What would you think if someone told you that one of the most important early champions of wind power touted it precisely because he thought it couldn’t work for advanced, industrialized societies? “Aww, can’t be true”? Well, it can be, and it is. In “The Question Concerning Technology” (1954), Martin Heidegger—one of the twentieth century’s […]
Wind and Solar Energy—Never Meant to Work? Learn More »
Want to “bring nothing but misery to poor people, especially in the developing world”? Simple: Just follow the advice of the international cabal of UN leaders and their organizations calling for drastic action to fight global warming. The harangue is familiar everywhere by now: Global warming will harm everybody, but it’ll harm the poor most
Does Fighting Global Warming Help or Hurt the Poor? Learn More »
Every once in a while—well, a lot more often than I wish—I miss a big story related to climate change and climate policy. Week before last, on my birthday, I missed a really big one: the decision by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reverse a critical piece of Obama-era energy regulation. Acting EPA
Dumping CCS Is the Right Decision Learn More »
I’ve long thought the primary obstacle to the great expansion of nuclear power’s contribution to America’s energy needs is excessive regulation imposing safety standards that go far beyond what’s necessary and thus pushing costs prohibitively high. I still think so, and one of the challenges Republicans in Congress should take on is revising bringing those
Why Should America Expand its Nuclear Energy Sector? Learn More »
Cornwall Alliance advisory board member H. Sterling Burnett published a good piece in the Washington Times recently that rebuts claims about “Green jobs” in two ways. Burnett points out that in response to President Donald Trump’s saying one reason to withdraw from the Paris climate accord was that staying in would drive energy prices higher, causing
What Do “Green Jobs” Produce? Learn More »
A tourist asks an Irish old-timer, “How do I get to Dublin?” The old-timer responds, “Well, you can’t get there from here.” That’s what came to my mind when I read Michael Kelly’s brief paper “A Challenge for Renewable Energies,” at the Global Warming Policy Forum. The gist: “In recent years the energy sector has accounted
Can We Get There from Here? Learn More »
For half a century, Middle Eastern countries, many with Islamic fundamentalist regimes that have financed radical jihadi terrorists while oppressing women and persecuting non-Muslims, have dominated the world’s energy markets. More recently, Europe has been hostage to Russia for natural gas, crucial to its energy needs. In the last decade, revolutionary oil and gas drilling
Is the Trump Administration Brave Enough to Move Beyond “Energy Dominance”? Learn More »
The United States has been the world’s #1 producer of natural gas for eight years now, and of oil for three—realities that are only slowly dawning on the broad public that still tends to think in terms of the olden days when Russia dominated the former and Saudi Arabia the latter. The result? Lower prices
How Did America Become the World’s #1 Energy Producer? Learn More »
Was it wise for President Donald Trump to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement? The President offered mostly economic reasons for his decision. Although they’re important, it’s also important to know whether there’s good scientific basis. As some critics reason, “So what if the economy booms? What if the earth dies?”So
Was Exiting Paris Wise or Unwise? Learn More »
In 2007 Congress passed a law requiring the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to study and report every three years to Congress on the environmental impact of EPA’s ethanol mandate. And in the intervening nine years, EPA has complied with the law once—in 2011. Now it says it’ll be 2024 before it can manage it
What Would the Precautionary Principle Imply for Ethanol? Learn More »
