“After a dozen extensions and nearly three decades on the books, it’s time to end the Production Tax Credit….”
Thirteen extensions of a 1992 tax credit for a supposedly infant industry in need of start-up aid. A subsidy has risen with inflation and become more lucrative with new technological design.
Little wonder that wind power can be “predatory” by under-pricing conventional electrical generation that does not get the subsidy. As in negative, zero, or small-positive prices. Little wonder that firm, dependable power sources are leaving the market–or require a corrective subsidy to continue to compete (a second wrong).
It’s a racket. And so 41 free market groups have aligned to urge the U.S. Senate to end the racket. The full letter, organized by the American Energy Alliance, follows.…
Continue Reading“Civilization’s advance can be seen as a quest for higher energy use required to produce increased food harvests, to mobilize a greater output and variety of materials, to produce more, and more diverse, goods, to enable higher mobility, and to create access to a virtually unlimited amount of information.” (Smil, Energy and Civilization, quoted below)
“Fortunately, basic numbers don’t lie, and what they convey is that, in the context of market economies, past Promethean writers proved much more right than their opponents.” (Desrochers, below)
Pierre Desrochers (Department of Geography, Geomatics and the Environment, University of Toronto Mississauga) is one of the world’s leading scholars in the fields of energy and sustainable development. A generation ahead of Desrochers is Vaclav Smil, a renowned expert in energy history and technology whose profuse writings document his energy worldview–at least most of it.…
Continue Reading“This year’s races are the first major electoral test for the Green New Deal, which was thrust into the national spotlight following the 2018 midterm elections. And so far, few Democrats in the most competitive races think it’s a winner.”
“… Democrats in close races are denouncing both the Green New Deal and quickly banning hydraulic fracturing when they get the opportunity, and are instead laying out their own, less aggressive plans to fight climate change.” (E&E News, below)
In a ‘Campaign 2020’ essay (October 20, 2020), Timothy Cama of E&E News indirectly documents the obvious: Americans like their energy affordable convenient, and reliable. And what is true today will always be, putting the Green Agenda of energy scarcity and inconvenience on the defensive against nature and reality.
Jerry Taylor–libertarian-turned-statist (see here and here)–warned back in March 2019 when the Green New Deal emerged:
… Continue Reading… the strategies and tactics you are pursuing through the Green New Deal amount to political malpractice.