The main thing you need to know about FrackNation is that you should watch it. More importantly, given that this blog’s audience is unusually educated about hydraulic fracturing–frac’ing–you should encourage friends and family to watch it.
The use of hydraulic fracturing and (less-publicized) horizontal drilling to extract oil and gas from shale rock is, to the best of my knowledge, the most important technological revolution of the last decade. The existence of enormous deposits of shale has long been known–some of the earliest experiments with kerosene involved shale–but the ability to affordably get oil and gas from these deposits has been elusive for over a century. In Ayn Rand’s 1957 Atlas Shrugged, one of the heroes manages to solve the problem, and it is rightly regarded as an epic achievement.…
Continue Reading“Hurrah” to the American Public Gas Association (APGA), a small trade group that was willing to step-up to U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and other special-interest organizations that want energy efficiency at any cost to the American consumer. The APGA/DOE Furnace Rule Settlement prevented the unintended consequences of regulatory overreach by allowing consumers choices between regulated and unregulated (and less regulated) products.
This post, following APGA’s piece at MasterResource last week, provides historical background on the subject of energy efficiency regulations in order to better understand the significance of this settlement.
From EPCA (1975) to EISA (2007)
In 1975, the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) was enacted largely as a Federal response to the Arab oil embargoes. EPCA was amended by the National Appliance Energy Conservation Act of 1987 and the Energy Policy Act of 1992 etc.,…
Continue Reading“[F]ossil-fuel-dependent technologies that stretched living nature’s natural productivity and displaced some of its products not only permitted humanity to escape the Malthusian vise, but saved nature itself from being overwhelmed by humanity’s demands.”
The collective demand for land to meet humanity’s demands for food, fuel, and other products of living nature is—and always has been—the single most important threat to ecosystems and biodiversity. Yet fossil-fuel-dependent technologies have kept that demand for land in check.
This positive aspect of the impact of fossil fuels on the environment has been ignored in most popular narratives, which instead emphasize fossil fuels’ potential detrimental effects, including air, water, and solid-waste pollution, as well as any climate change associated with the use and production of these fuels. Because of this oversight, and thus lacking balance, these studies generally conclude that fossil fuels have been an environmental disaster.…
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