“Imagining a low-carbon world, then, means reevaluating our conception of freedom itself.”

– Audrea Lim, “The Ideology of Fossil Fuels.” Dissent, Spring 2018.

Audrea Lim in a recent issue of Dissent (a quarterly magazine for Left Progressivism) penned an essay, “The Ideology of Fossil Fuels.” The journalist/editor at Verso Books offers a rather bizarre view of the energy world. She writes in part:

Why is it so much easier, as the saying goes, to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism? …. The most straightforward answer to the question, perhaps, lies in the sticky substance that fuels capitalism as we know it, and is daily bringing us closer to the apocalypse of the [doomsday] preppers’ imagination: oil.

“The mansion of modern freedoms stands on an ever-expanding base of fossil fuel use,” writes the postcolonial theorist Dipesh Chakrabarty in a seminal essay collected in Energy Humanities.…

“A carbon tax is not simple either, especially when you start talking about how the revenue will be distributed. … Yes, there would be a food fight over the revenue….”

– Antonia Herzog, Natural Resources Defense Council

“I wish I could tell you that Republican offices have approached us and said, ‘Thank you for doing this, we are ready to talk about it’…. [F]rankly Senators Schatz and Whitehouse are two of the more liberal members of the Senate.”

“There is also concern from the left that those conversations [with Republicans] could lead to eradication of EPA authority or at least a moratorium on EPA authority, which leaves some folks nervous….”

– Michael Obetter, Office of Sen. Brian Schatz

“I find these meetings extremely productive and helpful. They have influenced my thinking in how best to go about what I want to accomplish in the House and Senate with the GOP.…

“Over the last year or so, I have tried to advise the progressive community that we should be open-minded about a carbon tax.”

– Greg Dotson, Center for American Progress

“The bottom line here is that the distributional effect of a carbon tax could really be anything you want, depending on how you use the revenues. We think it is shortsighted to only think of the direct effect of the tax.”

– Eric Toder, Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center

“[Trump] … is going to be utterly decimated in November….  Then the question is, what does that do to the Tea Party? …. Is the Tea Party really something to fear now, after a decimation in November? 

– Jerry Taylor, Niskanen Center

It is rare that one gets to follow the talk and reasoning of climate/energy alarmists/activists.…

“For this treaty to merit our support, the proponents should be asked to demonstrate the accuracy of all of the following statements…. As will be seen below, the case for any one of these statements is surprisingly weak.  The case for a global warming treaty, which depends on the accuracy of all of these statements, in shockingly weak.”

– William Niskanen, Fall 1997

“Given the low cost of waiting, it would seem only prudent to continue to try to answer the open questions about climate change before making major changes to Western civilization.”

 – Jerry Taylor on Niskanen (above), Winter 1998

In the Fall 1997 issue of JOBS & CAPITAL (Milken Institute), William A. Niskanen, chair of the Cato Institute, published a long essay against regulating carbon dioxide (CO₂) via a global treaty (or otherwise).…