Editor Note: Today is the release of a new book by Pierre Desrochers and Joanna Szurmak, Population Bombed! Exploding the Link Between Overpopulation and Climate Change.  The authors have provided this synopsis at their website by the same name.

“This book is an attempt to present a relatively concise case for the environmental benefits of economic development, population growth and the use of carbon fuels.”

Many scholars, writers, activists and policy-makers have linked growth in population to environmental degradation, especially catastrophic climate change. They argue that:

• A more numerous and increasingly affluent population creates a growing demand for resources of all kinds. This increased demand requires increased combustion of fossil fuels.
• Burning ever larger quantities of these fuels (coal, petroleum and natural gas) increases atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations to levels said to cause catastrophic global warming.

“WHEREAS all the major productive provinces of the World have been identified with the help of advanced technology and growing geological knowledge, it being now evident that discovery reached a peak in the 1960s, despite technological progress and a diligent search … NOW IT IS PROPOSED THAT … No country shall produce [or import] oil at above its present depletion rate.”

– Colin J. Campbell (2003), reprinted here

MasterResource has been a home for mineral-resource optimism from such luminaries as Julian Simon, Pierre Desrochers, and Michael Lynch. Perhaps the most profound statement on this subject is from a University of Houston economics professor, Thomas Degregori, himself a student of Erich Zimmermann’s functional theory of resources, who stated in back in 1987:

If resources are not fixed but created, then the nature of the scarcity problem changes dramatically.

“We build into our automobiles more power and greater gas consumption than we need. We use the press and radio to push the sales of more cars. We drive them hundreds of millions of miles a year in pursuit of futility.”

“With the exhaustion of our own oil wells in sight … much of our resource capital has been used up, but we still have our yacht, our stable of horses….”

– William Vogt. Road to Survival (New York: William Sloane, 1948), p. 68.

MasterResource documents the historical record behind the grand energy debate from the vantage points of business, economics, political economy, and history. What was said? When? Why? And to what effect?

One aspect of the debate has been the difference between natural market efficiency/conservation versus its political offshoot,  conservationism, defined as the belief that less usage is per se a moral good or economic necessity.…

Last week, I recognized twelve individuals associated with free-market, classical-liberal energy analysis and advocacy. Here is a second “tribute” to those who have labored against the mainstream of Malthusianism and energy statism–and now find themselves with new opportunities to formulate, summarize, and promote pro-consumer, taxpayer-neutral energy policy.

This list is in alphabetical order. It is subjective and hardly exhaustive. Other candidates (such as the present writer) could also be included–and could be in a future iteration.

ROBERT BRYCE is a force for energy realism. His highly readable, well researched books (three on energy, two on energy-related cronyism) are joined by highly effective opinion-page editorials in leading publications, such as the Wall Street Journal. A convert to the free-market beginning with his third book (from a politically correct all-of-the-above energy view), Bryce has  reached progressive audiences with a message that renewable energies are quite imperfect substitutes for dense mineral energies.…