“Capitalism turns luxuries into necessities. Socialism turns necessities into luxuries.”

“What did socialists use before candles? …. Electricity”

These are just funny jokes until a scenario unfolds where a huge lifestyle disruption lurks for you, your family, friends, and most everyone else.

Matt Ridley of the UK is there. And the notable classical-liberal thinker and writer is steamed about it.

Energy crises should be a thing of the past, the West having painfully learned to avoid the price and allocation controls that cause physical shortages and fuel riots.

Now, energy crises occur in the name of “green” energy policies that force inferior energies on the power grid–and discourage or prohibit the fossil fuels from doing their yeoman work. Consumers lose. Businesses lose. Taxpayers lose. A small intellectual and political elite win.…

Ed. Note: This interview with Robert L. Bradley Jr. by Jane Shaw Stroup appeared earlier this week at the Liberty and Ecology website of the Goodman Institute for Public Policy Research. Comments are welcomed, including new questions to clarify the role of nuclear power in a free economy.

Q1. What role should nuclear power have in the years ahead?

A. “Let the market decide” is the straightforward classical-liberal, free-market answer. This means government neutrality in terms of not subsidizing or penalizing one energy technology versus another to determine what, when, where.

The decision to build new capacity, or the decision to operate-versus-retire, should be based on stand-alone economics, without government favor or penalty.

Q2. Under this standard, what is the future of nuclear in the energy mix as far as new capacity?…

“[My] early writing was from a viewpoint that there was an ocean of BTUs beneath our feet, and what was high cost and supplemental today would become low cost and conventional later. I ‘trusted’ human ingenuity. I turned out ‘right’ for the wrong technological reason: horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing.”

Any intellectual is interested in what is written about him or her, whether it be in the newspaper or an essay, book, or doctoral dissertation. In my case, being of 66 summers, and having a lot of scholarship under my belt, I do not worry much about the momentary ad hominem stuff. But for the record, I am eager to correct with facts and interpretation as needed.

This brings me to a dissertation, “Limits and Cornucopianism: A History of Neo-Liberal Environmental Thought, 1920–2007” (New York University: 2019).…

The drawbacks of petrochemicals and plastics are widely publicized by “news” media, singers, actors, professors, and most anyone else with a megaphone. But the black-sheep facts of the alternatives are quietly herded out of sight, especially by Big Tech censors. (below)

Yesterday (Part I) reviewed the use of carbon-based energies for synthetic polymers, chemicals, lubricants, and pavement. Part II today discusses the original “natural” things as a substitute for petroleum. Three areas are wood, metals, and bioplastics.

Wood

First, let’s examine wood as a substitute for making three-dimensional parts:

• Huge areas of forests will be wiped out to get enough wood to replace plastic. This means thousands of miles of logging roads gouged through the mountains, causing erosion into pristine streams. Alternately, vast land areas will be converted to monoculture tree farms requiring pesticides and fertilizers for fast growth.