Ed. Note: Fred L. Smith Jr. (1940–), founder and chairman emeritus of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, originally published this article in April 1999. Its insights remain as relevant today as 21 years ago.
April 22, once associated with the optimism of revolutionary Marxism (as the birthday of Lenin) and then with the pessimism of modern Malthusianism (as the environmentalist’s Earth Day since 1970), merits redemption.
A new label, Resourceful Earth Day, is appropriate as we enter the 21st century, a title selected to honor mankind’s increasing ability to solve environmental as well as economic problems.
This title, of course, is inspired by the late Julian Simon, author of “The Resourceful Earth,” who combated with passion and power those who viewed man as the cancer of this planet and his future as bleak and austere.…
Continue Reading[It] is very frustrating that after 25 years of the anti-pessimists being proven entirely right, and the doomsayers being proven entirely wrong, their credibility and influence waxes ever greater. That’s the bad news. The good news is that there is every scientific reason to be joyful about the trends in the condition of the Earth, and hopeful for humanity’s future, even if we are falsely told the outlook is grim. So Happy Earth Day.” (- Julian Simon, 1995)
April 22 [1995] marks the 25th anniversary of Earth Day. Now as then its message is spiritually uplifting. But all reasonable persons who look at the statistical evidence now available must agree that Earth Day’s scientific premises are entirely wrong.
During the first great Earth Week in 1970 there was panic. The public’s outlook for the planet was unrelievedly gloomy.…
Continue ReadingRoughly 3.3 billion people—about 45 percent of all the people on the planet—live in places where per-capita electricity consumption is less than 1,000 kilowatt-hours per year, or less than the amount used by my refrigerator.
By 2017, more than 6,600 coal-fired power plants, with a combined capacity of about 2,000 gigawatts, were operating around the globe…. Not only that, coal’s share of global electricity production has remained nearly constant, at about 40 percent, since the mid-1980s. Why is this? For the simple reason that coal is cheap and widely available.
Americans are currently facing significant uncertainty over how the drop in oil prices, the COVID-19 virus, and governments’ response to both will harm the economy and their long-term prosperity.
However, the harm caused by governments that limit access to affordable and reliable electricity is well understood.…
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