UK Energy Schizophrenia (all pain, no gain)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 8, 2026

“Whilst the government is pursuing a pragmatic approach to the North Sea, we have to accept the geological reality that North Sea gas production has declined by 74% since its peak in 2000 and we have been a net importer of gas since 2004.” – UK Government Report (below)

The United Kingdom represents less than one percent of global CO2 emissions. Yet the political class, including academic experts, will not be deterred from social injustice for consumers and self-annihilation of its economy. UK energy statism is tears-in-the-ocean–and for the wrong cause.

The latest report from the UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, titled “Gas System in Transition: Security of Supply (Interim Response),” tries to square the circle between decarbonization and economy. “The UK must decarbonize because of volatile, higher oil and natural gas prices, yet energy affordability is important too.”…

Resourceship: Creating Mineral Resources (in three parts)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 7, 2026

In 1972, just two years after the first Earth Day, a team of scholars from MIT published a 200-page book, The Limits to Growth. Using the emerging instrument of computer models, they created a worldwide stir by suggesting that science had now put numbers to a few self-evident truths. Non-renewable resources are fixed; the consumption of such resources must eventually end; any civilization based on such consumption must collapse. New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis called the work “likely to be one of the most important documents of our age” (January 28, 1972).

Of course, the scholars acknowledged that they were dealing with variables. The consumption of resources might be steady or rising; resource supplies might be smaller or greater than estimated. But the logic could not be avoided. The growth of industrial society must run up against the physical limits of the natural world.…

Energy Labor-saving Day

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 6, 2026

“Energy will do anything that can be done in the world.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)

Energy is the resource of resources, the master resource. This Labor Day weekend, give thanks to the dense, plentiful, affordable, reliable energies that have done much to improve living standards worldwide, while mastering the vagaries of extreme weather and climate. Think of it as Labor Saving Day. After all, eight billion consumers cannot be wrong.