Meet David Crane, president and CEO of NRG Energy, the nation’s biggest independent power producer (IPP). This company’s diversified generation interests are fueled by every energy source from coal to wind.

Crane’s pedigree is a lot better than mine–degrees from Princeton and Harvard Law and lots of business experience. With all that going for him, it may not surprise you that Crane has a philosophical bent to go with his industry smarts. The current issue of Energy Biz summarizes some of his recent thoughts in an article with the deep title, Carbon Morality: The Nearsidedness of Incumbency.

The message of Carbon Morality? The power industry has lost its moral stature, and American society is on the verge of doing something awful to it.

The crisis? There’s a “fast shifting moral landscape” that “threatens to leave our industry adrift, shunned by the customers we serve.”…

Voters blasted climate alarmism at the ballot box earlier this month, just as South Carolina Republicans voters fired Rep. Robert Inglis for his climate alarmism back in 2011. Yet, Obama-like, the now head of Energy and Enterprise Initiative at George Mason University has launched a new website, republicEn.org and written an inaugural blog post about the post-election prospects for enacting a carbon tax.

In trying to sell Republicans on a carbon tax to reduce U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, Inglis insists on calling himself a Republican and free-marketer. Since 2012, his EEI has engaged in ” a nationwide public engagement campaign promoting conservative and free-enterprise solutions to energy and climate challenges.” Wiki also describes his work “to build support for energy policies that are true to conservative principles of limited government, accountability, reasonable risk-avoidance, and free enterprise.”…

“In terms of affordability, availability and scalability – methanol and ethanol are the best prospects to [displace oil in transportation] quickly.”

– John Hofmeister, quoted in John Holeywell, “Q&A: He Ran Shell Oil Co. – and He Thinks We Use Too Much Crude,” Houston Chronicle, September 19, 2014.

Milton Friedman once opined: “The two greatest enemies of free enterprise in the United States … have been, on the one hand, my fellow intellectuals and, on the other hand, the business corporations of this country.”

Enter T. Boone Pickens, crony capitalist extraordinaire. Enter John Hofmeister, former president of Shell Oil Co. (2005–2008), the Houston-based U.S. subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell. [1]

Hofmeister maliciously titled his signature book, Why We Hate the Oil Companies: Straight from an Energy Insider.…

“Enron was a political colossus with a unique range of rent-seeking and subsidy-receiving operations. Ken Lay’s announced visions for the company—to become the world’s first natural-gas major, then the world’s leading energy company, and, finally, the world’s leading company—relied on more than free-market entrepreneurship. They were premised on employing political means to catch up with, and outdistance, far larger and more-established corporations.

– R. Bradley, “Enron: The Perils of Interventionism,” EconLib, September 3, 2012.

A debate is currently playing out over the future of the Import-Export Bank, which comes up for Congressional reauthorization this September. In “End Corporate Welfare? Start With the Ex-Im Bank,” Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, a free-market advocacy group, pin-pricked the notion that small business was the beneficiary of taxpayer-guaranteed loans.…