“Some form of ecocatastrophe, if not thermonuclear war, seems almost certain to overtake us before the end of the [twentieth] century.”

– John Holdren and Paul Ehrlich[1]

Doom and gloom—and falsity—hallmarks the long career of John P. Holdren, neo-Malthusian and now President Obama’s initial and still science advisor.

What else has the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy said? And can we assume that he still holds and trumpets these views to Obama?

It’s Halloween, a good time to refresh memories of the man who just might be the scariest presidential advisor in U.S. history!

Read—but don’t be frightened. The sky-is-falling gloom of Holdren, his mentor Paul Ehrlich, and others is in intellectual and empirical trouble. From Julian Simon to Bjorn Lomborg to Indur Goklany to Matt Ridley, the technological optimists have the upper hand in a debate that continues to be one-sided.…

“The oil and gas boom has revealed a shortage of skilled labor. Some educational institutions are responding. But should the industry itself enter into the educational field and form for-profit training programs? Such would further remove the need for government (taxpayer) education, a win-win for the economy.”

Julian Simon said it first and best: the scarcest resource is human capital. His proof? The rising cost of labor relative to other inputs, even so-called depletable resources. And such is a mighty tribute to capitalism, as David Boaz noted.

A recent article in the Houston Chronicle, “San Jacinto College’s fast-track pipefitting fabricator program responds to industry need“ (Cheryl P. Rose, June 28, 2013) made me think of Simon, the hydrocarbon-energy boom, and the purpose of education.

We will soon have the Internet capability of getting a world class education at virtually zero marginal cost.…

Tuesday July 2 begins my new Mises Academy online class, “Adventures in Energy Economics.” This five-week $59 course will cover the economic treatment of depletable natural resources, pollution, and climate change, as well as the current public policy debate.

The course naturally will focus on an entrepreneurial, property-rights, Austrian perspective, but the standard mainstream views will be accurately presented. All reading materials will be provided and are included in the course fee.

After the five-week course, the student will have a solid command of some of the major issues in energy economics and will be able to handle typical objections to laissez-faire capitalism coming from an environmentalist perspective.

Scope

The weekly lectures will run from July 2 through July 30. The first week will address the question, “Will we run out of energy?”…

“It’s not unlawful to run an ad hominem presidency. It’s merely shameful. The great rhetorical specialty of this president has been his unrelenting attribution of bad faith to those who disagree with him. He acts on principle; they from the basest of instincts.”

– Charles Krauthammer, “There’s a Fly in My Soup,” Washington Post, May 23, 2013.

The alarmist/statist side of the energy/environmental debate is losing intellectually and now politically. The agenda of inferior energies simply cannot stand up to a combination of analytic failure, government failure, and real-world realities. The oil and gas boom … the cessation of global warming; improving air and water quality … alternative energy busts ….

And as the alarmists have become ever more argumentative and shrill, even (former) allies and sympathizers are seeing a quasi-religious, nonintellectual, even ugly aspect to the Climate Progress view of the world.…