“Civilization’s advance can be seen as a quest for higher energy use required to produce increased food harvests, to mobilize a greater output and variety of materials, to produce more, and more diverse, goods, to enable higher mobility, and to create access to a virtually unlimited amount of information.” (Smil, Energy and Civilization, quoted below)

“Fortunately, basic numbers don’t lie, and what they convey is that, in the context of market economies, past Promethean writers proved much more right than their opponents.” (Desrochers, below)

Pierre Desrochers (Department of Geography, Geomatics and the Environment, University of Toronto Mississauga) is one of the world’s leading scholars in the fields of energy and sustainable development. A generation ahead of Desrochers is Vaclav Smil, a renowned expert in energy history and technology whose profuse writings document his energy worldview–at least most of it.…

“This year’s races are the first major electoral test for the Green New Deal, which was thrust into the national spotlight following the 2018 midterm elections. And so far, few Democrats in the most competitive races think it’s a winner.”

“… Democrats in close races are denouncing both the Green New Deal and quickly banning hydraulic fracturing when they get the opportunity, and are instead laying out their own, less aggressive plans to fight climate change.” (E&E News, below)

In a ‘Campaign 2020’ essay (October 20, 2020), Timothy Cama of E&E News indirectly documents the obvious: Americans like their energy affordable convenient, and reliable. And what is true today will always be, putting the Green Agenda of energy scarcity and inconvenience on the defensive against nature and reality.

Jerry Taylor–libertarian-turned-statist (see here and here)–warned back in March 2019 when the Green New Deal emerged:

… the strategies and tactics you are pursuing through the Green New Deal amount to political malpractice.

“We find that the arguments marshaled to support the hypothesis that a transition to a soft energy economy is inevitable are riddled with economic errors and are thus less than compelling. Moreover, we can’t help but note that past predictions by soft energy advocates about the future of the energy economy have proven wildly incorrect.”

– Jerry Taylor and Peter VanDoren (1999)

Twenty-one years ago, Jerry Taylor and Peter VanDoren of the Cato Institute published a journal article, “The Soft Case for Soft Energy,” in a special issue of the Journal of International Affairs, Fueling the 21st Century: The New Political Economy of Energy (Fall 1999). This article remains sound and prescient, with political energies continuing to be government-dependent versus their superior rivals.

This 11,000-word, 101-footnote essay is the longest and most comprehensive of Jerry Taylor’s career–and the most notable journal article he has published.…

” … environmental groups, which are increasingly opposed to all fossil fuels at a time of heightened concern about climate change, are split over how to respond to the fact that a leading presidential candidate’s son worked in the natural gas business.”

“When asked by a reporter over the weekend if she would allow the son or daughter of her vice president to serve on the board of a foreign oil company, Sen. Kamala D. Harris said ‘probably not’.”

“‘It’s not just Hunter – it’s Vice President Biden’s multitude of connections to energy experts who continue to push the false narrative that there’s a place for gas in a clean energy future,’ Collin Rees, a campaigner for Oil Change U.S., wrote by email.” [Washington Post, October 1, 2019]

MasterResource in vain has tried to uncover evidence of the energy knowledge and industry experience of Robert Hunter Biden through a Call for Information, issued October 23, 2019, and again September 1, 2020.…