“We build into our automobiles more power and greater gas consumption than we need. We use the press and radio to push the sales of more cars. We drive them hundreds of millions of miles a year in pursuit of futility.”
“With the exhaustion of our own oil wells in sight … much of our resource capital has been used up, but we still have our yacht, our stable of horses….”
– William Vogt. Road to Survival (New York: William Sloane, 1948), p. 68.
MasterResource documents the historical record behind the grand energy debate from the vantage points of business, economics, political economy, and history. What was said? When? Why? And to what effect?
One aspect of the debate has been the difference between natural market efficiency/conservation versus its political offshoot, conservationism, defined as the belief that less usage is per se a moral good or economic necessity.…
Continue Reading“… environmentalists, politicians, regulators and courts have united to block tree thinning, brush removal and harvesting of dead and dying trees. The resulting conditions are perfect for devastating wildfires, which denude hillsides and forest habitats, leaving barren soils that cannot absorb the heavy rains that frequently follow the fires – leading to equally devastating mudslides.”
Abnormal, explainable weather conditions set the stage for 2017’s intense, highly destructive wildfires in California. But so did the state’s public-policy choice of au natural, where the absence of tree thinning, brush removal, and harvesting of dead and dying trees super-fueled the destruction.
But this is not the story being told by California political establishment. To them, the wine-country fires of October and the Thomas Fire in December were the result of global fossil-fuel burning and land-use changes, each increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) that increased temperatures and produced more severe droughts.…
Continue Reading“The National Academy of Science reports are supposed to guide the thinking of policymakers …. One constant in both reports is the unwavering faith of energy experts in the efficacy of government-subsidized energy research and development, and government intervention in energy production markets. Looking back we can see that the Energy in Transition report from 1980 was largely a failure as an exercise in technical and economic prognostication.”
– Ronald Bailey, ‘How Green Is Your Crystal Ball?‘ (August 4, 2009).
The argument from authority (aka appeal to authority) is a favorite of climate alarmists/activists who are certain of a problem and its solution. But consensus-worshipping (intellectual bullying?) has been long employed by the Malthusian mainstream against those who do not see a massive market failure in the self-interested actions of humankind striving to be fruitful and consume in a free and prosperous commonwealth.…
Continue Reading