Julian Simon (1932–98) is the worldview scholar most associated with this blog. MasterResource takes its name from Simon’s characterization of energy as the master resource and human ingenuity as the ultimate resource.
This post reproduces some quotations in the ‘ultimate resourceship’ literature to illuminate the contra-Malthusianism worldview that a greater number of people is the solution, not the problem, in free-market settings.
“The world’s problem is not too many people, but a lack of political and economic freedom.”
– Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2 (Princeton, N.Y.: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 11.
“Discoveries, like resources, may well be infinite: the more we discover, the more we are able to discover.”
… Continue Reading– Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2, p. 82.
“The climate change adaption program could make EPA a powerful master that could dictate to all departments in the government. Already the Department of Energy, Department of Interior, Department of Agriculture, and Department of Defense have numerous programs that promote President Obama’s Climate Action Plan.”
At her public announcement June 2, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy made the following comments about the economic consequences of the Clean Power Plan:
… Continue ReadingI know people are wondering: can we cut pollution while keeping our energy affordable and reliable? We can, and we will. Critics claim your energy bills will skyrocket. They’re wrong. Any small, short-term change in electricity prices would be within normal fluctuations the power sector already deals with. And any small price increase—think about the price of a gallon of milk a month—is dwarfed by huge benefits.
“Slight increases [in CO2] can have no effect on causing asthma or stimulating its attacks…. It may be that EPA’s calling ‘wolf’ causes parents to keep their children inside homes where actual air pollution is more severe. EPA should go back to the drawing board and work from the science out rather than from the agenda in.”
Along with the postmodernistic claims of averting catastrophic climate events, the Obama Administration introduced its proposed carbon pollution standards with a hearty, but bogus, claim of public-health benefits.
The Guardian (May 31) carried an article, “Obama heralds health benefits of climate plan to cut power plant emissions,” which described a presentation President Obama made–with white-robed individuals in the background–in an asthma ward at the Children’s National Medical Centre in Washington, DC. The President said, “just in the first year the plan would reduce asthma attacks by 100,000 and heart attacks by 2100.”…
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