Editor note: Julian Simon is a primary inspiration for this free-market energy blog, the name of which comes from his characterization of energy as the master resource.

Twelve years ago today came the shocking news: Julian Simon, age 65, had died of heart failure after his regular morning workout in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He had undiagnosed heart disease.

Just two months before, I had visited extensively with Simon when he came Houston to give what would be his last major address, titled: “More People, Greater Wealth, Expanded Resources, Cleaner Environment.” A full house of 200 heard Simon that day, and one in attendance, free-market entrepreneur Gordon Cain, was so impressed that he mailed Simon an unsolicited $25,000 check for research.

Simon invited me to coauthor an energy paper with him for a conference he was planning.…

“Many people think that the threat of ‘global warming’ arose only towards the end of the twentieth century…. Climate change, either natural or anthropogenic, has been discussed from the classical age onwards, evolving from the expected benefits of climate engineering to today’s fear of global disaster.”

– Hans von Storch and Nico Stehr, “Climate Change in Perspective,” Nature, June 8, 2000, p. 615

It is all gloom, what Michael Mann cautioned against as “doomism.”[1] Such alarm has been the mainstream narrative—and wrong—since the 1960s. And warnings about how exaggeration can backfire (New York Times: “In Climate Debate, Exaggeration Is a Pitfall“) have been thrown to the wind in the futile, costly pursuit of Net Zero.

This post presents the climate alarm quotations of today with the quotations from Paul Ehrlich and the Club of Rome in the late 1960s/early 1970s for historical perspective.…

“The late economist Julian Simon offers a cautionary tale for both climate scientists and economists…. His views have stood the test of time relatively well. But he also had strong views on topics that he was not an expert — climate change being a particular example — and on that topic his views have not fared well…. Simon was wrong about global warming….”

Cleaning Up Our Mess

On climate change, what is our obligation to future generations? Spring 2022 • Regulation By David Levine

This article starts with Greta Thunberg, assumes a negative externality of untold proportion, and ends with the assertion that Julian Simon being wrong on climate change because “he was not an expert.”

And the article pretends to be objective, fair, and impartial.

Things have gotten intellectually sick at the Cato Institute.…

“We believe energy should be in an upward spiral. Energy is the foundational engine of our civilization. The more energy we have, the more people we can have, and the better everyone’s lives can be. We should raise everyone to the energy consumption level we have, then increase our energy 1,000x, then raise everyone else’s energy 1,000x as well.” (- Techno-Optimist Manifesto, below)

Add a new name to the powerful critics of climate alarmism and forced energy transformation. Marc Andreessen is the author of The Techno-Optimist Manifesto, which draws upon the Julian Simon tradition of free minds and free markets to solve real challenges. This is a refreshing anecdote to the doom-and-gloom neo-Malthusians–and a threat to the climate industrial complex.

Sure enough, the critics are out with swords. Having posted The Techno-Optimist Manifesto on LinkedIn to the Climate Change Professionals Group, I was asked: “How is this diatribe from consume-more economics suitable for climate change professionals group??”…