[Last night, President Obama did not deviate from his interventionist, centralist approach to governing America, including with energy policy. This post reverses the mindset to a speech with a free-market, classical-liberal President at the podium.]

“My fellow Americans, I come before you tonight to deliver my sixth State of the Union address at a time of continuing economic disappointment and social uncertainty across our great nation.

“I have spoken to you more than once about the country’s need for ‘hope and change.’ I have tried to begin that process over the first five years of my presidency. But I now realize that I had been looking in the wrong direction for that new and better America.

“Not long ago, while looking under my bed in the White House for the terrorists that the NSA assures me are everywhere and against whom they must surveillance each and every one of you to keep you safe, I found some books that must have been left there by former President Ronald Reagan.…

On December 26, 2008, the free-market energy blog MasterResource began. Some 1,440 posts (from 150 authors) later, we are nearing two million views.

The original idea of MasterResource was to bring a distinguished group of energy experts together to attract a wider audience. The thinking was that a movement website would provide the critical mass to be heard in an increasingly crowded blogosphere.

Here was the original concept as explained in our first blog five years ago today:

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.

“Greater energy consumption, higher economic growth, and more people are not increasing air pollution but reducing it in the world’s leading capitalist societies. More people mean more solutions …. What appears to be a paradox is really a Simon truism.”

– Robert Bradley, Julian Simon and the Triumph of Energy Sustainability, p. 85.

This concludes a two-part (Part I yesterday) look-back at the major points made in Rob Bradley’s 2000 primer on energy sustainability inspired by the worldview of Julian Simon.

Energy Affordability

“In terms of work-time pricing, conventional energy has become dramatically more affordable throughout this century … for electricity. The average U.S. worker needed over 20 minutes of labor to purchase a gallon of gasoline in the 1920s. In the 1990s a less polluting, higher performing, and more taxed gallon of gasoline cost a worker close to 6 minutes on average.…

“Innovation does not appear to be a depleting resource but an expanding, open-ended one. Instead of encountering diminishing returns, new advances appear to be expanding the horizon of new possibilities.”

– Robert Bradley, Julian Simon and the Triumph of Energy Sustainability, p. 40.

A  decade ago, I worked for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) as Director of the Energy, Environment, Natural Resources, and Agriculture Task Force.  Energy was a critical part of this area for state legislatures, covering such issues as

• Global warming issues such as the Kyoto Protocol, carbon pricing schemes (cap-and-trade, etc.) in light of the precautionary principle;
• Oil and natural gas affordability for  domestic industry (U.S. manufacturers were going overseas for cheaper labor and fuel); and
• Gasoline taxes

ALEC was a free-market resource for state legislators. My task force’s crucial energy work had been done by Ross Bell and Chris Doss before me, and Dan Simmons and Todd Wynn came after me.…