An apocryphal quote often (incorrectly it seems) attributed to John Maynard Keynes goes something like, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” Eliot Ness, as portrayed by Kevin Costner in The Untouchables, answers a reporter’s question about the lawman’s plans once Prohibition is repealed: “I think I’ll have a drink.”

The point of these quotations, though fictional, is to draw attention to the virtue of intellectual honesty.  For real-world, verifiable intellectual honesty one can turn to a June 13, FrontPage essay by Arnold Ahlert. In it, Ahlert names leftist environmental activists who actually did change their minds in accordance with a deeper understanding of facts.

Unfortunately missing from Ahlert’s roll call are those religious and clergy affiliated with the Interfaith Council of Corporate Responsibility and other organizations that submit proxy shareholder resolutions for a variety of leftist environmental causes having nothing to do with verifiable science and everything to do with a radical, misinformed and secular view that has more to do with worshiping Mother Earth rather than God. Read more on Intellectual Honesty Overcomes Radical Agendas…

One of the greatest benefits of living in the United States is our access to plentiful, affordable domestic energy. These benefits extend to the nation’s poor who enjoy an unprecedented wealth of heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer, plentiful light in the evening hours and electronic devices that power up at the press of a button.

Driving up costs for energy forces a concomitant rise in costs to consumers in every strata of society. Such has been the case of renewable mandates enacted throughout the country. One of the reasons behind such cost increases is that current renewable technologies such as solar and wind simply can’t provide enough energy to satisfy rising demand.

But for Rev. William Somplatsky-Jarman, a Presbyterian minister affiliated with the Interfaith Council of Corporate Responsibility, the increasingly dubious threat of catastrophic climate change trumps cheap energy for our nation’s poor. Somplastky-Jarman, you see, is one of those religious leaders who submits proxy shareholder resolutions to reduce greenhouse emissions.

In the Reverend’s case, his resolution was aimed at Dominion Resources Inc., “Virginia’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases,” according to Bloomberg Business Week. Somplastky-Jarman was joined by 20 likeminded activists who proposed at last month’s shareholder meeting that Dominion issue a report on anticipated financial fallout from climate change. The resolution failed, but not before 25 percent of shareholders voted for it. Read more on Virginia Power Company Prudently Rejects Renewable Mandate Resolution…

One of the four nuclear reactors that loom over Chernobyl

Twenty-seven years have passed since the Ukrainian city of Chernobyl endured the worst nuclear power plant accident in history. In 2005, the United Nations predicted 4,000 people could eventually die from the radiation exposure, although different estimates exist. In a recent presentation at Aquinas College, Father Oleh Kindiy, a Ukrainian Catholic priest and visiting Fulbright Scholar, and Luba Markewycz, a photographer and member of the education committee at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, shared insights on the current state of Chernobyl and what can be learned from the tragedy. All images in this post are copyright of Luba Markewycz.

Kindiy’s reflections on the situation include the following:

1)  “No matter how grave the technological disaster, human solidarity and support reveals the vulnerability, interconnectedness, and dream for the better in us.”

2)  “Since the times of the Enlightenment of the 17^th century, the Western Civilization has believed that all problems can be solved by science and technology, but in fact besides them, there is faith, tradition, and moral responsibility that need always be taken into account. Without them, technology by itself is a loose cannon that can explode at any time.”

Read more on Chernobyl: Lessons From a Ghost Town…

A new report by the Environmental Protection Agency finds that one of our cheapest sources of energy may be cleaner than we had previously thought:

The Environmental Protection Agency has dramatically lowered its estimate of how much of a potent heat-trapping gas leaks during natural gas production, in a shift with major implications for a debate that has divided environmentalists: Does the recent boom in fracking help or hurt the fight against climate change?

Oil and gas drilling companies had pushed for the change, but there have been differing scientific estimates of the amount of methane that leaks from wells, pipelines and other facilities during production and delivery. Methane is the main component of natural gas.

The new EPA data is “kind of an earthquake” in the debate over drilling, said Michael Shellenberger, the president of the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental group based in Oakland, Calif. “This is great news for anybody concerned about the climate and strong proof that existing technologies can be deployed to reduce methane leaks.”

The EPA credits stricter regulations, but as Erika Johnsen points out, we should not “overlook the overarching role of the free market in inspiring increased efficiency, innovation, and improved technology.”
Read more on Are Free Markets and Fracking Producing Cleaner Energy?…

On National Review Online, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg reflects on President Obama’s State of the Union address last night, and flags the “reality-denial” that is expressed by “a few token references to free enterprise and rewarding individual initiative (to reassure us we’re still living in America instead of just another declining European social democracy).” More:

Read more on Samuel Gregg: An Alternate Reality State of the Union Address…

In the 1880s America’s most flighty fad was fowl-bedecked fashion.

“Trendy bonnets were piled high with feathers, birds, fruit, flowers, furs, even mice and small reptiles,” writes Jennifer Price, “Birds were by far the most popular accessory: Women sported egret plumes, owl heads, sparrow wings, and whole hummingbirds; a single hat could feature all that, plus four or five warblers.” The result was the killing of millions of birds, including many exotic and rare species. Reporting on the winter hat season in 1897, Harper’s Bazaar declared, “That there should be an owl or ostrich left with a single feather apiece hardly seems possible.”

Americans outraged by this senseless destruction of wildlife launched, as Price says, “the first first truly modern conservation campaign” in the 1890s—decades before John Muir, Teddy Roosevelt, and others made conservation efforts popular. Over the next two decades a flock of legislation began to be passed to protect birds, including the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 (MBTA).

Appearing 55 years before the Endangered Species Act, the statute made it unlawful to pursue, hunt, take, capture, kill or sell specific migratory birds, including bald eagles, barn owls, and mourning doves. The federal law became an important conservation tool, a means of preventing the wanton slaughter of wildlife for trivial commercial reasons.

But tools can often be used as weapons, and the Obama administration has used the MBTA as a bludgeon against the oil and gas industry. Last year the executive branch argued that the MBTA should be broadly interpreted to impose criminal liability for actions that indirectly result in a protected bird’s death, and used that reasoning to file criminal charges against three energy companies.
Read more on Obama’s Most Fowl Double Standard…

Our friends at the Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment (FREE) in Bozeman, Mont., have put together another strong slate of summer programs for clergy, seminary professors and other religious leaders with the aim of deepening their understanding of environmental policy. In its description of the program, FREE notes that many in faith communities “see an inherent conflict between a market economy and environmental stewardship.”

Major religious groups assert that pollution, deforestation, endangered species, and climate change demonstrate a failure of stewardship that requires reform. And of course they are correct—what, however, are the incentives and information generated by alternative reform policies? Some policies can have profoundly negative impacts on social well-being.

FREE’s goal is to help increase the understanding of religious leaders as they approach environmental policy. These leaders are influential nodes in a network of congregations, providing a conduit to disseminate market-based environmental ideas, potentially to millions of Americans.

FREE will help religious leaders understand the political economy dimensions of environmental policy reform. We will explain how basic economic principles can help achieve green goals with minimum sacrifice to social welfare. Together we will explore how a culture that values America’s founding ideals, secure property rights, and responsible prosperity, can also foster a healthy environment and promote social justice.

I’ve been to a number of these FREE events and have been impressed with the content — and that’s from someone who has grown “seminar averse” over the years. At FREE, faith leaders get the economic insights that are necessary for a deeper understanding of environmental stewardship. On the other side, policy analysts — including some of the FREE lecturers — get the faith insights that they do not ordinarily have access to in their own specialized fields. Yes, it is possible to bring together economic and moral thinking.

In a Bozeman Daily Chronicle piece titled “Environmental Stewardship and Social Justice,” FREE Chairman John Baden writes: Read more on Free Market Environmentalism for Religious Leaders…

For PowerBlog readers, we’re posting the video from Andrew Morriss’ April 26 Acton Lecture Series talk in Grand Rapids, Mich., on “The False Promise of Green Energy.” Here’s the lecture description: “Green energy advocates claim that transforming America to an economy based on wind, solar, and biofuels will produce jobs for Americans, benefits for the environment, and restore American industry. Prof. Andrew Morriss, co-author of The False Promise of Green Energy (Cato, 2011), shows that these claims are based on unrealistic assumptions, poorly thought out models, and bad data. Rather than leading us to an eco-utopia, he argues that current green energy programs are crony capitalism that impoverishes American consumers and destroys American jobs.”

Read more on Video: The False Promise of Green Energy…

Andrew Morriss

Join us for the next Acton Lecture Series on Thursday, April 26, when Andrew Morriss, the D. Paul Jones, Jr. & Charlene Angelich Jones Chairholder of Law at the University of Alabama, will speak on “The False Promise of Green Energy.” Register online here.

Read more on Acton Lecture Series: Andrew Morriss on ‘The False Promise of Green Energy’…

[Note: This is the first in an occasional series on gleaner technology.]

Read more on Gleaner Tech #1: Solar Bottle Lights in the Philippines…