A free-market energy economy promotes and rewards the creators and producers. Parasites and glad-handers need not apply. (below)

Free-market entrepreneurs and their workforce are creators, providing not only for themselves but for the wider good. They do not bank on government mandates or subsidies but on the needs of consumers, existing and new. They seek good profit, defined as creating real consumer value.

The fossil-fuel industries from top-to-bottom would qualify in the great majority of instances. In fact, most of its members, at present, are overcoming government intervention rather than depending on it.

It is just the reverse with the renewable industries, except for off-the-grid where there is no plug-in power. (David Bergeron, an author at MasterResource, is an example of a remote solar entrepreneur.)

The wind power industry, in particular, is made up of rent-seekers who have put themselves in the business of deceit, exaggeration, and half-truths.…

“Classical liberalism does not have a long resume in the history of energy thought. Prior to the 1970s energy crises, it was a backwater for free-market intellectuals, although the opportunity was there for both scholarship and political advocacy.”

I recently constructed a new home with a two-story library, ladders and all. On one side are my energy-related books; on the other, economics. Several thousand volumes are, for the first time, organized in one place. Better late than never as I am in my 66th year.

The energy books, many unearthed from storage, bring back a lot of memories. Some observations follow.

Classical liberalism (or the political term, libertarianism) does not have a long resume in the history of energy thought. Prior to the 1970s energy crises, it was a backwater for the free market intellectuals, although the opportunity was there for both scholarship and political advocacy.…

“Classical economists used to list among the virtues of the price mechanism that it avoided social strife…. It has worked so smoothly we did not understand what the classical economists meant; today we see. In addition to its economic virtues, the price mechanism is a vital buffer of civility.” (WSJ editorial, 1979)

For many decades, the opinion-page editorials of the Wall Street Journal have informed the public policy debate. This was certainly true during the 1970s energy crisis, and it remains so today amid climate alarmism and the nostrums of forced energy transformation.

With the gasoline lines on the East Coast, some marred by temper tantrums and fisticuffs, I am reminded of perhaps my all-time favorite WSJ energy editorial. “Buffer of Civility” was published during the dark days of energy violence in summer 1979 (yes, the U.S.…

Ed. Note: From time to time, MasterResource reaches back in energy history to document bad governmental ideas. The example before is surprisingly recent–just before the shale revolution destroyed the case for synthetic oil and gas (not to mention wind, solar, and even nuclear in power generation) as market-competitive.

“In March [2006], the [U.S. Department of] Energy Secretary, Samuel K. Bodman, said in a speech that making diesel fuel or jet fuel from coal was ‘one of the most exciting areas’ of research and could be crucial to the President’s [George W. Bush] goal of cutting oil imports.” (below)

Synthetic oil and gas: World War II, Korean War, postwar, 1970s. All projects a failure, completed or suspended-in-construction. But a last hurrah came in 2006, a period when none other than George W.…