A Free-Market Energy Blog

Energy at the Speed of Thought (Part 3: How Oil Rose to Prominence)

By -- December 22, 2010

[Editors note: This is part 3 of 4 in Alex Epstein’s exploration of innovation and creative destruction of the early oil market. Read Part 2 here. References are at the bottom. This post was originally published in The Objective Standard.]

George Bissell was the last person anyone would have bet on to change the course of industrial history. Yet this young lawyer and modest entrepreneur began to do just that in 1854 when he traveled to his alma mater, Dartmouth College, in search of investors for a venture in pavement and railway materials. 26 While visiting a friend, he noticed a bottle of Seneca Oil—petroleum—which at that time was sold as medicine. People had known of petroleum for thousands of years, but thought it existed only in small quantities.…

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Energy at the Speed of Thought (Part 2: Individual Planning in the Pre-Petroleum Illumination Market)

By -- December 21, 2010

[Editors note: This is part 2 of 4 in Alex Epstein’s exploration of innovation and creative destruction of the early oil market. Read Part 1 here. References are at the bottom. This post was originally published in The Objective Standard.]

Today, we know oil primarily as a source of energy for transportation. But oil first rose to prominence as a form of energy for a different purpose: illumination.

For millennia, men had limited success overcoming the darkness of the night with man-made light. As a result, the day span for most was limited to the number of hours during which the sun shone—often fewer than ten in the winter. Even as late as the early 1800s, the quality and availability of artificial light was little better than it had been in Greek and Roman times—which is to say that men could choose between various grades of expensive lamp oils or candles made from animal fats.…

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Energy at the Speed of Thought (Part I: The Original Alternative Energy Market)

By -- December 20, 2010

[Editors note: This four-part post examines the innovation and creative destruction of the early oil market. It was originally published by The Objective Standard.]

The most important and most overlooked energy issue today is the growing statist threat to global energy supply.

There is no substitute for available, affordable, and reliable supply. Cheap, industrial-scale energy is essential to building, transporting, and operating everything we use, from refrigerators to Internet server farms to hospitals. It is desperately needed in the undeveloped world, where 1.6 billion people lack electricity, which contributes to untold suffering and death. And it is needed in ever-greater, more-affordable quantities in the industrialized world: Energy usage and standard of living are directly correlated.1

Every dollar added to the cost of energy is a dollar added to the cost of life.…

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“Clean Energy Standards”: The Sky is the (Price) Limit

By -- December 17, 2010
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Peak-Oil Puff on Huff (David Hughes of the Post-Carbon Institute Tees Off)

By -- December 16, 2010
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Divvying Up the Warming

By Chip Knappenberger -- December 15, 2010
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Climate Hearings in the 112th Congress: GOP Chairmen Will Need Talent Like Jim’s

By -- December 14, 2010
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Cape Wind: Spreading the Pain

By -- December 13, 2010
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Antarctic Warming Revisited: Blog Analysis (turned scientific paper) Tempers Alarm

By Chip Knappenberger -- December 10, 2010
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Jane Talks About Wind with a Town Representative (Part II)

By -- December 9, 2010
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