month, next year, or in a decade? Are we truth-seekers or mere shouters for the moment? We advocate private property rights, voluntary market relations (instead of government coercion), and sound science, but our preference cannot come at the expense of scholarship (the factual record; logical and relevant theory). This is our standard, and we invite comments to this end from our readers. (1)
To date we have had 285 posts from 34 authors and approximately 1,750 comments from nearly 400 individuals.…
Continue ReadingPaul Krugman has been on the warpath lately regarding climate change economics. He has devoted his last two NYT columns (here and here) to the subject, as well as back-to-back blog posts (here and here). True to form, Krugman accuses those who disagree with him of abject stupidity and evil intent; for Krugman it is impossible that any decent economist who cares about human beings could actually think the costs of cap-and-trade legislation will be high. But as we’ll see, Krugman’s own figures don’t jibe with the narrative he’s pushing.
In his September 27 blog post, Krugman takes up his familiar theme of denouncing those who dare to say that Waxman-Markey carries a large price tag. After using a diagram to explain the textbook distinction between the compliance costs of a new tax (or mandate), versus the “deadweight loss,” Krugman excoriates economist Martin Feldstein for allegedly spreading lies:
… Continue Reading[Feldstein] took the CBO’s estimate of “compliance costs”, which was $1600 per household in an early report (it’s now down to $900, but who’s counting?),