A Free Market Energy Vision

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- November 4, 2020 1 Comment

Energy, as Julian Simon emphasized, is the master resource. Without energy, other resources could not be produced or consumed. Even energy requires energy: usable mineral energies requires energy to manufacture and to power the requisite tools and machinery. Nor would there be wind turbines or solar panels, which are monuments to embedded fossil-fuel energy.

Fossil fuels upgrade renewable energies to be part of electricity grid. Short of prohibitively expensive storage, natural gas-generated power, in particular, fills in when the wind does not blow or the sun does not shine.

As an input to all products and services, energy must be affordable, convenient, and reliable. To this end, public policy should respect consumer preference and allow energy entrepreneurs to meet the demands of the marketplace. This requires a respect for private property rights, voluntary exchange, and the rule of law to facilitate the global exchange of energy and its innumerable subcomponents.…

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George Will on Climate Alarmism (2009 op-ed reads well today)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 7, 2020 2 Comments

“An unstated premise of eco-pessimism is that environmental conditions are, or recently were, optimal. The proclaimed faith of eco-pessimists is weirdly optimistic: These optimal conditions must and can be preserved or restored if government will make us minimize our carbon footprints and if government will ‘remake’ the economy.” (George Will, 2009)

Climate alarmism is now in its 4th decade. It can be dated, at least, to James Hansen’s congressional testimony in mid-1988, which inspired the New York Times to report on the front page:

If the current pace of the buildup of these gases continues, the effect is likely to be a warming of 3 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit from the year 2025 to 2050…. The rise in global temperature is predicted to cause a thermal expansion of the oceans and to melt glaciers and polar ice, thus causing sea levels to rise by one to four feet by the middle of the next century.

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‘The Increasing Sustainability of Conventional Energy’ (1999 analysis for 2020)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 30, 2020 8 Comments

“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.…

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Petroleum Trash to Treasure: Market Incentives Spark Human Ingenuity

By -- June 17, 2020 No Comments

Editor Note: This post is by two leading scholars working in the Julian Simon, Austrian School, Institutionalist School traditions. Authors of Population Bombed!, Pierre Desrochers and Joanna Szurmak are important figures at MasterResource.

Even greater creativity and market complexity can be observed in the history of the petroleum production and refining industries. Market institutions and incentives provide the framework from which a plenitude of individuals and companies make their contribution.

Black, Black Progress

Petroleum was first sought after in western Pennsylvania in the 1850s, as it proved a more economical source of kerosene (a combustible hydrocarbon used for illumination), which had previously been produced from coal, oil shale, and bitumen. Kerosene was seen as a superior and more reliable alternative to animal and vegetable oils, the best of which were derived from sperm whales.…

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The Flawed Worldview of ‘Planet of the Humans’ (Part II)

By -- May 21, 2020 3 Comments Continue Reading

The Flawed Worldview of ‘Planet of the Humans’ (Part I)

By -- May 20, 2020 4 Comments Continue Reading

Clarence Ayres on Human Ingenuity (1944 insights for today)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 4, 2020 1 Comment Continue Reading

Human Ingenuity: The Ultimate Resource (for minerals, adaptation)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 7, 2020 5 Comments Continue Reading

Halloween: Neo-Malthusian Day

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 31, 2019 1 Comment Continue Reading

Dessler’s ‘Introduction to Modern Climate Science’ (Part III: Adaptation as the weather/climate strategy)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 26, 2019 2 Comments Continue Reading