“… knowledge is truly the mother of all resources.” – Erich Zimmermann (1951).
Thanksgiving 2020 presents an opportunity to step back and appreciate the driver of progress in the free economy: the liberated, liberating entrepreneur. The change-makers of the market drive the creation and usage of resources, as well documented by the oil and gas extraction revolution of the last decade or more.
Increasing “depletable” resources is a paradigmatic example of what Julian Simon called “the ultimate resource,” human ingenuity. Resourceship is a term that the followers of Erich Zimmermann, from Stephen McDonald to Pierre Desrochers, have popularized to understand mineral development.
Salient quotations from seven sources follow: institutional economist Zimmermann; fellow institutionalists Wesley Mitchell and Tom DeGregori; political scientist David Osterfeld; economists Terry Anderson and Donald Leal; economist M.…
“With climate change politics a given, Yergin surveys history with a dose of political economy to see two energy worlds: conventional, consumer-chosen, taxpayer-neutral, dense, reliable minerals vs. government-dependent, politically powerful, dilute, intermittent wind and solar, as well as battery-powered electric vehicles.”
Daniel Yergin’s tomes are fun reading and great cliff notes to the sweep of energy history. With many hundreds of energy books on my shelf, I find myself pulling down The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power (1990), The Commanding Heights (1998), and The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World (2011). I also peruse his edited/coauthored Energy Future (1979) to note Yergin’s incorrect embrace of the soft energy path when it was ‘the thing.’
His latest is The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations (Penguin Press, 2020).…
The United Nations Conference of Parties (COP 26) concludes this week from Glasgow, UK. The general consensus is that no progress was made–and all will try again November 1–12, 2021, in the same location.…