“Material insufficiency and environmental problems have their benefits, over and beyond the improvement which they invoke. They focus the attention of individuals and communities, and constitute a set of challenges which can bring out the best in people” (emphasis added).
– Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2 (1996), p. 587.
“We need our problems, though this does not imply that we should purposely create additional problems for ourselves.”
– Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2 (1996), p. 588.
If he were alive, Julian Simon (1932–1998) would apply his view that our problems can make us better to the worst-case scenario that BP uniquely brought to life in the Gulf of Mexico this year.
Simon argued that there was a third driving force or condition for human improvement beyond the institutional framework for progress (private property, voluntary exchange, the rule of law) and the insightful reasons given for capitalistic progress (motivation, effective use of knowledge, trial and error feedback, etc.).…
Continue Reading[This post, an abstract of a longer article from The American, was written with the assistance of Hiwa Alaghebandian, an energy and environment research assistant at AEI. Dr. Green’s post The Death Spiral for Climate Alarmism Continues (June 2, 2010) is one of the most viewed and influential published at MasterResource.]
In a Wired article published at the end of May, writer Erin Biba bemoans the fact that “science” is losing its credibility with the public. The plunge in the public’s belief in catastrophic climate change is her primary example. Biba wonders whether the loss of credibility might be due to the malfeasance unearthed by the leak of emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, but comes to the conclusion that malfeasance isn’t the cause of the public’s disaffection.…
Continue ReadingFor months, the corn ethanol industry has been pushing the Obama administration for permission to increase the amount of ethanol that can be blended into the U.S. gasoline supply.
But the ethanol industry’s opponents are launching a counterattack. And it’s a big one. Last week, a coalition of 36 groups sent a letter to the leaders of the Senate asking them to reject “any attempt to attach a mid?level ethanol authorization amendment during the Senate’s consideration of energy legislation in the coming weeks and months. Such an amendment would be bad for consumers, bad for safety, bad for the environment, and, by placing politics over sound science, bad public policy.”
FollowTheScience.org
The group, which has dubbed itself FollowTheScience.org, may be the oddest coalition in modern American politics. Indeed, the ethanol scam is so offensive that it has united groups ranging from the American Petroleum Institute and the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association, to the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club.…
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