Remember President Obama’s “Clean Power Plan”? It aimed to reduce global warming (aka climate change) by cutting American emissions of carbon dioxide from electricity generation. It never got very far, and the Trump Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) killed it.But now President Biden has his own version. He announced his “Energy Efficiency and Clean Electricity Standard” in March. The Washington Post reported it would “turbocharge the country’s transition from fossil … [Read more...]
The Tide-Theory of Climate Change
Guest article by Joakim BookI was watching the tide today and thought of climate change. Yes, they are different phenomena; the tide is predictable, well-known, and reverses itself like clockwork roughly every six hours, whereas climate change is unpredictable, uncertain, and (still) irreversible. Nevertheless, it serves as a relevant illustration of what we are often overlooking in the climate debate. The tide moves continuously; slowly and gradually, not suddenly or … [Read more...]
Pennsylvania Republican Senators Take a Stand for Constitutional Order Against Green Agenda
Twenty-eight Republican members of the Pennsylvania senate signed a letter April 21 of which Benjamin Franklin would be proud.Protesting Governor Tom Wolf's frequent use of executive orders to bypass the state legislature, which Republicans dominate, and impose his climate-change agenda on an otherwise unwilling state, hey gave him an ultimatum: Stop it, or we'll reject all your nominees to the state Public Utility Commission.We applaud their action and the reasoning on which it stands, and we … [Read more...]
The Ignorant World and What to Do About It
Guest column by Joakim BookA spectre is haunting the Western world – the spectre of a grossly mistaken understanding of the world.British kids have nightmares about the climate. Half of French respondents think it likely that climate change will cause “the extinction of the human race.” American teachers coddle students who have panic attacks when wildfires rage somewhere on the planet. Eco-anxiety has clearly gripped the Western world, but what’s worse is that most people … [Read more...]
Playing Fast and Loose with Numbers
Guest article by Joakim BookJournalism is hard. To portray the world accurately to a layman audience without delving into the complexities and nuances of the universe we inhabit, writers must always simplify, explain, and make difficult content relatable for their readers. You can do this well and comprehensively, and you can do it poorly. Often, writers simplify and give concrete examples with the best of intentions, even though I don’t put it past some of the activist writers out there to … [Read more...]
Indiana Economists Endorse “Carbon Tax”—But Should They?
Recently fifty Indiana economists issued a public letter to their state's legislature endorsing a "carbon tax" as an economically wise way to curb global warming by reducing carbon dioxide emissions.The fundamental premise of taxing CO2 emissions is that they cause more harm than good (and thus are what economists call a “negative externality”—a cost of doing business not borne by a firm but foisted off onto others—the typical case with pollution).Economists are right to say that taxing negative … [Read more...]
Healthy Polar Bears and Thriving Tigers: The Common Climate Tale
Last year, the world applauded Greta Thunberg’s emotional “How Dare You!” speech at the UN summit in New York. The teenager famously said, “Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction.” The mainstream media’s narrative is similar. Ecosystems are dying. Animals are going extinct. Our evil desire to consume fossil fuels is to blame! What do you think? Are species going extinct because of manmade global warming? Christians, who honor God as Creator, should … [Read more...]
The Formula for a Richer World? Equality, Liberty, Justice
Guest column by Dierdre N. McCloskey[Editor's note: Dierdre McCloskey is one of the world's foremost economic historians, whose many books have provided extraordinary insights into how societies rise from poverty to prosperity and remain prosperous. We are grateful for Dr. McCloskey's permission to reprint this article, which first appeared in the New York Times and then was republished on the website of the American Institute for Economic Research.---E.C.B.]The world is rich and will become … [Read more...]
Must We Always Have Paris? How Trump Can Spoil Biden’s Climate Dream
On September 3, 2016, then-President Barack Obama engaged the United States in the Paris climate agreement.He called it the “most ambitious climate change agreement in history.”That means Obama considered it more ambitious than the Framework Convention on Climate Change—a treaty the Senate approved October 7, 1992.It means he considered it more ambitious than the Kyoto Protocol, American engagement in which the Senate killed with S.Res.98, passed by a roll-call vote of 95-0 on July 25, 1997.That … [Read more...]
CO2 Levels Highest “Since the Dawn of Human Civilization.” So What?
A donor to the Cornwall Alliance has asked if it is true, as Travis Kavulla wrote in “What Is the Green New Deal?” (National Review, February 21, 2019), that “The atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases has not been higher since the dawn of human civilization than it is today. No debate about the niceties of climate science can eclipse this basic fact.”The first sentence is probably true. (Probability is the best empirical observation can give us.) It’s not something that “global warming … [Read more...]
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