Ed. Note: April 22nd (tomorrow) has been celebrated since 1970 as Earth Day. However, this day needs an update by the simple addition of one word, Resourceful, to become Resourceful Earth Day. Human ingenuity has proven in the last 53 years that optimist/realist Julian Simon was right and neo-Malthusians were wrong on the human condition and its prospects. This name-change suggestion, and tribute to Simon, by the founder and longtime head of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), Fred Smith, remains as relevant as when it was published in 1999.
“The problems of famine, overpopulation, poverty, and disease are resolvable. In fact, they have been resolved in the United States and other places where human ingenuity is free to solve them.”
April 22, once associated with the optimism of revolutionary Marxism (as the birthday of Lenin) and then with the pessimism of modern Malthusianism (environmentalist’s Earth Day since 1970), merits redemption.…
Ed. note: Robert L. Bradley Jr. was one of 435 economists decrying the Biden Administration’s refusal to engage in deficit reduction through less government spending and borrowing. The letter, organized by Jim Carter, Founder of Concerned Economists and Director, Center for American Prosperity, follows:
…Dear Speaker McCarthy and Leader Schumer:
We, the undersigned economists, urge Congress to reject the anti-growth tax increases and unsustainable budget deficits put forward by the Biden Administration.
Our economy is still suffering the lingering effects of excessive government spending, massive increases in regulation, and the 40-year high inflation crushing American families. With consumer sentiment languishing and 41% of the American people saying they are worse off economically than they were two years ago, the recent failure of three banks will further shock our economy.
“The supply of coal and oil, [Frank Shuman] opined, would eventually be depleted. ‘One thing I feel sure of,’ he wrote prophetically in a 1914 Scientific American article, ‘is that the human race must finally utilize direct sun power or revert to barbarism.’”
Energy history brings perspective and caution to the real-world prospects of dilute, intermittent energies becoming 21st century mainstays. The wisdom of history also checks the notion that solar (and wind) are infant industries in need of ‘temporary’ government subsidies. [1]
I recently encountered a history piece about an early solar entrepreneur, Frank Shuman, written by Christopher Dougherty nine years ago for a Philadelphia magazine. Excerpts from Frank Shuman: Finding The Future In Tacony, A Century Ago follow.
Nearly a century ago, Philadelphia solar energy pioneer Frank Shuman toiled in obscurity, dreaming–and building–a solar powered device he felt would change the way the world made energy and did work….…