“In the year 2000, the solar water heater behind me, which is being dedicated today, will still be here supplying cheap, efficient energy.” [Reagan removed the panels six months later.]
“A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people.” [It is a museum piece.]
– President Jimmy Carter, June 20, 1979
Historical evidence and understanding is part of the intellectual case for free-market energy policy, which is simply letting consumers decide for themselves the best energies and keeping taxpayers neutral. A free society, not surprisingly has chosen the dense, most affordable, storable energies over dilute, intermittent, expensive ones.…
Continue ReadingPresidential candidate Bernie Sanders has come right out and said it: The Green New Deal will require a government takeover of the US energy industries. As reported by Sam Dorman of Fox News:
The “Green New Deal” proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., seeks a complete transition to “energy efficiency” and “sustainable energy” — much of which would be owned and administered by the federal government.
During an appearance on MSNBC Thursday [August 22nd], Sanders told host Chris Hayes that the U.S. needed an “aggressive” federal approach to producing electricity and nodded after Hayes claimed he proposed a “federal takeover of the whole thing.”
Sanders agreed with Hayes’ assessment that he wanted to create a “Tennessee Valley Authority [TVA] extension for the whole country.” “You can’t nibble around the edges anymore,” Sanders added.
“For once I agree with Bernie Sanders,” stated Eric Worrall at WUWT.…
Continue Reading“Discoveries, like resources, may well be infinite: the more we discover, the more we are able to discover.” (Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2, p. 82)
“The world is not ‘a bundle of hay’ but a living growing complex of matter and energy, a process rather than a thing.” ( Erich Zimmermann, World Resources and Industries, 1951, p. 815.
What explains the happy fact (really the miracle of man) that the more we discover, the more we find out if left to discover? Instead of mineral depletion, we have mineral expansion–turning the Malthusian predicament on its head. And instead of weather/climate doom, we have successful adaptation in wealthy (as in healthy) free economies.
Labor Day has passed, a day that could be renamed Energy Day for the saved labor that modern energy has transferred to machines and appliances.…
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