'Hard Facts: An Energy Primer' (New IER educational effort launched)

By Daniel Simmons -- April 30, 2012 5 Comments

Energy, the master resource, enables high living standards and promises future progress in virtually all areas of human betterment.

Energy heats our homes, lights the night, fuels our transportation, and powers our machines. Affordable energy improves economic efficiency and keeps the cost of goods and services down. All of us as consumers and as business people save money.

Low domestic energy prices create high-productivity jobs at home up. Energy made American great as a key input for a (relatively) free economy, and today’s home-grown energy boom can help keep America great.

Appreciated another way, energy plenty allows us to spend more time with our families and friends–and less time merely working to survive. Moreover, by making transportation less costly, affordable energy gives us greater freedom to live, work, and play how and where we want.…

'Crony Capitalism and Energy Policy' Lecture at the U. of Rochester

By Michael Rizzo -- April 11, 2012 6 Comments

[Editor note: This introduction was given on March 28 at the University of Rochester where Dr. Rizzo is assistant professor of economics. An increasing number of colleges and universities are becoming ‘freedom friendly,’ creating opportunities for free-market guest speakers such as Robert Bradley on energy.]

Welcome to Liberty Week at the University of Rochester hosted by the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization. We want to again thank the College Democrats for co-sponsoring the opening event with Robert McNamara of the Institute for Justice. His sobering and inspiring presentation was on the fight to protect the right to freely choose to enter into occupations and consume from businesses of their choosing, to pursue their own destinies, in the face of overreaching by governments and interest groups.…

Energy Misdirection: Revisiting Obama's U. of Miami Speech

By James Rust -- March 12, 2012 11 Comments

President Obama’s February 23 speech at the University of Miami supplemented his energy views in the State of the Union address and his 2013 Fiscal Year budget submitted to Congress. Playing defense in the face of high gasoline prices and an oil and gas boom not of his making, Obama’s pitch was long on misdirection and spin and short of true market-base reform.

Make no mistake: the President’s energy universe centers around curtailing the use of fossil fuels, in particular coal, due to fears that carbon dioxide (CO2) produced from combustion will cause catastrophic global warming. This motivation will guide future energy policies until the Obama era is over.

The United States has the most abundant fossil fuel reserves in the world, the greatest agriculture system, and the most innovative population, all of which should ensure prosperity for centuries. …

A Tale of Three Pipelines (Part II: Remembering Nixon's Trans-Alaska Pipeline Delay)

By Alex Epstein -- December 22, 2011 1 Comment

In yesterday’s post, I discussed how the (near-) universal protection of property rights made possible “industry at the speed of thought” in the 19th century. Unfortunately, in the 20th century, property rights became gradually and then completely subordinate to a supposedly “higher” concern: government’s protection of “the environment.”

Now, if the human environment is one’s concern, then the way to protect it is through private property rights. Property rights enable each individual to optimize his own environment, developing and preserving as best promotes his well-being. Twentieth- and twenty-first century concern with “the environment” amounted to placing the non-human environment–untouched nature–over property rights and the human environment.

Instead of “industry at the speed of thought,” we have “industry at the speed allowed by environmentalists.” And as the story of the Trans Alaskan Pipeline delay in the 1970s illustrates, that can be a deadly slow speed.