Tag: Climate change
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Air Conditioning Is Not a Luxury
by Kerry Dougherty I don’t know why more people don’t visit cemeteries when they’re on vacation. You can learn a lot by strolling among the old graves. When my son went to school in Buffalo, New York I found my way to Forest Lawn Cemetery, a graveyard so beautiful that weddings are held there. President…
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The Latest Wrinkle in the Law-Enforcement-for-Rent Saga
by James A. Bacon The Office of Attorney General (OAG) under former AG Mark Herring failed to adequately conduct a search for documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act by climate-change skeptic Christopher Horner, a Richmond Circuit Court Judge has found. The court ordered the OAG, now under Attorney General Jason Miyares, to conduct…
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Virginia’s Greens Need to Change Their Strategy
by James C. Sherlock When you ask a question you have to be prepared for the answer. McKinsey Global Institute, in collaboration with McKinsey Sustainability and the Global Energy & Materials and Advanced Industries practices released in January a massive study of the costs to get the planet to net zero emissions by 2050. The study is “The Net…
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Virginia, Heed the EU’s Failed Climate Policy
by Bill O’Keefe U.S. climate policy has been heavily influenced by actions taken by European nations, even when it was obvious that many of those actions were fraught with problems. Now the European Union (EU) may be on the verge of taking steps to reverse course and allowing economic and political realities to exert a…
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The Environmentalist Case Against Renewables
If you missed the Virginia Energy Consumer Conference last week, here’s your chance to catch up. The highlight is Steve Haner’s interview of Michael Shellenberger, author of “Apocalypse Never.” Addressing the energy debate from a national perspective, Shellenberger makes the case that renewable energy sources are no panacea for the environment. Subsequent presentations in the…
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Development and Sea-Level Rise in the Tarheel State
by James A. Bacon People love living on the water. They just can’t get enough of it. If they can’t afford to live on the waterfront, they will pay a premium just to live near it. Signs of the human proclivity for water views are evident all around Beaufort, N.C. (pronounced Bow-fort, not Bew-fort), a…
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Repeal the Clean Economy Act
by Bill O’Keefe The Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) mandates a plan for the Commonwealth electric grid to become carbon free. It is one of the most ambitious climate policies adopted by any state. Dominion Energy is the primary vehicle for achieving the carbon free goal. There is only one reason for such an ambitious,…
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Trees and the Chesapeake Bay
by Dick Hall-Sizemore There was a scuffle on this blog a few days ago over the production of more hardwood seedlings by the Department of Forestry. There were some who questioned the efficacy of planting more trees in the attempt to mitigate climate change. Others questioned why the state should be subsidizing the production of…
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Legislative Bamboozle and Blind Faith
by Bill O’Keefe The Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) establishes a mandatory renewable portfolio standard (RPS) program that requires Dominion Energy to deliver electricity from 100% renewable sources by 2045. Let this sink in. Legislation passed and signed into law in 2020 imposes a mandated outcome for 25 years hence even though the legislators who…
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The New Normal
by Dick Hall-Sizemore We are used to hearing and seeing weather temperatures reported as being some number of degrees above or below normal. The definition of “normal” has changed this year. The National Weather Service defines “normal” climate conditions as a 30-year average. New Climate Normals are calculated every 10 years. Before this year, the…
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The Virginia Green Car Buyer’s Blues
by Bill Tracy Let me tell you a sad yarn about buying green cars in Virginia. Due to a dead hybrid battery after 14 years and 192,000 miles, we recently traded in our classic 2006 Toyota Prius for a new Toyota RAV4 Hybrid LE, the cheapest green RAV4. Had we lived in a different Blue…
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A Reasonable Approach to Sea-Level Rise
by James A. Bacon Virginia’s environmentalists are smarter and more forward-thinking than California’s environmentalists. That’s a low bar, admittedly, but it’s a not-inconsiderable consolation now that environmental lobbyists and their friends in the Democratic Party run the commonwealth. In California, leaders of the environmental/political establishment fervently believe that human-caused climate change is increasing the incidence…
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Freeman Dyson, Scientific Consensus and Virginia Politics
by Irfan K. Ali One of the most brilliant scientists of the 20th century, Freeman Dyson, recently passed away. This most unassuming man hobnobbed with the likes of Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, John von Neumann, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and other giants of science and technology. He was a true giant in the world of science.…
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Getting to a Greener World with a Win-Win Agenda
by James A. Bacon Climate Change Alarmism is out of control. We’re being told that we have ten years to re-engineer the global energy economy or the world will reach a tipping point after which it will inevitably descend into an apocalyptic climate meltdown. A couple of weeks ago, the Washington Post published an article observing…
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Replacing One Existential Threat with Another
by James A. Bacon I’m a big fan of Nassim Nicholas Taleb, whose thinking on such subjects as “black swan” events, “Intellectuals Yet Idiots (IYIs),” “antifragility,” and “skin in the game” I have incorporated into my commentary on this blog. So, when Taleb invokes the precautionary principle in the context of climate change, I take…