“What is needed is universally affordable air conditioning, which means inexpensive power to run the units. The Green New Deal and, specifically, a carbon tax, whether during the summer cooling peak or the winter heating peak, is a death wish for humane, comfortable living.”

Red, white, and blue Americans should stay comfortable this summer and not heed calls for voluntary A/C conservation. Ditching self-interest is a step on the road to energy serfdom where “carbon guilt” is adjunct to mandatory policies. Citizen voters should be clear: affordable, plentiful free-market energy comes before sacrificial political energy.

Media Spin

The mainstream media, pushing climate alarmism doubly as an anti-Trump meme, is focused on heat waves and the irony of increased CO2 emissions from more air conditioning.

“Historic heat wave is double whammy for climate change,” reads The Hill.…

“LEEDCo/Icebreaker would do well to abandon its hoped-for permit from the OPSB. The obstacles and problems have been pointed out repeatedly by experts, individuals, birding organizations, ecologists, in consultations, letters, formal legal presentations; enough to fill volumes. Its ten-year-long attempts to capture subsidies while overlooking viable and responsible care for the environment are unsustainable.”

“This proposal has so many indisputable strikes against it,” says Bryan Ralston, president of the Lake Erie Marine Trades Association. “We’re calling for the OPSB to reject it outright. It cannot be justified economically. It will raise, not lower, consumer’s electrical rates. It cannot survive without taxpayer subsidies. It’s an environmental disaster and it will become an industrial size turbine graveyard in the future.”

Over the years, I have followed the aspirations of Lorry Wagner’s LEEDCo wind project—now the Icebreaker Wind project of Fred Olsen Renewables, Inc.…

[Editor Note: This reprint of a February 2009 post by Robert Murphy at MasterResource is back in play regarding the self-styled conversion of Jerry Taylor from skeptic to climate alarmist. Taylor, a principal at MasterResource at the time, was well aware of the Martin Weitzman argument (below) but claims he was introduced to and converted by it years later.]

The funny thing about carbon pricing is that even if you take the latest IPCC report as gospel, and even if you assume all of the governments around the world implement a perfectly efficient carbon tax, even so the “efficient” carbon tax ends up being fairly low for a few decades, and then it ramps up as atmospheric concentrations increase.  (See William Nordhaus’s new book treatment of his “DICE” model for an excellent exposition.) …

“All economic pain and no environmental gain is bad politics coming and going. The Democrats do not seem to want to touch it, if their vote on the Green New Deal was any indication.”

” … history will judge the climate alarm as exaggerated, CO2 as the gas of life, and carbon-based energy and modern living as heaven on earth. Governor Abbott, thank you.”

During the day, Houston, Texas, bustles as the oil and gas capital of the world. The daily business fare as reported by the hometown Houston Chronicle is a new offshore project here, new refinery or petrochemical plant there, new onshore production plays elsewhere.

And then there is a whole new industry within an industry, LNG exports from Texas and Louisiana to distant ports–and even LNG tank cars crossing into Mexico.…