The incessant calls for - and criticism of - government-funded/mandated "green/clean power" pork both ignore root causes and potential common ground. As a result, both sides of the debate are largely talking past each other, one talking about why there is a pressing need for government policy...
Henry Payne (cartoonist at the Detroit News and commentator at NRO) has a interesting post up on Feb. 18 at NRO's enviro-bashing "Planet Gore" website: "Obama’s Washington Is the Enemy of Auto-Industry Reform ". In it, Payne does a remarkable job of side-stepping the long...
Further to my previous posts , excerpted below are the recommendations that Paul Joskow (energy expert, MIT economist and current president of the Alfred P Sloan Foundationn) recently made in a speech at the National Press Club : What is to be done? We need to stop dealing with the electric power sector...
I believe that a key problem - and thus a key opportunity - that our country faces is over-regulation and misregulation of the electric power sector. Regulatory reform in this area is a middle ground, both for enviros and those whose principle concerns are economic liberty and healthy markets. As I noted...
A hodge-podge of state and federal regulations is keeping costs high and interfering with the development of competitive power markets. Paul L. Joskow , current President of the Alfred P Sloan Foundation and former Head of the MIT Department of Economics (now on leave) and former Director of the MIT...
I just lost my prior attempt at this post so forgive the brevity and lack of analysis in this one. Google is stepping up its activities and announcements (by CEO Eric Schmidt ) in the climate change / clean energy / "smart grid" interface, including announcing collaboration with GE (by CEO...
The New York Times has an interesting article that points out how the use of new wind and solar capacity is being hobbled by power distribution limitations , which limits result in part from the reluctance of state regulators to approve projects that might lead local power producers to seek higher returns...
I highly recommend that readers view the debate (or the transcript) between the above participants that Reason held last October but has just given renewed prominence at Reasononline and in their July 2008 print edition. Ron Bailey is the Science Correspondent at Reason and is the author of ECOSCAM:...