As the U.S. commemorates the 40th anniversary of passage of the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline Authorization Act of 1973, it is worth remembering the challenges the project overcame and how they mirror the challenges facing the Keystone XL Pipeline today. An 800-mile engineering marvel, the Alaska Pipeline was completed in two years …
Today the State Department released yet another positive environmental review for the northern portion of the Keystone XL pipeline project. The State Department approved the original pipeline route through Nebraska, which was supposedly less environmentally friendly, without any problems. It is no surprise, then, that the State Department also seems …
A cloud of photochemical smog from China drifted into Japan this week. The story highlights the fact that air pollution in China is getting worse—despite lamentations that the “world is passing us by” in clean energy. That quote came from Steven Chu, President Obama’s then-Secretary of Energy, in 2009. Chu …
The “think globally” people become very parochial when the global warming story isn’t as scary sounding as the local one. Climate change activists took the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) recent report showing 2012 to be the warmest on record for the continental United States, did a little geographic …
Today’s passing of Nobel Prize-winning economist James M. Buchanan is a sad milestone, but a good time to remember his impact on economics. Buchanan’s basic contribution to economic theory (and policy) was both simple and profound: Political decision makers, just like consumers and producers, are self-interested and subject to constraints. …
Once the electorate was made to realize that cap-and-trade bills (Lieberman-Warner, Waxman-Markey, etc.) were actually taxes on fossil energy, cap and trade became political poison. So it is surprising that an explicit tax on fossil energy is now being pushed in Washington. The hope among carbon-tax proponents is that they …
