In Senate testimony on February 3, Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute warned that replacing oil and gas with renewables will make the United States vulnerable to other countries—but barely reducing carbon dioxide emissions. “While the U.S. is essentially self-sufficient today in net hydrocarbon use, it is an importer of alternative energy materials and machines….
The Surprising Spread of Free Market Environmentalism
This is the second post by Shawn Regan of PERC, the Property and Environment Research Center, on “what free market environmentalists support.” Those who support the role of property rights and markets in environmental protection may not realize how many organizations agree with them. Here are a few examples (for others see Part I of…
‘An Extraordinary Act of Executive Fiat’
President Biden’s canceling the Keystone XL pipeline is “an extraordinary act of executive fiat that has few peacetime precedents in American history,” writes David Blackmon in Forbes. Added to its audacity is the disdain for the workers who have lost their jobs or will never get them. “In a statement reminiscent of Barack Obama’s famous…
Free Market Environmentalism Is Action, Not Theory
How a would-be academic discovered he was an ‘enviropreneur’ Wallace Kaufman, a regular contributor to this blog, describes his discovery of how profit-making projects can protect land. In the late 1950s what new college student with a social conscience didn’t think the world needed a better way of motivating people than profits? My parents had…
Cancellation of Keystone XL: A Win for China?
Daniel Turner, an advocate for energy production, writes in RealClearEnergy that President Biden’s decision to curtail the Keystone XL will cause Canadian oil to go to China rather than to the Gulf of Mexico. It will also give more business to Russia. (The 1200-mile pipeline, an extension of the original Keystone Pipeline, would go from…
How Do We Save the Monarch Butterfly?
Monarch butterflies hit a record low in California this winter, reports Business Insider, citing an annual count by the Xerces Society. The western Monarchs migrate as much as 3000 miles a year, arriving in California from the Pacific Northwest, usually staying in the state until March and then moving to other parts of the country….
Halt Wind Turbines? Not in New York State
This story seems to have slipped under the radar, but as the pandemic was kicking in last April, the New York state legislature clamped down on citizens’ ability to challenge renewable energy projects. The law was hidden in the state’s budget. (Hat tips to the Institute for Energy Research and the Buffalo News for following…