[Editor note: This is a repost from Marlo Lewis, Jr.’s piece from last year, published at the CEI blogsite. It is particularly relevant given the increasing isolation of R Street and the Niskanen Center in the climate-change debate.]

“… it is untrue that conservatives have been trying to beat something with nothing. Our “something” is climate realism and an energy sector free to power a growing economy because government eschews all forms of market favoritism.”

“The 2016 elections have given conservatives and free marketers an unexpected and rare opportunity to help a bold president change the direction of national policy. We squander that opportunity if we instead legitimize the progressive movement’s anti-fossil fuel crusade and promote an economically-destructive tax that would actually grow government under the pretense of streamlining it.”

“I have long been noted for ability to call turning points for industry: this suicide is one. Current industry support of EPA will create massive political backlash such as never seen before in US. ‘My early death by fossil fuel reflects what we are doing to ourselves.’ D. Buckel”

The above tweet by Amy Myers Jaffe (@AmyJaffeenergy) on 8:31 am – April 16th should live in infamy.

First, the author claims superior knowledge and prediction, not exactly a talking point for the Malthusians who have long predicted a (premature) end to the fossil-fuel-driven, growing energy sector. Peak oil demand is her new mantra, replacing her old fears of Peak Oil and “geopolitical peak oil.”

Second, Jaffe wildly predicts that the Trump Administration’s consumer-first, taxpayer-first, entrepreneur-first/crony-last energy policy is setting itself up for a massive reversal.…

“Mr. Anderson and the Energy and Policy Institute marginalize themselves by assuming what must be debated. Thinking persons want to know about tradeoffs: economic and environmental. And what about the fact that Tom Stacy has been and mostly is a volunteer for his cause, unlike Anderson who gets a nice full-time, six-figure salary for his?”

It is strange to read a perfectly normal, accurate biography of someone only to realize that the other side is using facts to try to smear someone for doing a sensible thing.

And for Tom Stacy, that “thing” is pushing back at the grassroots level against monstrous industrial wind turbines that are environmentally invasive, anti-consumer, and anti-taxpayer.

Yet mainstream environmentalists, favoring high prices and less reliability for the master resource of energy, not to mention environmental energy sprawl, pretend that there is an inherent social good in renewable energies that are inferior in every which way.…

“A new ethic is needed for corporate America, one where cronyism, obvious or subtle, is uncovered, reported, and criticized by the media and the public. Corporations will do the right thing under the new norms of a free, civil society.”

Corporations can practice Principled Entrepreneurship™ wherein “good profits” are derived from private property rights and voluntary exchange. Common ethical standards are respected in this quest as well.

Or corporations can practice contra-capitalism, mixing rent-seeking (cronyism) with philosophic fraud and imprudence.

A major corporation, ExxonMobil, and a major trade association, the Edison Electric Institute, used their financial and membership powers at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to go contra-capitalist on the issue of a resolution challenging the science behind Obama’s 2009 Clean Power Plan.

As described by Sterling Burnett at Climate News:

A resolution calling on the U.S.…