Climate Consensus: Do Little for Now
16 Sep 2014 1 Comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, economics of natural disasters, environmental economics, global warming, health economics, liberalism, technological progress Tags: climate alarmism, cost benefit analysis, global warming, moral panic, richer is safer, wealthier is healthier
Fact sheet on Green scaremongering about more flooding because of global warming
15 Sep 2014 1 Comment
Pollution is getting worse and worse alert: air pollution in Pittsburgh, 1940
13 Sep 2014 Leave a comment
Equal protection of birds under environmental law?
12 Sep 2014 Leave a comment
in environmental economics, environmentalism Tags: green hypocrisy, killer green technologies, solar power, wind farms
Exxon Mobil agreed to pay $600,000 in penalties after 85 migratory birds died of exposure to hydrocarbons at its natural gas facilities.
A common sight above the world’s largest solar thermal power plant is a streamer: a small plume of smoke that occurs without warning. The source is a bird that has inadvertently strayed into the white-hot heat above the plant’s many reflecting mirrors. No fines for the 28,000 birds killed in this way.
More than 573,000 birds are killed by U.S. wind farms each year. No fine.
the Obama administration issued an exemption in 2013 to allow wind power companies to kill or injure eagles without the fear of prosecution for up to three decades. The new rule is designed to address environmental consequences that stand in the way of the nation’s wind energy rush.
Who Is More Irrational – Consumers or Regulators?
08 Sep 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of regulation, energy economics, entrepreneurship, environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming Tags: Bjørn Lomborg, expressive voting, futile gestures, global warming, Kip Viscusi, nanny state, regulatory failure, The fatal conceit, The pretence to knowledge
A study by Ted Gayer and W. Kip Viscusi looked into this implied irrationality of consumers. They have found no empirical evidence to support the view that if consumers are so irrational that government agencies must prohibit certain energy consuming products for us to make the right choices:
Rather than accept the implications that consumers and firms are acting so starkly against their economic interest, a more plausible explanation is that there is something incorrect in the assumptions being made in the regulatory impact analyses.
Indeed, upon closer inspection it is apparent that there is no empirical evidence provided for the types of consumer failures alleged.
Even the EPA acknowledged this logical gap in its economic analysis of energy efficiency regulations:
it is a conundrum from an economic perspective that these large fuel savings have not been provided by automakers and purchased by consumers
Not surprisingly Kip Viscusi observed that
The regulatory impact analyses examined in this study contain virtually no empirical evidence to support the irrationality proposition.
• This proposition ignores the fact that consumers and firms purchase products based on a number of factors—only one of which is energy efficiency.
• Government agencies exhibit a parochial bias by ignoring all product attributes other than energy efficiency.
Managerial Econ: Make the rules or your rivals will: use anti-growth activists to erect entry barriers
08 Sep 2014 Leave a comment
in comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, economics of regulation, environmental economics, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: bootleggers and baptists, rent seeking
The courts have sanctioned the right to organize community opposition that urges government officials and agencies to deny land use permits to applicants, even when the underlying motive of the opposition is protecting market share and eliminating competition.
What’s more, the courts are protecting third-party funding sources, in many cases anonymous funding sources, which support the opposition efforts in order to block potential competition.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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