[Editor note: Mr. Epstein, a new Principal at MasterResource, is Founder of the Center for Industrial Progress. Part I appeared yesterday.]

But what about the “environmental impact” of industrial development? Isn’t the “green” movement providing a salutary influence us by helping us combat that problem? Again, no.

The idea of “environmental impact” is what philosopher Ayn Rand called an “intellectual package-deal.” Such a concept dishonestly packages together two very different things—the impact of development on the human environment and the impact of development on the non-human environment.

Industrial development will certainly often harm various non-human environments—but it is a godsend to the human environment. By lumping together concern with the non-human environment (e.g., displacing some caribou to get billions of barrels of the lifeblood of civilization) and the human environment (e.g.,…

It was supposed to be a speech about government engineering for job growth, including giving America another dose of “green jobs.”

What it turned out to be was the greatest surprise in the history of presidential speechmaking–a prime time address that the founding fathers would have applauded.

And the genesis of last night was several months ago when Obama decided to audit (through remote technology) the summer seminars held by the Institute of Humane Studies at George Mason University to learn about the ideas and ideals of a free society.

“‘Sleep less, think more’. That intrigued me,” said Obama after his address calling for deregulating the tax code by eliminating special provisions across-the-board; privatizing an estimated $1.5 trillion in federal assets over the next four years  to transition away from New Deal/Great Society welfarism; and establish a commission to explore separating government from money and banking.…

MasterResource, a premier free-market energy blog, is two-and-a-half years old. Since beginning in late 2008, we have published approximately eight hundred posts from 100 authors. Our total views will exceed the magical one million mark in the current quarter. Comments from our loyal, sophisticated readership add substance to many of the in-depth posts.

This site has covered a variety of energy issues on the state, national, and even international level. But our most active area has been the growing backlash against industrial wind turbines. MasterResource is pleased to have become a leading voice for citizens, environmentalists, and small-government  advocates who have united against this intrusive, wildly uneconomic, and government-enabled energy form.

Our concept is different from most blogs. With one in-depth post per day, we have created an open book of mini-chapters, creating a scholarly resource and a historical record for the energy and energy/environmental debates.…

[Editor note: The posts in this series are The Great Energy Resource Debate (Part I: Peak Oil was … is here!) and The Great Energy Resource Debate (Part II: Neo-Malthusian Alarmism). Part IV will look at the theoretical case for resource expansionism in light of the preceding posts.]

Julian Simon has commented that the logic of expanding oil supply is a hard case to make–not because it is incorrect but because it flies in the face of the deeply ingrained physical-science concept of fixity and depletion. But there is no question that for too many minerals and for too many long periods of time, supply has been expanding rather than depleting in a business/economic sense. And far too many of us have ‘jumped off a tall building and reported everything was nice and breezy on the way down’ but haven’t hit bottom.…