Energy, as Julian Simon emphasized, is the master resource. Without energy, other resources could not be produced or consumed. Even energy requires energy: usable mineral energies requires energy to manufacture and to power the requisite tools and machinery. Nor would there be wind turbines or solar panels, which are monuments to embedded fossil-fuel energy.
Fossil fuels upgrade renewable energies to be part of electricity grid. Short of prohibitively expensive storage, natural gas-generated power, in particular, fills in when the wind does not blow or the sun does not shine.
As an input to all products and services, energy must be affordable, convenient, and reliable. To this end, public policy should respect consumer preference and allow energy entrepreneurs to meet the demands of the marketplace. This requires a respect for private property rights, voluntary exchange, and the rule of law to facilitate the global exchange of energy and its innumerable subcomponents.
…“In terms of sunk cost and opportunity cost, Trump is the one for liberty. Job #1, after all, is to defeat Biden/Harris or Harris/Biden.” (Bradley, below)
“But these are extraordinary times, and perhaps ‘all things considered, the other guy’s worse’ is a profound compliment. That’s why this libertarian is voting for Donald J. Trump, and recommending that my fellow opponents of the welfare-warfare state do the same.” (D. Dowd Muska, below)
It is fair to say that Donald Trump has upended politics and the Republican Party in the last five years or more. But he has also fractured the libertarian movement too, with some turning into Never Trumpers, even Trump Haters, namely David Boaz, gatekeeper at Cato, and Tom Palmer of Atlas Network.
In contrast, I appreciate the many openings Trump has provided to free- market groups coast-to-coast, border-to-border.
…“When speaking to climate activists, young people, and Bernie Sanders supporters, all constituencies whose votes they need to win the election, Biden/Harris openly admit to ending fossil fuel use and fracking.”
“Biden/Harris’s climate/energy plans would put the hundreds of millions of workers in chemical and concrete manufacturing, coal, gas, mining, oil, refining, steel manufacturing, and associated industries out of work.”
Pundits have regularly opined about the possibility of an “October Surprise,” in the 2020 election race, a Hallowe’en trick that could change Presidential fortunes for one candidate or the other in the 2020 election.
Instead of an October surprise, I want to discuss an October non-surprise. The fact that the energy and climate plan put forward by Democratic Presidential hopeful Joe Biden, and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Ca), will shut down the oil and gas industry, in the process dampening American’s economic prosperity and making our country’s energy system beholden to China.
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