About Marita Noon

CFACT policy analyst Marita Noon is the author of Energy Freedom.,

Earth Day’s anti-fossil fuel focus could plunge millions into green energy poverty

As European nations come to grips with the exorbitant costs of energy subsidies and over-reliance on "green" energy (and build new coal-fired power plants to offset those costs and address the intermittent nature of wind and solar energy), the U.S. has been heading in the opposite direction -- President Obama's onerous Clean Power Plan. Thankfully, the plan is held up in court, as the world is beginning to recognize the enormous costs of complying with the non-binding Paris Climate Agreement. The question remains, though, whether America will go the way of California, which already has electricity prices 40% above the national average and the highest retail gasoline prices in the U.S.?

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|2016-04-18T12:21:11-04:00April 18th, 2016|3 Comments

Rooftop solar companies will only play if the game is stacked in their favor

The past couple of weeks have highlighted the folly of the energy policies favored by left-leaning advocacy agencies that, rather than allowing consumers and markets to choose, require government mandates and subsidies. Three major, but very different, solar entities—none of which would exist without such political preference—are now facing their demise.  Even with the benefit of tax credits, low-interest loans, and cash grants that state and federal governments have bestowed on them, the solar industry is struggling. We’ve seen Abengoa—which I’ve followed for years—file for bankruptcy. Ivanpah, the world’s biggest solar power tower project in the California desert, is threatened with [...]

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|2016-04-04T18:36:48-04:00April 4th, 2016|10 Comments

The developing world wants natural gas and electricity, Hillary Clinton responds with an “epic fail”

While serving as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton created a nonprofit to fund so-called clean cookstoves that are being marketed as the preferred UN solution for Africans and others without access to electricity (rather than, for example, providing electricity to them)(. Turns out the Clinton Foundation has an interest in this project, and perhaps the deeper goal is acquiring carbon credits for sale to the highest bidder once Hillary becomes President and imposes a carbon tax.

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|2016-03-29T09:00:36-04:00March 28th, 2016|2 Comments

Trying to make winners out of losers

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, speaking before coal miners, boasted that she was going to put most of them out of work if they vote for her. She went on to promise to eliminate the use of fossil fuels nationwide -- just days before the press reported terrible news about three major heavily subsidized -- yet near-bankrupt -- solar power generators and in the wake of a University of Chicago report admitting that "the world is likely to be awash in fossil fuels for decades and perhaps even centuries to come."

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|2016-03-24T23:42:22-04:00March 21st, 2016|Comments Off on Trying to make winners out of losers

“Green”—the status symbol the affluent can afford that costs the poor

Researchers have found that some buyers are willing to pay for environmentally friendly products because those products are “status symbols.” A report in  The Atlantic states: “Environmentally friendly behaviors typically go unseen; there's no public glory in shortened showers or diligent recycling. But when people can use their behavior to broadcast their own goodness, their incentives shift. The people who buy Priuses and solar panels still probably care about the environment—it’s just that researchers have found that a portion of their motivation might come from a place of self-promotion, much like community service does good and fits on a résumé.” With [...]

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|2016-03-14T15:58:35-04:00March 14th, 2016|3 Comments

Both parties are fractured, but on energy, each is unified

There is no shortage of news stories touting the splits within each party. The Democrat divide is, as NBC News sees it, between dreamers and doers—with the International Business Times (IBT) calling it: “a civil war over the party’s ideological future.” The Boston Globe declares that the “party fissures” represent “a national party torn between Clinton’s promised steady hand and Sanders’ more progressive goals.” The Republican reality is, according to IBT, a battle between moderates and conservatives. The party is being “shattered” by the fighting between the establishment and the outsiders. The New Yorker said the days following the Detroit debate have “been the week of open civil war within the Republican Party.” Former standard-bearer Mitt [...]

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|2016-03-07T13:57:19-05:00March 7th, 2016|3 Comments

Obama’s climate change legacy to be determined by next President

After months of debate and public comments, President Obama’s controversial Clean Power Plan (CPP) was issued in August 2015 and published in the Federal Register on October 23, 2015. But that is hardly the end of the story. Instead the saga is just beginning—with the ending to be written sometime in 2017 and the outcome highly dependent on who resides in the White House. The CPP is the newest set of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations that the Atlantic states “anchors the Obama administration’s climate-change policy. It seeks to guide local utilities away from coal-fired electricity generation, and toward renewable energy and natural gas”—with a goal [...]

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|2016-03-01T19:35:18-05:00March 1st, 2016|Comments Off on Obama’s climate change legacy to be determined by next President

Mr. President, you owe America an apology

Four years ago, President Obama scoffed at the idea of gasoline prices below $2 a gallon. Today, he both takes credit for it and wants a 20-cents-a-gallon tax to increase the price again -- all for the purpose of subsidizing inefficient, intermittent energy sources that have almost nothing to do with vehicular transportation.

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|2016-02-25T22:10:24-05:00February 24th, 2016|8 Comments

Biden “stimulus” anniversary tour avoids Obama’s hand-picked, bankrupt green energy project

In a week of big news stories, few noticed the 7-year anniversary of Obama’s $800 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act—signed into law on February 17, 2009. Commonly known as the “Stimulus Bill,” Politico calls it “one of the Administration’s most consequential and least popular initiatives.” In fact, according to Politico, “The package of tax cuts and government spending…became so unpopular that the word ‘stimulus’ disappeared from the Administration’s rhetoric.”  Despite the bill’s reputation, on Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden embarked on a three-city victory tour to celebrate the anniversary of the act for which he oversaw the implementation.  His first stop was New Orleans. [...]

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|2016-02-22T21:38:21-05:00February 22nd, 2016|13 Comments

Campaign 2016: nobody cares about climate change

Frustrated that nobody seems to care about climate change, “the country’s biggest individual political donor during the 2014 election cycle,” has pledged even more in 2016. Tom Steyer spent nearly $75 million in the 2014 midterms, reports Politico. He intends to “open his wallet even wider” now. But just what do his millions get him in this “crucial election”? Based on history, not much. In 2014, his NextGen Climate Action group specifically targeted seven races. Only three went his way—to Democrats. In Iowa, the group “invested in billboards and television and radio, newspaper, and webads,” to target Republicans and “agitate for more [...]

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|2016-02-15T12:43:21-05:00February 15th, 2016|23 Comments

“Keep it in the ground” at work in the real world

The Luddites are loose! It was not enough for them to waste billions of tax dollars on unsustainable wind and solar projects, but now they want to shut down the only safe, secure, 24/7 sources of energy in the U.S. -- oil, natural gas, and coal (and, yes, nuclear power too). The new Stone(d) Age awaits those who empower these de-development radicals who have enjoyed the fruits of innovative technology unleashed by a capitalist society but now want to deprive future generations (and those currently living as well) of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

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|2016-02-11T08:12:20-05:00February 9th, 2016|1 Comment

Electric cars: Another failed Obama campaign promise

President Obama promised a million electric cars by the end of 2015, but got less than half that number, and many of those are being leased. Studies show that EVs, because they run on whatever is generating the local electricity, are often in effect more polluting than gasoline vehicles -- and a lot more expensive and less convenient. Without massive subsidies and arm twisting, there would likely be very little market at all for these overpriced, underperforming vehicles.

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|2016-02-02T14:57:47-05:00February 2nd, 2016|6 Comments

Marita Noon: How to win the war on fossil fuels

Simply put, it is time to get to work to defeat the enemies of freedom and prosperity who are running the show in Washington, DC. The anti-energy crowd is fighting hard to shut down all coal, oil, and natural gas operations in the U.S. (and worldwide), but that will harm people and the environment. Armed with the facts and common sense, there is work to be done to spread the message.

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|2016-01-26T12:11:56-05:00January 22nd, 2016|9 Comments

Killing coal: The Obama Administration’s intentional assault on an industry

President Obama and his billionaire friends (who will profit financially from killing coal, though no one in the media will acknowledge this) are hell bent on killing the coal industry (and likely the oil and gas industry right after). There is no apology to the hundreds of thousands of people being thrown out of work or to the millions who will pay much higher fuel bills, maybe even go heatless, as a result of these elitist, cruel acts.

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|2016-01-18T16:34:01-05:00January 18th, 2016|3 Comments

January 2016: the U.S. becomes a global energy superpower

Environmentalists like a good crisis. Spreading fear is a proven fundraising technique—with manmade climate change as the fear du jour. But, back in 2005, the “looming crisis,” according to the Kansas Sierra Club, was the end of cheap oil. The post concludes: “The end of cheap oil, followed by the end of cheap natural gas, threatens to cripple strong economies and devastate weak ones.” The author posits: “The world burns oil faster than new oil is discovered.” Today, slightly more than 10 years later, thanks to American ingenuity and initiative, the world is awash in oil and natural gas—with America being [...]

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|2016-01-13T05:40:46-05:00January 12th, 2016|Comments Off on January 2016: the U.S. becomes a global energy superpower
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