“What’s the point of setting goals which cannot be achieved? People call it aspirational. I call it delusional.” (V. Smil, below)
In an article filed under “climate crimes,” The Guardian claims that environmental nirvana is reachable if only politicians stop listening to Big Oil and start listening to social scientists. Author Amy Westervelt argues that the technology needed to achieve “net zero” carbon emissions is at hand; we just lack the will and the laws to implement it. She quotes from a recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC):
… Continue ReadingFactors limiting ambitious transformation [to address climate change] include structural barriers, an incremental rather than systemic approach, lack of coordination, inertia, lock-in to infrastructure and assets, and lock-in as a consequence of vested interests, regulatory inertia, and lack of technological capabilities and human resources.
“Maybe instead of investigating the relatively high price [in early 2002] of gasoline, the government should check into its own regulatory and tax policies that artificially reduce supply and raise prices.”
This piece was written in first-quarter 2002 when environmental requirements were pushing reformulated gasoline prices higher, and the wellhead oil boom associated with hydraulic fractionation and horizontal drilling was a decade away.
Today, the war against oil from the Net Zero movement–now joined by the Russia/Ukraine conflict–has sent prices to historically high levels. Still, a mostly free market has wondrously overcome impediments to make a “depletable” mineral plentiful and affordable for hundreds of millions of Americans each day.
Let’s go back to the debate 20 years ago, when gasoline was sold for $1.50 per gallon (about $2.50 today)….
Crude oil prices are at a 6-month high. …
Continue ReadingEd Note: This (re)post from early 2015 by economist Michael Giberson, formerly at Texas Tech University, is reprinted below. While generic to pricing of any good or service in any emergency, it applies to Joe Biden’s recent concern about oil-price ‘gouging’ and calls from the Democrat leadership for FTC investigations into the same.
“Higher prices would discourage over-buying and help ensure that useful consumer goods get distributed to more households, not just the households best able to rush to the store. Consumer sentiment against higher prices during emergencies, by discouraging a price response and encouraging shortages, tends to put the burden of the shortages on those consumers least able to run to the stores in emergencies.”
When consumer demand shoots up and supplies are limited, either prices must increase or shortages will result.…
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