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Renewable Energy Trouble: Energy Reality Meets Budget Reality

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 1, 2011

“It is clear that solar and wind are competitive in many situations right now.”

Joe Romm, Climate Progress, April 21, 2011.

“If it wasn’t clear before it is crystal clear now that the people pushing a massive government spending program for clean energy are living on ‘Another Earth’.”

– Joe Romm, Climate Progress, July 28, 2011

In April, Joe Romm at Climate Progress reiterated his claim that politically correct renewable energies are well on their way to competitive viability–if not there already. Now, with business-as-usual federal subsidies for wind and solar at risk, there is fear and loathing at Climate Progress (Romm’s bully blog at the Center for American Progress).

Mad Joe Romm is extra mad at Obama and the WHOLE budget debate–as if record, unsustainable budget deficits were not reality.…

The Crisis of Interventionism (Mises's 1949 wisdom speaks to the limits of government- forced energy transformation today)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 22, 2011

Ludwig von Mises’s Human Action: A Treatise on Economics might stand as the single greatest social science book of the 20th century. Written in 1949, with slight revisions in 1961 and 1966, Human Action has been described as economics as it might have been and should be. No economists jokes here! This book is all about using sound assumptions and logically deriving the qualitative truths, the science, of economics.

I spent the summer of my sophomore year in college (1975) teaching tennis and studying Human Action. It was slow reading, and I worked up my own index to help me. I underlined profusely and wrote margin notes.

It was exhilarating. I had just changed my major from business to economics and wanted a solid foundation, a worldview, to understand the business and economic world.

Jimmy Carter's 'Malaise Speech' of July 15, 1979: An Energy Moment to Remember

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 15, 2011

[Editor Note: Carter’s April 1977 energy speech was also reproduced and commented upon at MasterResource.]

Thirty-two years ago today, President Carter and his energy advisor James Schlesinger got it all wrong in an emergency television address to the nation. Their neo-Malthusian, government-as-engineer moment should never be forgotten but stand as timeless warning about the anti-market, anti-energy mentality.

In the summer of 1979, many Americans were stuck in the gasoline lines. There was a lot of lost time and nervousness. There was fighting and worse. The market as a buffer of civility was gone. Americans were not used to such a predicament and had the common sense to know that something was very abnormal and not to be tolerated. They were mad.

Here is the background of his energy speech, considered as the most important speech of his presidency:

On June 30, 1979, a weary Jimmy Carter was looking forward to a few days’ vacation in Hawaii, as Air Force One sped him away from a grueling economic summit in Tokyo.

Jimmy Carter's Energy Speech of April 1977 (Is President Obama going Carter's way?)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 13, 2011

MasterResource: 2Q-2011 Activity Report

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 8, 2011

Is Al Gore Bad for Big Environmentalism? (A shriller gone sour)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 5, 2011

Craig Biddle: "What to Celebrate on the Fourth of July"

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 4, 2011

Oil Exceptionalism … Houston Exceptionalism … Texas Exceptionalism … U.S. Exceptionalism: Private Oil and Gas for the Social Good (Joe Pratt's soulful message to the world)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 1, 2011

Open-Ended Resourceship

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 30, 2011

Shale Gas and the New York Times: The Challenge from Energy In Depth (A 'Dewey-Defeats-Truman' Energy Moment?)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 29, 2011