Environmental policy

New York Times Devotes Front Page Stories to Various Skeptical Remarks Made About Shale Gas Resources from over the Past Few Years

Michael Giberson The New York Times has prominently published two articles highlighting skeptical views about the amount of natural gas that will be produced from shale. On Sunday’s front page industry is featured: “Insiders Sound an Alarm Amid a Natural Gas Rush.” On Monday’s front page, skepticism in the U.S. Department of Energy is revealed: …

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Kazman on Cafe Regulations

Michael Giberson Sam Kazman, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, opines on the loss of spare tires in some new car models: Fewer tires, higher taxes. That may be what’s in store for drivers under the federal government’s spiraling fuel economy mandates (known as CAFE, for Corporate Average Fuel Economy). The Department of Transportation is floating …

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Recommended in the Comments: Ten Fracking Things Everyone Should Know

Michael Giberson Commenter “Fat Man” recommends Peter C. Glover’s essay in the Energy Tribune: “Ten Fracking Things Everyone Should Know.”  Number one on the list of things to know is “Hydraulic fracking has been around for 60 years. Developments made by U.S. engineers around 2008-9 have simply made the process much more commercially viable.” Relatedly, …

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Science, Law, and Regulation of Fracking for Natural Gas in the Marcellus Shale

Michael Giberson The current issue of the Energy Law Journal includes an article examining the public policy history surrounding the use of hydraulic fracturing to develop natural gas in Pennsylvania and New York. The article, “Science and the Reasonable Development of Marcellus Shale Natural Gas Resources in Pennsylvania and New York,” is by attorneys Lynn Kerr McKay, Ralph …

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They Can’t Even Pull off the Ethanol Subsidy Repeal …

Lynne Kiesling Although the federal government is actually in a budget crisis and our elected so-called representatives claim to be dealing with it, they are acting rather like they are in denial, or still embroiled in such petty partisan bickering that they refuse to make difficult choices with short-run costs and long-run benefits. Take ethanol …

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Environmental Benefits from the Keystone Xl Pipeline

Michael Giberson The National Wildlife Federation and other environmental groups have been lobbying against the Keystone XL pipeline proposal as a sort of proxy battle against production of crude oil from Canadian tar sands. Robert Hahn and Peter Passell suggest that, as the tar sands will be developed whether or not the pipeline is built, …

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Saving Fisheries with Property Rights

Lynne Kiesling Researchers at PERC have been working on free-market environmentalism and property rights-based approaches to aligning economic and environmental values for decades. This video does an excellent job of highlighting the work that PERC scholars and others have done to make ocean fisheries more sustainable by moving from open-access overfishing to population and profit …

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Keystone Pipeline Leaks Boost Case for New Keystone Xl Pipeline and Other Energy Stories in the News

Michael Giberson Mostly oil and natural gas stories from around the web: The Hill’s E2-Wire, Oil industry: Response to leaks boosts case for pipeline – “The Obama administration’s swift response to leaks at the TransCanada pipeline boosts the case for approving an extension of the line, the oil industry argued Monday.” Logic is: sure the …

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