“A groundbreaking gathering of the most acclaimed thinkers, scholars, and policymakers on our historic energy revolution, the global prosperity it will produce, and the federal policy that threatens it.”
Date: September 25/26, 2014
Place: Hyatt Regency Houston
Contact: REGISTER NOW
Kudos to the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) for hosting a state-of-the-art climate and energy conference in the nation’s energy capital. The global warming establishment, including many government-grant-dependent local university professors, may stay away. But open-minded Houstonians and visitors will get a multi-disciplinary dose of sound physical science, political economy, and resource economics at this two-day event.
TPPF describes the conference as follows:
…At the Crossroads is a unique gathering of the world’s foremost experts, brought together to analyze the historical crossroads at which our county sits. The burgeoning opportunities flowing from the energy revolution are now directly threatened by federal regulatory mandates to displace coal, oil, natural gas.
“It is ironic that many environmentalists who would herald similar growth in population of some of the endangered species as a very good indicator of the environmental health of the planet, see the success of man as a harbinger of environmental doom. Even many economists usually consider an increase in production of steel or birth of an additional calf, as positive addition to the national output or Gross Domestic Product, but view the birth of a human child to have a negative impact on GDP.“
The twentieth Century has witnessed unprecedented demographic changes. For the first time in history, the world population almost quadrupled from about one and a half billion in 1900 to six billion in the span of just hundred years. Likewise, Indian population too crossed the one billion level in May 2000, from about 238 million at the beginning of the Twentieth century.…
“While we think that policies and institutions compatible with freedom and openness are important factors in promoting human progress, we let the evidence speak for itself. We hope that this website leads to a greater appreciation of the improving state of the world and stimulates an intelligent debate on the drivers of human progress.”
– HumanProgress.org (Cato Institute)
Kudos to Cato for their new website portal, HumanProgress.org, which brings into one place the statistics of human welfare with reference to the socio-economic conditions responsible for it. The mission and status of this new website is discussed below.
A Julian Simon Institute?
I often lamented the absence of a Julian Simon Institute to tackle the area of ‘sustainability’ or “sustainable development,’ which covers so many things relating to population and progress. …