Libertarianism and Energy (Part I: Robert L. Bradley Jr. Interview with Professor Stephen Hicks)

By -- January 7, 2011 2 Comments

[Note: Last summer, philosophy professor Stephen Hicks (website here) interviewed MasterResource founder Rob Bradley. “The Robert L. Bradley Jr. Interview, ‘Enron and Political Entrepreneurship'” covers Bradley’s intellectual career and worldview regarding the market order and energy.

This series (in four parts: Part II, Part III, Part IV) is the full interview (with some elaboration), from which an abbreviated version was published in KAIZEN magazine (Issue 13: August 2010)  and a longer version was posted online.]

Introduction

Rob Bradley worked at Enron for 16 years. As director of public policy analysis for his last seven years there, he wrote speeches for the late Ken Lay, Enron’s CEO, who was convicted in 2005 of fraud and conspiracy.

Bradley is also founder and CEO of the Institute for Energy Research of Houston, Texas, and Washington, D.C.…

Continue Reading

MasterResource Turns Two

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- December 27, 2010 1 Comment

Two years ago yesterday, MasterResource was launched by a group of free-market energy scholars.

Our concept was different from most blogs. With one in-depth blog per day, the idea was to create an open book of small mini-chapters, creating a scholarly resource and a historical record for the energy and energy/environmental debates. We now have 275 categories–the index of our ever expanding book.

Our total views have surpassed 700,000. Our rank at Technorati is #25 out of 6,369 “green blogs” (as of 12/26/10). We have a loyal, sophisticated readership. The comments add meat to the posts.

Most of all, our content will most assuredly meet the test of time as future scholars review MasterResource to understand the intellectual arguments and political discourse.

Here is the opening blog from December 26, 2008:…

Continue Reading

Energy at the Speed of Thought (Part I: The Original Alternative Energy Market)

By -- December 20, 2010 16 Comments

[Editors note: This four-part post examines the innovation and creative destruction of the early oil market. It was originally published by The Objective Standard.]

The most important and most overlooked energy issue today is the growing statist threat to global energy supply.

There is no substitute for available, affordable, and reliable supply. Cheap, industrial-scale energy is essential to building, transporting, and operating everything we use, from refrigerators to Internet server farms to hospitals. It is desperately needed in the undeveloped world, where 1.6 billion people lack electricity, which contributes to untold suffering and death. And it is needed in ever-greater, more-affordable quantities in the industrialized world: Energy usage and standard of living are directly correlated.1

Every dollar added to the cost of energy is a dollar added to the cost of life.…

Continue Reading

Death to the Chicago Climate Exchange ($7.40 to a nickel per CO2 ton, the market has spoken)

By William Griesinger -- November 18, 2010 8 Comments

“One of the keystones of the Climate Change alarmist movement was its audacious attempt to create a functioning market by monetizing the atmospheric gas known as CO2…. Certainly, gaming the system has always been at the top on the agenda of the new green eco-trader.”

– Patrick Henningsen, “The Great Collapse of the Chicago Climate Exchange,” 21st Century Wire, August 28, 2010.

We were tipped off by the August 28th headline, “The Great Collapse of the Chicago Climate Exchange,” by Patrick Henningsen, editor of 21st Century Wire. And now it is official as reported by Chicago Business, Fox News , and Crain’s Chicago Business (sub. required): the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) is dead. Trading in carbon-dioxide (CO2) emission contracts at CCX has basically ceased with member emissions-reduction agreements expiring at the end of the year.…

Continue Reading

Halloween Hangover: Ehrlich, Holdren, Hansen Unretracted

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- November 1, 2010 50 Comments Continue Reading

Is Windpower the Ethanol of Electricity? (Part I: Economics)

By Ben Lieberman -- September 28, 2010 10 Comments Continue Reading

Milton Friedman on Mineral Resource Theory (remembering a giant of social thought)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 30, 2010 26 Comments Continue Reading

Regulatory Failure by the Numbers

By Robert L. Bradley, Jr. and Richard W. Fulmer -- July 24, 2010 3 Comments Continue Reading

A Free Market Energy Vision

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 16, 2010 98 Comments Continue Reading

The U.S. Spent Nuclear Fuel Policy: Road to Nowhere [Part III: Yucca Mountain]

By Robert Peltier -- July 10, 2010 4 Comments Continue Reading