“The Petroleum Economist’s headline for 1998 projects, ‘Ever Greater Use of New Technology,” will also characterize future years, decades, centuries, and millennia under market conditions. If the ‘ultimate resource’ of human ingenuity is allowed free rein, energy in its many and changing forms will be more plentiful and affordable for future generations than it is now, although never ‘too cheap to meter’ as was once forecast for nuclear power.” (Bradley, 1999: 40)

From time to time, MasterResource dips into the history vault to demonstrate how well the free-market, human ingenuity worldview has stood the test of time. Julian Simon Lives!, in other words.

Twenty-one years ago, I published a Cato Policy Analysis, The Increasing Sustainability of Conventional Energy (No. 341: April 22, 1999). It was 51 pages with 250 references.…

This completes our two-part review (Part I here) of the development and worldview of Joanna Szurmak, whose work with Pierre Desrochers is at the forefront of classical-liberal scholarship in sustainable development.

Q. And the shorter pieces led to something bigger—a book, Population Bombed!

A. Yes. Since Julian Simon’s influence and inspiration was in our minds, in late 2017 we realized that Simon’s nemesis, Paul Ehrlich, was approaching the 50^th anniversary of his bestseller, The Population Bomb (1968). This slim book—really a collection of Ehrlich’s lecture notes that his wife and life-long collaborator Anne Ehrlich stitched together into a narrative—became a manifesto to population-control activists around the world.

Like Simon, we disagreed with both the premises and the arguments of those who Pierre likes to call the “population bombers.” But we had been noticing an upsurge in calls to impose controls on world population in the name of environmental health and climate justice.

“In a reset economy, the government will be a regulator; and also an industry policy champion, a financier, and a key partner.” (Jeff Immelt, GE 2008 Annual Report, quoted here)

“What else can be said about how a destructive management philosophy–long warned against by classical liberals–drove a once iconic American company into the bog? Contra-capitalism destroys wealth, not only capitalism.” (below)

A May 27, 2020, piece at EnergyWire (E&E News) reported the latest of how errant leadership, political correctness, and cronyism diminished a once proud, iconic company.

“General Electric Co. cut one of the last remaining links to founder Thomas Edison, as the beleaguered manufacturer wrapped up a three-year process to sell its iconic lightbulb business,” reported Rick Clough. The buyer was the automated ‘smart home’ firm Savant Systems Inc.…

… on Oahu, generating 1 MW of power using wind and solar requires 154 acres of land. That’s more than 800 times as much land as the Kahe petroleum-fired power plant requires to generate the same amount of power. Using wind/solar projects to produce the same amount of electricity Oahu utilities produced in January 2020 would require … almost one-third of Oahu … be covered with solar panels, wind turbines, and battery storage systems.

On Oahu’s west side, a Hawaiian green sea turtle snuggles up to a reef for an afternoon nap. But this is no ordinary reef. It’s the warm water outflow structure for Oahu’s biggest electric power producer, the Kahe Power Plant.

Built in the early 1960’s, the 651 megawatt (MW) workhorse often provides over 40% of Oahu’s power.…