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Cato President, David Boaz, discusses the Obama administration’s move to impose import tariffs on Chinese solar panels and solar cells. Boaz likens the US solar industry’s demands for protection from foreign competition to Fredric Bastiat’s “Candlemakers Petition.” (I enthusiastically embrace any opportunity to link to or recount Monsieur Bastiat’s thoughts, so …)

You are on the right track. You reject abstract theories and have little regard for abundance and low prices. You concern yourselves mainly with the fate of the producer. You wish to free him from foreign competition, that is, to reserve the domestic market for domestic industry.

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The ‘hockey stick‘ graph produced by Michael Mann, at Penn State may have suffered the final blow to its credibility. As more original data sets are released to the public and other scientists and statisticians have the opportunity to recreate Mann’s work, their findings are lacking the distinct 20th century uptick in temperatures.

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This article demonstrates something that I have been telling listeners in my writing and public speaking for years. When the environmental industry feels comfortable in its ability to attack and suppress one form of energy, they inevitably move on to the next. For those who believed the stories that green groups viewed natural gas as a good transition fuel, this is the outcome. For them natural gas was simply the next target.

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This article by the Australian describes the rush to use coal across the planet as renewables fail to fill gaps and European natural gas prices remain stubbornly high.

Despite high hopes for renewables, the figures show the world to be on the cusp of another fossil fuel boom.

King Coal is refusing to die and, without a significant breakthrough in technology, the biggest energy future winner looks certain to be gas. [...]

Cost blow-outs have forced rooftop solar programs to be wound back, wind projects face tougher planning regimes and heightened local community opposition.

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The EPA is earning a reputation for abuse …

Interestingly, this short article doesn’t discuss the EPA’s regulations targeted at the coal industry when there is a host of other examples to pick from there.

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Lance Brown with PACE has a good editorial in the Houston Chronicle where he argues that it is time for the EPA to quit with the political games and move back to regulation that is based in science and reason.

Brown recounts the story of Al Armendariz, former EPA Region 6 Administrator who joked about his department’s “philosophy of enforcement” that included “crucifying” fossil fuel producers and “making examples of them” to ensure other energy producers would quickly fall in line with his department’s regulatory initiatives. Brown quite rightly points out that,

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Maria Tworek’s story is the same story being told by millions of American’s over the past few years. Maria is a small business owner that is working hard to provide her customers with a good product and her family with a roof over their heads.

But small business owners like Maria are struggling to deal with the high costs of regulation.

Recent and radical changes to energy policy are making it harder to produce and use our domestic energy resources. To the average Maria in your town, that means energy costs are “necessarily skyrocketing.”

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Because mining safety is EVERYBODY’s business.

NMA Core Safety from SPARK Experience Design on Vimeo.

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This is a powerful video of Rep. Hal Rogers (KY) questioning EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson on the EPA’s refusal to approve Appalachian mining permits.

It’s instructive to see Ms. Jackson and her staff struggling and scrambling to find one out of her claimed “many” approved permits, when Mr. Rogers asks her to give him the name/location of even one approved mining permit.

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This video of Al Armendariz, EPA’s Region VI Administrator provides a very clear view into the mind and intentions of at least one high-ranking EPA official – Armedariz states that he is responsible for 150 EPA agents and for enforcement activities across five states.

While answering a question in a public meeting, Mr. Armendariz likened his “enforcement philosophy” to the methods employed by Roman legions to control populations of defeated countries.