Where Good Is Bad: ‘The Energy of Slaves’ (Oil as ‘servitude’?)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- November 16, 2017 8 Comments

“To many of us, our current spending of fossil fuels appears as morally correct as did human slavery to the Romans or the Atlantic slave trade to seventeenth-century British businessmen.”

– Andrew Nikiforuk, The Energy of Slaves: Oil and the New Servitude (Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2012), p. xi.

A ran across a 2012 book by Andrew Nikiforuk, The Energy of Slaves: Oil and the New Servitude, sponsored by the David Suzuki Foundation and published by Greystone Books.

In it, I encountered a unique (okay, strange) application of Malthusianism to energy. And I found the author taking the present author head on. I like that, good or bad.

The thesis of Nikiforuk’s book is that yes, fossil fuels (and oil in particular) has greatly enabled mankind in a multitude of tasks.…

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Energy & Environmental Newsletter: September 25, 2017

By -- September 25, 2017 1 Comment

The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested in improving national, state, and local energy and environmental policies. Our premise is that technical matters like these should be addressed by using Real Science (please consult WiseEnergy.org for more information).

A key element of AWED’s efforts is public education. Towards that end, every three weeks we put together a newsletter to balance what is found in the mainstream media about energy and the environment. We appreciate MasterResource for their assistance in publishing this information.

Some of the more important articles in this issue are:

Four people die in helicopter crash near major NC wind project

PhD: Massachusetts wind turbine study is junk science

Alert: Integrating the Social Cost of Carbon into NYS Utility Pricing

Societal Benefits of Fossil Fuels

Study: Hidden consequences of intermittent electricity production

Study: Vermont Energy Goal Numbers Don’t Add up

Unwinding Failing Renewables Policies

The EPA Needs to Stick to its Knitting

Global Warming: Who Are The Deniers Now?

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ExxonMobil’s Tillerson on Wind and Solar Subsidies (an argument to remember)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 21, 2017 6 Comments

“If I wanted to kill [tax subsidies], the thing to do is for Exxon Mobil to go and invest heavily in [wind and solar] and then Congress would immediately cancel the tax subsidy. Actually what they would do is they would just cancel it for us…. So we are not going to go into investments that are dependent on a government providing a tax system to make them viable.”

– Rex Tillerson, Quoted in Russell Gold, “Exxon Mobil: We Like Renewable Energy Subsidies. Wink, Wink.” Wall Street Journal (March 6, 2009).

Last week at MasterResource, I posted on current US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s 2013 views on climate science in light of consumer energy needs. He referenced the pause in increasing global temperatures in light of rising concentrations of greenhouse gas concentrations.…

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State Department Climate Pullback (remembering Tillerson’s 2013 views)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 14, 2017 5 Comments

How do you want to deal with that great social challenge? To what good is it to save the planet if humanity suffers in the process of those efforts when you don’t know exactly what your impacts are going to be? So we [at ExxonMobil] have taken a much more balanced view and we said let’s manage the things, we know how to do manage today.” – Rex Tillerson (2013)

“Rex Tillerson just took the State Department another step back from acting on climate change,” laments Samantha Page at ThinkProgress (Center for American Progress). “This is part of a streamlining that reduced a number of special envoy positions as redundant or outdated.”

In particular, the Climate Change Envoy is slated for termination. Writes Page:

According to the State Department’s website, the climate change envoy “is responsible for developing, implementing, and overseeing U.S.

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Jeffrey Sachs’s Hurricane Harvey Hate Speech (Houstonians, Texans should be offended)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 30, 2017 12 Comments Continue Reading

Tesla Stumbles: Bad EV Economics or Something Else?

By -- July 26, 2017 2 Comments Continue Reading

China’s EV Problem: Battery Depletion

By -- June 28, 2017 1 Comment Continue Reading

Energy & Environmental Newsletter: June 12, 2017

By -- June 12, 2017 1 Comment Continue Reading

Remembering Al Gore’s $30,000/year Utility Bill (‘inconvenient truth’ made news ten years ago)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- April 25, 2017 6 Comments Continue Reading

The New ‘Mental Health’ Standard: Can We Apply It to Neo-Malthusians? (Romm, Hansen, Ehrlich, etc.)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 21, 2017 2 Comments Continue Reading