Our occasional Wednesday environment focus When you discuss natural gas, do you refer to the environment, the economy or the law? Just mention natural gas to some of my friends and they focus on the e…
Handy Ukraine Facts
When 2066 Americans were asked where Ukraine is located, as the dots on the following map show, the replies were rather scattered. While 16% of the respondents knew their geography, the rest were off …
Cost and Benefit: Is the Air Ever Too Clean?
Implying that we cannot put a price on environmental responsibility, Maine’s Senator Edmund Muskie (1914-1996) once said, “Can we afford clean water? Can we afford rivers and lakes…w…
Comparative Advantage: A Natural Gas Dilemma
When the price of natural gas plunged in 2008, manufacturers smiled. As Dow Chemical’s CEO recently explained, cheaper natural gas means a $4 billion investment in 120 new manufacturing projects…
Election Economics: The Economics of Foreign Policy
Although tonight’s presidential debate is about foreign policy, perhaps the real focus is the economy. More than 200 years ago, Alexander Hamilton created the connection between economic policy …
High and Low Energy Markets
Let’s rewind to 2008 for a moment. At $13 per thousand cubic feet, the price of natural gas was soaring. Close to $91 a barrel, the price of oil was exceeding recent highs. Selling for more than…
The Future of Oil
When will we run out of oil? A room full of pistachios might have the answer. In the first several pages of The Invisible Heart: An Economic Romance, a teacher says you have been given a room filled 5…
Sounds Like Pistachios
“Remember the pistachios,” is a memorable line from a novel by economist Russ Roberts. In the first several pages of The Invisible Heart: An Economic Romance, a teacher says you have been …