“The deposits of mineral substances and their exploitation are not characterized by features which would give a particular mark to human action dealing with them.”

I nominate the above 25 words for the shortest, sweetest statement of energy economics (really economics applied to mineral energies) in history. Properly understood, millions of words could have been spared trying to prove the opposite.

Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) was the greatest economist of his generation and, indeed, the 20th century. John Maynard Keynes got the accolades, but his theory did not stand the test of time. Milton Friedman, the counterweight to Keynes from the free-market-oriented side, had many contributions that were more quantitative than the much-more-difficult qualitative. And Friedman, the great educator, did not pen a systematic treatise on the corpus of his discipline as did Mises, expositing “an economics that should have been but never was.”…

It was Thomas Edison who brought us electricity, not the Sierra Club. It was the Wright brothers who got us off the ground, not the Federal Aviation Administration. It was Henry Ford who ended the isolation of millions of Americans by making the automobile affordable, not Ralph Nader. Those who have helped the poor the most [were] … those who found ways to make industry more productive and distribution more efficient, so that the poor of today can afford things that the affluent of yesterday could only dream about.

The New York Times’ long-standing motto, “All the News That’s Fit to Print” should be changed to reflect today’s reality: “Manufacturing News to Fit an Ideology.

Born a black in poverty during the early Great Depression. A Marxist at Harvard University and beyond.…

“… we have set ourselves the ambition to become a net zero company by 2050 or sooner and to help the world get to net zero…. We will need support from partners, investors, policy makers, customers – and trade associations…. (Bernard Looney, CEO, BP, 2020)

“BP’s $100-million annual investment in clean energy equals only about 1 percent of the company’s overall expenditures of $12.5 billion.  While this positions the company to gain market share in a growing industry, it does little to reduce vulnerability to policies that reduce demand for carbon-intensive products.” (Seth Dunn and Christopher Flavin, 2002, p. 41)

BP is a fossil-fuel company with token investments in solar, wind, and biofuels. The new CEO, Bernard Looney, is taking the company back to the John Browne’s “beyond petroleum” days.…

“Simon’s idea is simultaneously simple and startling. Once grasped, its truth is undeniable. Yet its implications are profound — none more so than the realization that the amount of resources on earth is not fixed.” (Donald Boudreaux, below)

Some articles are worth revisiting to keep the fundamental ideas fresh in our minds. I recently ran into one of them by the noted economist and educator Donald J. Boudreaux.

It was Professor Boudreaux, in fact, that switched his major to economics and pursued teaching when a professor explained the cause of the then-experienced natural gas shortages.

A few years back, the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) published a piece by Boudreaux, simply titled “There Are No Natural Resources.” I reprint the article in full:

Recently I had a very enjoyable conversation over dinner with some impressive undergraduates at Bowling Green State University.