Energy is ubiquitous to modern industrial life. It is the fourth factor of production in addition to the textbook triad of land, labor, and capital. Julian Simon coined the term master resource to describe the resource of resources, energy.

Energy as been recognized as a unique driver of economic activity and human betterment for almost two centuries–about as long as carbon-based energies came to be recognized as a sea change from the inherently dilute, unreliable renewable energies of before. The Industrial Revolution was enabled by coal, the energy required by the new machinery, as W. S. Jevons so brilliantly saw in his day.

The quotations below, some classic, resonate as well or better today than ever before. They are as ‘right” as the peak-oil quotations (compiled here and here) have been wrong.…

“[N]eo-Malthusians like [Paul] Gilding resemble hypochondriacs who insist that they are at death’s door and see every sniffle as confirmation that the end is near. Rather than launch massive programs to sterilize the population or make everyone vegetarians, we should hand them a tissue and tell them to get over it. Or, as the English philosopher Pete Townsend said, ‘This is no social crisis, just another tricky day for you’.”

– Michael Lynch on Thomas Friedman et al.

Thomas Friedman’s New York Times latest column–The Earth is Full–quotes environmental-entrepreneur Paul Gilding (author: The Great Disruption) about the rampant denial concerning the world crossing of “growth/climate/natural resources/population redlines all at once.”

So just about all of us do not see what is so obvious to these smartest-guys-in-the-environmental room. Really.…

“There has to be a lot of shrillness taken out of our language,” Environmental Defense Fund chief Fred Krupp said in a moment of candor last month. “In the environmental community, we have to be more humble. We can’t take the attitude that we have all the answers.”(1)

Fred Krupp–please call Joe Romm, the incendiary editor of the (‘Lack of’?) Climate Progress blog of the Center for American Progress. Romm is as shrill as ever, and except to his apocalyptic apostles, people are turned off. What is wine for his hard core is whine to the open-minded, which is the large majority of us. Making jokes about global-warming exaggeration has turned into pretty good sport, as Krupp must know.

The latest from Dr. Doom (what’s new?) is that we are living on borrowed time.…

“The two greatest enemies of free enterprise in the United States … have been, on the one hand, my fellow intellectuals and, on the other hand, the business corporations of this country.”

– Milton Friedman. “Which Way for Capitalism?” Reason, May 1977, p. 21.

Special government favor. A little something for nothing at the other’s expense…. Sure, a particular business or industry can gain in the short run. But when everyone is getting the booty, almost all lose.

Just look where government is today. The chronic, gargantuan federal budget deficit is testament to the Enrons then, GEs now  receiving government subsidies from either the U.S. Treasury or the tax code. The rest of us pay (or will pay) what the rent-seekers are getting and not paying for (outside of their lobbying costs).…