An Eight-Year Anniversary

“Big Government Democrats are not the cure to Big Government Republicanism. Oil, natural gas, and coal are middle class, working class energies. Wind and solar are for the rich…. Maybe, just maybe, these parasitic, inefficient energies will get the scrutiny they deserve from all sides of the political spectrum.”

The beginning of the Obama presidency was less than one month away. Things looked bad for energy. Climate exaggeration and alarmism as US policy was coming up. And there were very few of us in the free market camp to fight against climate/energy statism.

Eight years ago this month, I got in touch with these few–Marlo Lewis (Competitive Enterprise Institute), Ken Green (American Enterprise Institute), and Jerry Taylor (Cato Institute), and a few others–to launch a new website. Two-thousand one-hundred and twenty-seven posts later, we are into year nine of “a free market energy blog.”

A whole new cast has come on board at MasterResource since then, particularly with the grassroots talent fighting against industrial wind turbines. The more than 200 contributors to MasterResource indicates the great growth of the free-market movement in the (Obama) Era of Energy Peril.

And here we are today at the threshold of a new energy/climate era. All the more reason to keep MasterResource humming with the great fight that the energy/climate alarmists and their business elites are about to wage against commonsense, free-market energy policies.

The original post of MasterResource dated December 26, 2008, follows:

We are just getting started here, but some of us veterans of the energy debate from a private property, free-market perspective have teamed together to offer our thoughts on late breaking energy items. When I read my newspapers each day, I have some thoughts that I wish I could share with folks from a historical, worldview perspective. I think we all have something to add–and thus the inspiration for this endeavor.

We have a good core group of principal (and principled) bloggers, as well as a growing list of guest bloggers. We aim to post new material most every day. What we have to provide to the reader is frequent insight so that you visit us regularly.

There will be some trial and error, but this is the time to launch. President-elect Obama and his team have little concept of history in the energy debate–what W.S. Jevons said about renewable energies in the 1860s or the perils of U.S. energy regulation learned from wartime planning and the 1970s. Some of us will dwell on this to add some unique perspective to the debate.

By the way, our blog name is inspired by the late Julian Simon (1932–1998). He labeled energy “the master resource” because it is the resource needed to bring other resources from a state of nature to one of human usefulness. Simon also used the term “the ultimate resource” to describe human ingenuity. As the institutional economist Erich Zimmermann once said, resources come from the mind, not the ground.

Finally, I do hope mainstream journalists and many other open-minded individuals will come our way in the great energy and climate debates. The Obama march to energy statism needs a lot of debate. Big Government Democrats are not the cure to Big Government Republicanism.

Oil, natural gas, and coal are middle class, working class energies. Wind and solar are for the rich. Windpower, in particular, as my friend Robert Bryce has put it, is the ethanol of electricity. Maybe, just maybe, these parasitic, inefficient energies will get the scrutiny they deserve from all sides of the political spectrum.