Whether it is a new fuel efficiency standard for cars, bans on incandescent light-bulbs, or those commercials touting businesses’ commitment to lowering their carbon footprint, the idea that we can reduce carbon emissions by using energy more efficiently is a mantra of our age.
In fact, energy efficiency is considered to be so important that it is sometimes said to be a “fifth fuel” along with coal, petroleum, nuclear, and “alternative” energy. And who can forget Amory Lovins’s term negawatt in this regard?
But as New Yorker staff writer David Owen details in his new book The Conundrum, the idea that we can reduce our energy use by buying the right products is based on flawed economic reasoning.
Background
Improving efficiency and related conservation are not unique to energy but all resources.…
Continue Reading“This notion that the environmental movement — or any other major play in the media landscape — is pushing non-stop apocalyptic messages like a broken record is one I debunked ….”
– Joe Romm, April 29, 2012
“CONCLUSION: Unrestricted emissions of greenhouse gases threaten multiple catastrophes, any one of which justifies action. Together, they represent the gravest threat to humanity imaginable.”
– Joe Romm, November 15, 2010
“Now that [James Lovelock] has dialed back his doomism — alarmism is a wholly inadequate word for Lovelock’s (former) brand of unjustified hopelessness.”
– Joe Romm, April 23, 2012
“… the alarmists have ‘won the day’ scientifically.”
– Joe Romm, January 11, 2012
Confused? Even dizzy? It is not your fault.
The alarmists’ alarmist Joe Romm is trying to soften a bit to have it both ways. …
Continue ReadingEnergy, the master resource, enables high living standards and promises future progress in virtually all areas of human betterment.
Energy heats our homes, lights the night, fuels our transportation, and powers our machines. Affordable energy improves economic efficiency and keeps the cost of goods and services down. All of us as consumers and as business people save money.
Low domestic energy prices create high-productivity jobs at home up. Energy made American great as a key input for a (relatively) free economy, and today’s home-grown energy boom can help keep America great.
Appreciated another way, energy plenty allows us to spend more time with our families and friends–and less time merely working to survive. Moreover, by making transportation less costly, affordable energy gives us greater freedom to live, work, and play how and where we want.…
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