From time to time, John Holdren has acknowledged that plentiful, affordable, reliable energy is vital to human well being. Indeed, there is no going back to an energy-poor world. (Remember: caveman energy was 100% renewable.)
When Holdren or Obama advocates policies that risk making energy artificially scarce or less reliable, these words can be used to argue for nonregulatory approaches to energy policy:
“Virtually all of the benefits that now seem necessary to the ‘American way’ have required vast amounts of energy. Energy, in short, has been our ultimate raw material, for our commitment to economic growth has also been a commitment to the use of steadily increasing amounts of energy necessary to the production of goods and services.”
… Continue Reading– John Holdren and Philip Herrera, Energy (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1971), p.
Apparently, an increase in offshore drilling is still on the policy table, which suggests Obama is taking a more rational approach to energy policy than many of his colleagues. Without question, offshore drilling cannot provide ‘energy independence’ (a ludicrous concept, but that’s for another day), but there are numerous benefits and only a trivial downside.…
Continue ReadingA recent story (http://liberty.pacificresearch.org/blog/sid.green-jobs) notes layoffs in the renewable energy business and laments the oft-heard call for expenditures on ‘green jobs’. The author notes the potential ‘explosion’ in clean jobs, but also the wasteful practice of low productivity investment. Solar power especially is very expensive and hardly a cost-effective way to spend taxpayer or consumer money.
Amazingly, a number of Congressional leaders such as Harry Reid and Bernie Sanders point to the struggles the public has had with higher energy costs, and then turn to renewable energy as a solution, without mentioning its (higher) cost. This is rather like Marie Antoinette’s supposed comment that the poor who had no bread should eat cake. Arguing for ‘clean’ energy over ‘dirty’ energy is one thing, but proposing to solve the problem of expensive energy with even more expensive (but ostensibly cleaner) energy is at best disingenuous.…
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