A few years back a YouTube video of the comedian Louis CK went viral on the internet. Speaking on the Conan O’Brien show, CK called on people to reawaken their sense of wonder at the unprecedented technological marvels of the modern world:

We live in an amazing amazing world… Everybody on every plane should constantly be going “oh my God! Wow!” You’re sitting in a chair in the sky. People say there’s delays on flights. Delays, really? New York to California in five hours. It used to take 30 years.

Robert Bryce’s Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper: How Innovation Keeps Proving the Catastrophists Wrong, published this month by Public Affairs, does not feature Louis CK’s comic rant, which is too bad, as the book is in many ways an extended reflection on the same theme.…

“According to a recent ICF study, the Northeast will host more than one-fourth of all U.S. capacity expansions for natural gas pipeline investment through 2020 and about a third of NGL pipeline capacity. According to the study, the Marcellus, all told, is projected to stimulate nearly $70 billion in investments in natural-gas and NGL-related infrastructure through 2035.”

Pennsylvania was the birthplace of the oil and natural gas industry in the 1800s. A century and a half later, the Marcellus shale play has once again put Pennsylvania and West Virginia in the energy headlines.

This time the focus is on natural gas more than oil–and with wells that are at least one hundred times deeper than the first oil well drilled in 1859. The rapid growth in supplies in an area exceptionally close to major demand markets has been a benefit to regional economic growth and has helped reduce U.S.…

“When I attend NARUC meetings and other topical meetings, I am absolutely astounded by the number of rent-seeking non-profit organizations that are advocating for changes to shape the electric industry in ways that accommodate their interests (where do they get all that funding?).

Not all of them are wrong! But most assuredly, many of them are!”

The electricity regulatory framework is broken.

The long list of market distorting policy includes subsidies, mandates, mispricing, costly but ineffective regulations, entry restrictions, political vs. evidence based decision-making, social vs. market emphasis, and just plain anti-market bias. Add to this a gaggle of well-financed crony capitalists that can attend endless meetings to advocate for more of these misguided efforts.

The myriad reforms, just another layer of politicization, will take us even further from an economically coherent electric services industry to one that is full of command and control.…

The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested in improving national, state, and local energy & environmental policies. Our basic position is that technical matters like these should be addressed by using Real Science. It’s all spelled out at WiseEnergy.org, which is a wealth of energy and environmental resources.

A key element of AWED’s efforts is public education. Towards that end, every three weeks we put together a newsletter to balance what is found in the mainstream media about energy and environmental matters. We appreciate MasterResource for their assistance in publishing this information.

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