[Editor Note: Today, Moynihan Prize winner John Holdren will give a public lecture in Washington, DC at the Willard Intercontinental (1401 Pennsylvania Avenue) at 4:00 pm eastern. What might he say about I = PAT and his fishing hobby?]

He loves to fish. His is a motor boat, not a kayak, a row boat, or canoe.  AND he has employed his very own electronic fish finder.

As such, he violates all three independent variables of his own I = P A T equation! But then like most others in the Malthusian intelligensia, and a few others like Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio, the equation just does not apply to him.

His name is John Paul Holdren, Obama’s eight-year science advisor, Harvard Professor of Environmental Policy, MacArthur genius (one of the first), and overall “powerhouse.”…

“Falling commodity prices in general are a good thing in a free market because, as economist Ludwig von Mises emphasized, the sole end of production is consumption. Consumption first, production second. Also the US is a net importer of both oil and natural gas, which means we consume more than we produce. So provincially speaking, the US gains more than it loses from well-to-pump or well-to-burner-tip price drops.”

Business consultant Carlos Lara and I produce a monthly financial publication, the Lara-Murphy Report, which highlights the Austrian School of economics in both academia and the financial markets. The January 2016 issue interviewed Rob Bradley of Houston, Texas, who was trained in Austrian-school economics and is a longtime historian of oil markets. This interview is reproduced below.

Robert L. Bradley Jr. is the founder and chief executive officer of the Institute for Energy Research (IER), a 501(c)3 educational foundation with offices in Houston, Texas, and Washington, D.C.…

“[Christopher Keating] rigged the bet. Compare it with the old-West poker player who stacks the deck, marks the cards, seats his opponents so he can see their hands in mirrors, and hides a few aces up his sleeve.”

“Physicist offers $10,000 to anyone who can disprove ‘man-made global climate change'”, the headline at Daily Kos (June 22, 2014) proclaimed. “Climate change deniers using same methods as tobacco industry, says physicist.”

Wow! It’s put-up or shut-up time for climate skeptics like us at the Cornwall Alliance, right? Ten grand ripe for the picking!

All we have to do is lay out our proof and collect the dough. And if we don’t? Well, obviously we’re admitting we don’t dare put our arguments to the test.

But there’s a whole lot less here than it appears.…

“[Free energy] markets tend not only to clear, but to clear faster and at lower prices than anticipated.”

The resignation of Aubrey McClendon as CEO of Chesapeake Energy provides a good case to study in corporate strategic planning. Ignoring his financial side deals, for which he has received a good share of criticism, the wisdom of his primary strategy, the aggressive pursuit of shale resources, is an open question to many. Although he has been hailed as a pioneer and risk taker, clearly those risks have gone bad and should be examined.

Higher Prices: A Bad Bet

The core failing was his decision to bet the firm (essentially) on high natural gas prices. From 1997 to 2005, wellhead prices had increased from $3/Mcf to $8/Mcf (2010$), the highest level historically. This, combined with a neo-Malthusian mentality, convinced him and many others that prices would not be mean-reverting, but remain at levels from two to three times the historical average.…