Energy

Going carbon-free will be difficult without the U.S.’s largest source of carbon-free electricity: nuclear energy.

Germany’s similar experiment with an energy transition has been going on much longer than the time period under President Biden’s proposal, and that has led to skyrocketing electricity prices for residential users equal to three times what Americans pay.

This new proposed natural gas tax is a punitive tax designed to artificially raise the price of natural gas.

Alex Epstein’s testimony for a hearing by the House Natural Resources Committee on May 19, 2021.

It’s particularly absurd that Earth Day’s activists rarely mention the form of energy that could most quickly reduce greenhouse gases: nuclear power.

Philosophy, not only economics and political economy, matters in the global warming/climate change debate. Start by checking your premises—and those of your intellectual opponents.

The Canadian government’s net-zero 2050 plan has been aptly criticized for not being feasible because it ignores reality: the lack of necessary technology and the increasing demand for affordable and reliable energy in developing countries around the world.

Without fossil fuels, much of the world would freeze in the dark. We just don’t yet have enough alternatives.

Pandemic or not, the dream of abandoning fossil fuels is just a dream—a suicidal one

With climate alarmism and “extinction” protests now in the mainstream, it is no wonder that most people consider the alleged man-made catastrophic climate change an established fact, and advocate curtailing carbon “pollution” or even banning fossil fuels altogether.

Californians are right to feel dismay in this situation. Basic services like electricity should be the norm, despite dry weather and upticks in wind speed. Their ire would be best directed not at PG&E, but at the regulated monopoly model that Californians themselves have maintained through their state government.

Competition and the profit motive will encourage competing utilities to criss-cross the country with a more robust transmission grid, providing safer and cheaper electricity to all.

What does the oil and gas industry have to do with peace and love?

If the oil companies want to take the moral high ground, they must first acknowledge, not just the negative effects of their product, but also its enormous benefits to humans.

Carbon taxes are nonobjective, they are coercive, and they are impediments to prosperity.

A carbon tax with a realistic possibility of being signed into law, would not be the revenue-neutral, regulation-busting efficient solution that libertarian and conservative tax advocates desire. The political forces on the left want no part of an even nominally market-based solution.

In performing cost-benefit analyses our government has a responsibility to present the fullest view to the public that is possible. In the context of climate change, that means exploring the social cost of carbon at a wide range of discount rates, on a diversity of time horizons, and showing both the domestic and the global consequences.