“You have been led to water–please drink and pass the cup. The Malthusian worldview, while stubbornly mainstream, is in trouble. Studying Population Bombed! is the road to optimism–and away from the road to serfdom.”
A very important book has turned three years old. Population Bombed!: Exploding the Link Between Overpopulation and Climate Change (Global Warming Policy Foundation: 2018) by Pierre Desrochers and Joanna Szurkmak is a tour-de-force, with a deepness of research and full presentation that is missing from almost all books on sustainable development.
The authors should be familiar to readers at MasterResource. A two-part interview with Ms. Szurmak is here and here; with Pierre Desrochers here.
The authors have usefully provided a summary of their book, inviting one and all to read and assess, pro or con.…
Continue ReadingA free-market energy economy promotes and rewards the creators and producers. Parasites and glad-handers need not apply. (below)
Free-market entrepreneurs and their workforce are creators, providing not only for themselves but for the wider good. They do not bank on government mandates or subsidies but on the needs of consumers, existing and new. They seek good profit, defined as creating real consumer value.
The fossil-fuel industries from top-to-bottom would qualify in the great majority of instances. In fact, most of its members, at present, are overcoming government intervention rather than depending on it.
It is just the reverse with the renewable industries, except for off-the-grid where there is no plug-in power. (David Bergeron, an author at MasterResource, is an example of a remote solar entrepreneur.)
The wind power industry, in particular, is made up of rent-seekers who have put themselves in the business of deceit, exaggeration, and half-truths.…
Continue Reading“Classical liberalism does not have a long resume in the history of energy thought. Prior to the 1970s energy crises, it was a backwater for free-market intellectuals, although the opportunity was there for both scholarship and political advocacy.”
I recently constructed a new home with a two-story library, ladders and all. On one side are my energy-related books; on the other, economics. Several thousand volumes are, for the first time, organized in one place. Better late than never as I am in my 66th year.
The energy books, many unearthed from storage, bring back a lot of memories. Some observations follow.
Classical liberalism (or the political term, libertarianism) does not have a long resume in the history of energy thought. Prior to the 1970s energy crises, it was a backwater for the free market intellectuals, although the opportunity was there for both scholarship and political advocacy.…
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