The Michael Lynch Power Hour Interview
By Alex Epstein -- March 4, 2011[Editor note: Alex Epstein of the Ayn Rand Institute is one of the bright young lights of energy rationalism. His four-part post at MasterResource, Energy at the Speed of Thought, can be found here (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4).
“Man does not live on a raft with one bottle of water. He lives on earth, which gives him infinite resources—and it is up to him to get them. His proper conduct and morality must be based on this fact.”
– Letter from Ayn Rand to Rose Wilder Lane, in Michael Berlinger, ed., Letters of Ayn Rand (New York: Dutton, 1995), p. 354.
The most recent episode of “Power Hour”–my monthly interview podcast on energy issues–featured oil forecaster Michael Lynch, President of Strategic Energy & Economic Research, who examined the controversial theory of Peak Oil.…
Continue ReadingJohn Holdren: White House Malthusian
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 3, 2011If there is one quotation by Obama’s new science advisor that every American should hear, it is this:
“A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States. . . . Resources and energy must be diverted from frivolous and wasteful uses in overdeveloped countries to filling the genuine needs of underdeveloped countries. This effort must be largely political” (italics added).
– John Holdren, Anne Ehrlich, and Paul Ehrlich, Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions (San Francisco; W.H. Freeman and Company, 1973), p. 279.
Holdren’s deep-seated belief of the human “predicament” as a zero-sum game–America must lose for other countries to win–was also stated by him two years before:
… Continue Reading“Only one rational path is open to us—simultaneous de-development of the [overdeveloped countries] and semi-development of the underdeveloped countries (UDC’s), in order to approach a decent and ecologically sustainable standard of living for all in between.
Dear EPA: Why is Wind Okay and Shale Gas Not?
By Paul Driessen -- March 2, 2011Remember all this? America is running out of natural gas. Prices will soar, making imported liquefied natural gas (LNG) and T. Boone Pickens’ wind farm plan practical, affordable and inevitable. Well, reality intervened. We are having an energy transformation, but just the opposite of what the non-market energy planners predicted.
Shale Gas Revolution
Barely two years later, America (and the world) are tapping vast, previously undreamed-of energy riches – as drillers discover how to produce gas from shale, coal and tight sandstone formations, at reasonable cost. They do it by pumping a water, sand and proprietary chemical mixture into rocks under very high pressure, fracturing or “fracking” the formations, and keeping the cracks open, to yield trapped methane.
Within a year, U.S. recoverable shale gas reserves alone rose from 340 trillion cubic feet to 823 tcf, the Energy Department estimates.…
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