Category Archives: Environment

Do you remember when the media were apoplexed by reports that the Defense Department during the days of Reagan were spending hundreds, hundreds of dollars on porcelain throne lids? USA Today does, or did when former Defense Sec. Caspar Weinberger died. For those who don’t, yes, there have been times when media were offended byContinue Reading

The new poll by Civitas found “Voters soundly opposed to paying more for so-called Green Energy.” Earlier this year a poll by the NC Sustainable Energy Association found “North Carolinians overwhelmingly support the increased use of clean energy sources like solar or wind energy.” In my newsletter today, I show how those seemingly disparate pollContinue Reading

The latest issue of The Atlantic devotes a full 13 pages to answering the question, “What If We Never Run Out of Oil?” Among the more interesting discussion points: People who spend much of their time shouting for cleaner fuel sources frown on fracking for natural gas. On a broader level still, cheap, plentiful naturalContinue Reading

Roy Cordato’s newsletter today puts it starkly: The Republican controlled House Public Utilities Committee voted 18-13 yesterday –allying themselves with the Obama administration and powerful special interest groups against North Carolina’s electricity customers — to defeat the rollback of the state’s renewable portfolio standard. Republicans allying themselves with Obama? What does that mean? Well, forContinue Reading

Under that assumption, which has only changed slightly since 2007, it is therefore incumbent for Republicans now to continue raising electricity prices on poor people and other captured ratepayers — because North Carolina’s Super-Strong Solar Industry cannot survive without exploiting people who have no choice in electricity providers. To paraphrase economists who’ve looked at thisContinue Reading

Steven Hayward shares with Weekly Standard readers some inconvenient facts for those who spout alarmist lines in the climate science debate. After two decades of steady and substantial global temperature increase from 1980 to 1998, the pause in warming is causing a crisis for the climate crusade. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. TheContinue Reading

Mitch, Good point. The monopoly providers are going to benefit either way; the captured ratepayers, on the other hand, are harmed when the state forces them to purchase electricity generated from more expensive, less efficient and less reliable sources. For the poorest among us, it’s not a small matter. Electricity is a basic household necessity.Continue Reading

This post builds on my previous post. In that one, I quoted a Bloomberg article today on the point that “More than half the U.S. states with laws requiring utilities to buy renewable energy are considering ways to pare back those mandates after a plunge in natural gas prices brought on by technology that boostedContinue Reading