Editor’s Note: Today has been celebrated since 1970 as Earth Day. With the Progressive Left all but abandoning its significance, the opportunity is to rebrand April 22nd as Resourceful Earth Day. Human ingenuity, despite Statism, has proven optimist/realist Julian Simon correct, as noted by CEI founder and longtime head Fred Smith in this 1999 tribute.
“The problems of famine, overpopulation, poverty, and disease are resolvable. In fact, they have been resolved in the United States and other places where human ingenuity is free to solve them.”
April 22, once associated with the optimism of revolutionary Marxism (as the birthday of Lenin) and then with the pessimism of modern Malthusianism (environmentalism’s Earth Day since 1970), merits redemption. A new label, Resourceful Earth Day, is appropriate as we enter the 21st century, a title selected to honor mankind’s increasing ability to solve environmental as well as economic problems.…
“Living small is not going to sell with the public and the voters. And the call for a meatless cuisine is not even culturally correct.”
EuroNews’s Liam Gilliver (AP) summarized the new political reality in “Trump Tracker: How the US is Rolling Back Climate Progress in 2026“). In addition to
Gilliver also singled out New Dietary Guidelines, with the comment: “The US Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture have come under fire after releasing their 2026 dietary guidelines, which encourage American households to prioritise diets built on “whole, nutrient-dense food.”
The “Eat Real Food” pyramid recommends “significantly limiting highly processed items.”…
“Major technical and economic advancements are happening within the fossil-fuel industries, not outside of it. The stock energy age–oil, natural gas, and coal age–is still young. The future belongs to the efficient, no taxpayer subsidies or government direction required.”
More than a quarter-century ago, I wrote a policy analysis for the Cato Institute, “The Increasing Sustainability of Conventional Energy.” I concluded:
A ‘reality check’ of the increasing sustainability of conventional energy, and a better appreciation of the circumscribed role of backstop technologies, can re-establish the market momentum in energy policy and propel energy entrepreneurship for the new millennium.
I was reminded of this in regard to offshore oil and gas drilling versus the hyper-expensive, ecologically suspect offshore wind turbines. In this regard, consider this full-page advertisement in the Wall Street Journal by Shell, reproduced verbatim.…