-Caveat Lector-
>From http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-341es.html
The Increasing Sustainability of Conventional Energy
by Robert L. Bradley Jr.
Robert L. Bradley Jr. is president of the Institute for Energy Research in
Houston, Texas, and an adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute. An earlier
version of this paper was presented at the 17th Congress of the World Energy
Council in Houston, Texas, in September 1998.
Executive Summary
Environmentalists support a major phase-down of fossil fuels (with the
near-term exception of natural gas) and substitution of favored
"nonpolluting" energies to conserve depletable resources and protect the
environment. Yet energy megatrends contradict those concerns. Fossil-fuel
resources are becoming more abundant, not scarcer, and promise to continue
expanding as technology improves, world markets liberalize, and investment
capital expands. The conversion of fossil fuels to energy is becoming
increasingly efficient and environmentally sustainable in market settings
around the world. Fossil fuels are poised to increase their market share if
environmentalists succeed in politically constraining hydropower and nuclear
power.
Artificial reliance on unconventional energies is problematic outside niche
applications. Politically favored renewable energies for generating
electricity are expensive and supply constrained and introduce their own
environmental issues. Alternative vehicular technologies are, at best,
decades away from mass commercialization. Meanwhile, natural gas and
reformulated gasoline are setting a torrid competitive pace in the
electricity and transportation markets, respectively.
The greatest threat to sustainable energy for the 21st century is the global
warming scare. Climate-related pressure to artificially constrain use of
fossil fuels is likely to subside in the short run as a result of political
constraints and lose its "scientific" urging over the longer term. Yet an
entrenched energy intelligentsia, career bureaucrats, revenue-seeking
politicians, and some Kyoto-aligned corporations support an interventionist
national energy strategy based on incorrect assumptions. A "reality check"
of the increasing sustainability of conventional energy, and a better
appreciation of the circumscribed role of backstop technologies, can
reestablish the market momentum in energy policy and propel energy
entrepreneurship for the new millennium.
>From http://www.freetrade.org/pubs/briefs/tpb-004.html
The Steel 'Crisis' and the
Costs of Protectionism
by Brink Lindsey, Daniel T. Griswold, and Aaron Lukas
Brink Lindsey is director and Daniel T. Griswold is associate director of
the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. Aaron Lukas is a
policy analyst with the center.
Executive Summary
Claims of the imminent demise of America's domestic steel industry -- at the
hands of "unfair" and "illegal" imports -- have generated a crisis
atmosphere in Washington. Antidumping, countervailing duty, and Section 201
actions now under way already threaten draconian cutbacks of steel imports.
But U.S. steel mills and their unions want additional protection, including
highly restrictive quotas already approved by the U.S. House of
Representatives in March.
It is vitally important that policymakers gain a measured understanding of
the full facts of the steel import question. There is no steel crisis. U.S.
steel mills shipped 102 million tons in 1998, the second highest annual
total in the past two decades. Eleven of the 13 largest steel mills were
profitable in 1998, earning collective profits of more than $1 billion. U.S.
steel makers still supply more than two-thirds of domestic steel
consumption.
The problems confronting the steel industry are already lessening. Steel
imports in February 1999 fell to 2.2 million tons, below the monthly average
of 2.7 million tons imported during the last "precrisis" quarter of
April-June 1997.
Steel protectionism is incapable of saving steel jobs. Employment in the
steel sector has declined by more than 60 percent since 1980 largely because
of rising productivity, and employment will continue to fall even if trade
barriers are imposed.
Consumers and steel-using producers will pay a heavy price for steel
protection. Workers in the major steel-using sectors -- transportation
equipment, industrial machinery, fabricated metal products, and
construction -- outnumber workers in the steel industry by 40 to 1.
Quotas are a direct violation of our international obligations under the
World Trade Organization and would encourage copycat protectionism in other
countries. An outbreak of protectionism around the world would directly
threaten continued U.S. prosperity. Congress and the administration should
reject protection for the U.S. steel industry.
� 1999 The Cato Institute
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