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More Energy Blather

The Wall Street Journal's John Fund offers us his take on the current energy policy debate.

One has a very hard time absorbing this "fact":

"Example: Polls show that the public is now much more willing to consider an expanded role for nuclear power, an environmentally clean way of generating electricity...."

Fund seems to disregard the fact that nuclear power is entirely a creation of government intervention, in the form of the Price Anderson Act, which, by fiat, lowers the liability for operating nuke plants.

Fund also may have a difficult time explaining this sentence to those who lived near Three Mile Island or Chernobyl, allegedly "safe" plants that ruptured.

It's most unfortunate, IMO, that "environmentalism" and "conservationism" have been linked. I'd make the case FOR environmentalism but AGAINST conservationism, at least as appropriate roles for government. So, yes, making it difficult to operate highly polluting oil refineries seems reasonable to me. But doing so to "conserve" oil seems silly and counterproductive. We already HAVE a very effective means to conserve natural resources: it's called the market. And the market seemed to work pretty darned well in the aftermath of Katrina. Supply fell, prices rose, demand abated slightly. Supply came back, prices fell, demand returned to normal.

Fund and the Journal don't seem to see that markets DO work, and that government shouldn't be in the business of subsidizing or enabling polluters as a means to pander to energy interests and to scare and manipulate consumers. It should be beneath them. And I suspect Fund knows better.

-Robert Capozzi

Posted by Robert Capozzi on November 28, 2005 08:10 AM |

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