Statism, not Populism, is the Road to Serfdom

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 12, 2024

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Political Realism from a Climate Alarmist (the beginning of the end?)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 9, 2024

“The UN’s COP process is almost as dead as its deeply dishonest posturing about ‘keeping 1.5°C alive’…. With the COP process itself on life support, surely it’s time to change tack….”

“The sight of 80,000+ delegates unwittingly providing credibility to the fossil fuel incumbency that COP now unapologetically represents, has become sickening. Stay away. Call it out. Tell the truth.”

– Jonathan Porritt (below)

At least some climate crusaders are realistic in the lack of progress in the mitigation policy designed to dislodge consumer-driven, taxpayer-neutral energies (oil, gas, and coal) and substitute politically correct, inferior ones (wind, solar, batteries). It all gets back to energy density, a fundamental concept that climate activists do not want to understand (or do understand, but want pure de-industrialization).

A recent post by “sustainability campaigner and writer” Jonathan Porritt, “From COP 28 to COP 29” (January 4, 2024), has a number of realistic points regarding politics, while clinging to the narrative that Net Zero is achievable and at hand.…

Appreciating the Master Resource (Part II: Energy Foes Agree!)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 3, 2024

[Ed. Note: Part I yesterday examined quotations on the primacy of energy for human betterment from friends of conventional energy. Today’s post adds respect from foes of oil, gas, and coal.

Free-market energy proponents gain the high ground when they stress the utilitarian nature of affordable, plentiful, reliable energy. Energy statists must play defense when their opponents stress the need to keep energy affordable for the less financially able and those billion-plus world citizens who do not have access to modern forms of energy.

Increased energy affordability is not bad but good. Yet cheap energy is the enemy to the other side (although the Obama greens will not publicly admit it). Julian Simon noticed as much when he wrote The Cheaper the Energy the Better during the BTU tax debate in 1993:

Some people simply believe that it is ipso facto a good thing to use less energy and have less economic growth.

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