“[I]t is utterly futile, on a priori grounds, even to think that wind power can make any significant contribution to world energy supply, let alone to emissions reductions, without ruining the planet. As the extraordinary polymath Sir David MacKay pointed out, the arithmetic is against such unreliable renewables.”

– Matt Ridley, “Wind is an Irrelevance to the Energy and Climate Debate“(May 15, 2017)

An op-ed and blog post several months ago by Matt Ridley is still making the rounds. A great thinker, Ridley gets to the essence of things. He is hard to ignore, even by his critics. Ridley’s book The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (2010), is a seminal contribution in the Julian Simon tradition. (His other work can be found here.)

Here are some salient excerpts from his op-ed/post:

“[Wind power’s] contribution is still, after decades — nay centuries — of development, trivial to the point of irrelevance.

“America has a short list of truly shameful ‘days,’—among them the Dred Scott decision, the Trail of Tears, Japanese internment, and Abu Ghraib—most of them symbolic of a larger national moral failure. I hope I am wrong, but I fear that today will join that list.”

“If all that [climate-policy-related] deregulation comes to pass, then I predict future generations will look back on today with particular scorn and shame.”

“A single executive order might therefore seem unremarkable. But today’s action is significant….  At stake are the global economy, entire ecosystems, and the lives of millions—most of them not yet living. Those future generations will judge the authors of today’s policy harshly.”

– Nathan Richardson, “Trump’s Climate Executive Order Discards American Values.” Resources for the Future, March 28, 2017.

“I switched from defense policy to petroleum economics and forecasting because the latter produced a track record that could be judged. And my track record is quite good over the four decades, especially where I have done intensive, data-driven research (as opposed to short-term oil price forecasts, where my record is more mixed).”

“Trying to convince governments, especially oil producing governments, not to expect ever-higher revenues from rising prices has been somewhere close to impossible. Although some officials might want to restrain their fellows, the politicians usually convinced themselves that the goose would never stop laying golden eggs in ever-increasing numbers.”

Q. First, congratulations on the publication of your new book, The “Peak Oil” Scare and the Coming Oil Flood (Praeger). It is a tome, a real takedown, of the fixity-depletion view of petroleum and the activist movement behind it.…

“Economists may not know much. But we know one thing very well: how to produce surpluses and shortages. Do you want a surplus? Have the government legislate a minimum price that is above the price that would otherwise prevail…. Do you want a shortage? Have the government legislate a maximum price that is below the price that would otherwise prevail.”

– Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose (1979), p. 219.

Tomorrow (October 5, 2016), a book seminar will be held at Resources for the Future [register here] to revisit the lessons from the 1970s energy crisis. Panic at the Pump: The Energy Crisis and the Transformation of American Politics in the 1970s by Meg Jacobs will receive comments from three RFF scholars.

The Princeton historian and author usefully provides a good deal of archival documentation surrounding the ill-fated attempt by federal authorities to regulate the price and allocation of crude oil and oil products in the 1971–1981 era. …