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.…

In graphs and numbers, this article provides an overview of energy generation in the U.S., particularly electricity, during the last two decades. The data are extracted from the annual reports of the Department of Energy. For convenience, the various units used in the DOE tables are converted here to just one unit, the watt (W) with its billion multiple, the gigawatt (GW). Assigning the same unit for both generation and consumption enables straight-forward comparisons among efficiencies, capacity factors and the like.*

“Given the current productivity of wind and solar (W/S) employment, the presently available total work-force will be insufficient to manufacture, operate, maintain, tear down, dispose of, and erect all those millions of W&S plants that would be needed anew every 20 years.”

The Department of Energy (DOE) lists six energy sources as renewable: Wind, Solar, Hydro, Wood, Waste, and Geothermal.…

“The Green New Deal is a massive investment program, not an expenditure. The question isn’t how will we pay for it, but what is the cost of inaction, and what will we do with our new shared prosperity created by the investments in the Green New Deal.”

“The Green New Deal sets a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, at the end of this 10-year plan because we aren’t sure that we will be able to fully get rid of, for example, emissions from farting cows or air travel before then.”

It was an embarrassment–and to my knowledge, the most ill-conceived energy proposal in the history of the United States by a major political party since the oil-industry nationalization proposals of the shortage 1970s.

The Green New Deal FAQ was published on the website of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) on February 5, 2019, only to be taken down after an outcry over its proposed elimination of air travel and cow flatulence within ten years (quotation above).…

“Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont now pursue decarbonization targets to reduce emissions 75-85 percent by 2050. These states’ “strategic electrification” policy calls for eliminating natural gas and propane from home and water heating applications by substituting electric appliances and heat pumps that can use wind and solar systems.”

“Because of insufficient gas pipeline capacity, New England now faces critical shortages. In January, utility Con Edison announced a moratorium on new natural gas customers in Westchester County, New York. That same month, Holyoke Gas & Electric of Massachusetts also announced that it can no longer accept new natural gas service requests due to a lack of supply.”

Global usage of natural gas continues to grow rapidly. Methane and propane are essential low-cost, non-polluting fuels for heating, cooking, industrial use, and generation of electrical power.…