Last week, I recognized twelve individuals associated with free-market, classical-liberal energy analysis and advocacy. Here is a second “tribute” to those who have labored against the mainstream of Malthusianism and energy statism–and now find themselves with new opportunities to formulate, summarize, and promote pro-consumer, taxpayer-neutral energy policy.

This list is in alphabetical order. It is subjective and hardly exhaustive. Other candidates (such as the present writer) could also be included–and could be in a future iteration.

ROBERT BRYCE is a force for energy realism. His highly readable, well researched books (three on energy, two on energy-related cronyism) are joined by highly effective opinion-page editorials in leading publications, such as the Wall Street Journal. A convert to the free-market beginning with his third book (from a politically correct all-of-the-above energy view), Bryce has  reached progressive audiences with a message that renewable energies are quite imperfect substitutes for dense mineral energies.…

“To actually accomplish replacing all light vehicles in the UK with battery-powered vehicles, while also meeting the requirements of the UK’s Climate Change Act, would require building 39,000 new 2 MW wind turbines, which is nearly 6 times the number of wind turbines built over the last 15 years. The cost would be approximately $165 billion or £131 billion. (More, if offshore wind or solar is built.) This is 90% of the UK budget for its entire health care program, or nearly three times larger than the UK’s defense budget.”

The media went gaga over France’s and the UK’s proposal to eliminate the use of internal combustion engines in automobiles by replacing them with battery-powered vehicles (BEVs).

As it now stands, the global BEV count of two million represents a 0.2 percent market share.…

“As a first priority, the Trump Administration must review, revise, reject or even rescind the SCC, and reduce its values well below what Obama used – perhaps even to zero or negative numbers. Doing so will destroy the justification for many expensive, intrusive, punitive, useless, counterproductive regulations.”

“The benefit estimates … will remain orders of magnitude larger than any reasonable SCC estimates, which means the B-C ratios will also remain very high.”

The Obama Administration aggressively used a Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) scheme to justify federal regulations pertaining to carbon-based fuels, carbon dioxide and methane emissions, coal mine and pipeline permit denials, energy development foreign aid, and many other actions.

While “SCC” may sound esoteric or academic, it is a critical concept. Without the artificial and inflated SCC estimates, many recent energy and environmental regulations could not have been justified or promulgated.…

“The UN’s ‘Deep Decarbonization Pathways’ … will require a radical transformation of economic and energy systems by 2050, through massive declines in carbon intensity in all sectors. It is not about modest or incremental change [but] … major changes in every country’s energy and production systems, over both the mid-term and long-term.”

Radical Islamist terrorists just maimed and murdered hundreds of people in Paris, dozens more in Mali, still more in other nations. They promise more atrocities in the United States and around the globe.

Meanwhile some 40,000 bureaucrats, politicians, scientists, lobbyists, activists and journalists plan to enjoy five-star Parisian hotels and restaurants, while attending COP21, the twenty-first UN Climate Change Conference, from November 30 through December 11. Like President Obama, they insist that humanity faces no greater threat than climate change.…