Guest column by Ken Braun An anecdote widely attributed to (but perhaps not originating with) Milton Friedman holds that the late, great Nobel Prize laureate was touring a developing nation and happened upon a public works project. To make way for the new road or canal or whatever, platoons of workers using hand shovels were laboriously moving the dirt and rocks from one spot to another. Perplexed by this absurdly primitive approach, Friedman supposedly asked why the government wasn’t using … [Read more...]
RICO and Climate Consensus: Putting the Chill on Science, Speech, and Human Flourishing
Forget about the First Amendment, the indispensable role of vigorous debate and testing in the progress of scientific knowledge, the reality of major reversals in science, the tremendous benefits of fossil-fuel-derived energy in lifting and keeping whole societies---and their individual members---out of poverty, disease, and premature death. Those mean nothing to climate alarmists like Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the Natural Resources Defense Council and other large environmentalist … [Read more...]