It’s another great day in the history of humankind as the quest for betterment in markets outpaces, in most areas of the world, the drag of Statism.
Today is especially august at the Cato Institute where a conference convenes in honor of the late Julian Simon (1932–1997). Hosted by Marian Tupy of the HumanProgress project, the event will be livestreamed beginning at 11:00 am.
Here is the announcement:
Are we running out of resources? That’s been a hotly debated question since the publication of Paul Ehrlich’s book The Population Bomb in 1968. The Stanford University biologist warned that population growth would result in the exhaustion of resources and a global catastrophe. University of Maryland economist and Cato Institute’s Senior Fellow Julian Simon, in contrast, argued that humans would innovate their way out of resource shortages.…
Dr. Larry Bell, a leading figure in space architecture and endowed professor at the University of Houston, is one of a small army of gifted people who have jumped disciplines to help even the climate debate against a locked-in academic establishment.
One of Bell’s recent columns deserves attention in reference to the current proposal by Dr. William Happer of the White House’s National Security Council to create an independent panel of outside experts to critically review the Fourth National Climate Assessment of the U.S. Global Change Research Program. (For the latest of the developing panel, see here.)
While Climategate has been the subject of several dedicated posts at MasterResource, Bell’s retelling is particularly relevant to what has been going on behind closed doors by a band of mostly deep-ecologist academic climatologists who work from an agenda of climate alarm and Malthusianism (a fear of population growth, technology, and affluence).…
“The chief victims of the war against fossil fuels are the poorest citizens of the poorest nations. Developing countries need cheap energy.” – Stephen Moore and Kathleen Hartnett White. Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy, p. 237.
Stephen Moore, nominated last month by the Trump Administration for the Federal Reserve Board, has attracted criticism for his views on energy and climate from the usual sources (Grist, Huff Post, Desmog). In fact, poor and rich Americans and Left and Right politicos should support Moore’s realistic, utilitarian views. Dense mineral energies are for the masses in virtually all aspects of their daily lives.
Moore’s energy/climate views are well stated in his 300-page multidisciplinary primer (coauthored with Kathleen Hartnett White), Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy (Regnery: 2016).…