Energy

Tom Friedman continues his reversal on oil prices. Last week he said we need lower oil prices to combat Iran’s growing power. Now he says Russia would be better off with oil at $15 a barrel. But his new hope for lower oil prices contradicts his old hope for high oil prices in America — a minimum of $40 to $50 per barrel, he has long said. Higher if possible. He wants high prices here to reduce consumption, and low prices abroad to reduce profits for Putin and Ahmadinejad. How to reconcile these views? It’s impossible. He simply doesn’t believe in the price system. So here’s my prediction: You tell me the price of oil, and I’ll tell you what Read More ›

We noted a few weeks ago that New York Times columnist Tom Friedman had retreated from his previous moralism on the topic of alternative energy to embrace coal as a key future source of U.S. electricity. After years of AlGore-ithmic pie-in-the-sky pronouncements, it seems, reality knocked him over the head. Now Friedman is back, echoing Steve Forbes and me. This time over the price of oil. In August I argued in The Wall Street Journal that high oil prices, caused mostly by an inflationary monetary policy, were fueling rogue regimes in Tehran and Caracas. Then in October Forbes was even more explicit: in ignoring the effects of monetary policy on the price of petroleum products, the U.S. was letting a Read More ›

Tom Friedman of the New York Times has been on a moral crusade these past few years. An environmental crusade. A “geo-green” crusade to persuade you that you are destroying the planet with your cars and your electronic gadgets, which, respectively, consume oil and coal. These modern necessities emit carbon dioxide, as you do when you exhale. We are scorching, frying, boiling, cooking, broasting, and broiling the earth, he has told us, over and over. It is a moral imperative to conserve energy and to move quickly to alternative sources. Only alternative energy is acceptable — indeed, ethical. Anything less is immoral and even unpatriotic because the environment is now the key geopolitical issue. But today all of Friedman’s moral Read More ›