Lynne Kiesling
Jonathan Adler has a Volokh post on energy regulation linking to Andy Morriss’s article about regulatory sclerosis in energy.
America’s energy markets, including the infrastructure that makes trading in energy possible (made up of pipelines, oil and gas terminals, and refineries), are clogged with the debris of almost a hundred years of state and federal regulation. This “regulatory cholesterol” is as damaging to our economy as the “cholesterol” analogy suggests. Remaining within the analogy, the proposals that have been made by politicians are the equivalent of recommending that a heart patient in need of a triple bypass eat more steak instead of undergoing surgery. If we are going to meet our future energy needs, we need to unleash entrepreneurs on the problem. And that means politicians need to get out of the way, not add another layer of regulation.
Needless to say, since I wish I had written that, and Andy is saying things that resonate with the arguments I’ve been making here for years, this is highly recommended reading.