[Editor note: This introduction was given on March 28 at the University of Rochester where Dr. Rizzo is assistant professor of economics. An increasing number of colleges and universities are becoming ‘freedom friendly,’ creating opportunities for free-market guest speakers such as Robert Bradley on energy.]

Welcome to Liberty Week at the University of Rochester hosted by the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization. We want to again thank the College Democrats for co-sponsoring the opening event with Robert McNamara of the Institute for Justice. His sobering and inspiring presentation was on the fight to protect the right to freely choose to enter into occupations and consume from businesses of their choosing, to pursue their own destinies, in the face of overreaching by governments and interest groups.…

“During Human Achievement Hour, enjoy the benefits of capitalism and human innovation. To celebrate participants need only to spend the 8:30pm to 9:30pm hour on March 31 enjoying the benefits of free enterprise and human innovation: gather with friends in the warmth of a heated home, watch television, take a hot shower, drink a beer, call a loved one on the phone, or listen to music.”

The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) is a feisty bunch. Their global warming realism team of Marlo Lewis, Myron Ebell, Chris Horner, and William Yeatman is crack.

And really, who would you rather have a beer with: Marlo Lewis or that guy Joe Romm over at Climate Progress? Heck, Marlo might bring his Mandolin and Old Town Tradition band to entertain you!

I think we win the ‘good guys’ award in the highly contentious global warming debate, not only the intellectual case for climate livability and public policy inactivism.…

“With only 2% of the world’s oil reserves, we can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices,” President Barack Obama said in his weekly address March 10. “Not when we consume 20% of the world’s oil.”

The claim is, if not blatantly false, at best grossly misleading. If the President didn’t know this, some advisors should be dismissed. If he did, he needs to accept the blame and formally correct it.

As Investors Business Daily explained,

… the figure Obama uses—proved oil reserves—vastly undercounts how much oil the U.S. actually contains. In fact, far from being oil-poor, the country is awash in vast quantities—enough to meet all the country’s oil needs for hundreds of years.

The U.S. has 22.3 billion barrels of proved reserves, a little less than 2% of the entire world’s proved reserves, according to the Energy Information Administration.

“Human beings create more than they destroy.”

– Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2 (Princeton, N.Y.: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 580.

When the tide comes in, all boats rise.

Saskatchewan’s mining industry has begun a period of unprecedented growth that promises to last for decades.  And while Prince Albert is not at the mouth of the bay, we are in the bay, and our boats are rising as well.  Prince Albert is seeing record building permits issued, but few local items to exactly explain why.

With a current tax incentive and confidence in the future, PotashCorp began a series of expansions seeing $5.8 billion being poured into Saskatchewan.  It is the “mother of all economic stimulus packages,” seeing spending, on a per capita basis, double the American and triple the Canadian governments’ stimulus packages. …