“Damage and destroy new CO2 emitting devices. Put them out of commission, pick them apart, demolish them, burn them, blow them up…. Sabotage, after all, is not incompatible with social distancing.” (Andreas Malm, How to Blow Up a Pipeline, 2021: 3, 67)

“How will Malm keep people from freezing to death in the winter or dying from heat exhaustion in summer after his followers have disabled power plants or the pipelines that supply them?” (below)

There are “no regrets” policy changes that can reduce CO2 emissions by expanding, not reducing, freedom. Repealing the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (aka, the Jones Act), for example, would eliminate the Act’s enormous carbon footprint. The Act, which requires goods shipped between American ports to be transported on American owned, built, and crewed ships, makes it impossible for Americans to make full use of the veritable conveyor belt of ships that navigate our nations’ waters. …

“Using moralistic yet blatantly dishonest slogans and pseudo-science, the environmental movement has digressed dangerously…. One of the most fundamental truths rarely surfaces among the movement: there is no credible alternative to hydrocarbons in both the near and far foreseeable futures.” (Michael Economides, below)

He was irascible in person but a rare energy realist in thought and action. Michael Economides (1949–2013) was many things, including leading oil consultant and Lecturer in Petroleum Engineering at the Cullen College of Engineering at the University of Houston. [1]

With Ronald Oligney, he authored an important book, The Color of Oil: The History, the Money and the Politics of the World’s Biggest Business (2000). Some quotations follow:

“… energy is the world’s biggest business, and it continues to move unstoppably forward.” (p. 17)

“We predict that the world will not run out of oil for the next three centuries, at least.”

Ed. note: The third part in this series covers IER as a full-time organization, which occurred in 2002, some 13 years after its founding (in 1989). Part I covered the history of the Institute for Humane Studies–Texas, the forerunner to IER. Part II reviewed the formation and early history of IER in Houston, Texas.

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Q1. Roger Donway: The last interview explained your dual life as a full-time employee of Enron Corp. and the president of the “think bucket” IER. How did IER emerge full time?

A1. Robert Bradley Jr.: My Enron life ended a day after the company declared bankruptcy on Sunday December 1, 2001. I was part of the mass layoff the next day. Some 4,000 of us were let go where we were told to clear out our desks and leave.

Ed. Note: This interview with Robert L. Bradley Jr. by Jane Shaw Stroup appeared earlier this week at the Liberty and Ecology website of the Goodman Institute for Public Policy Research. Comments are welcomed, including new questions to clarify the role of nuclear power in a free economy.

Q1. What role should nuclear power have in the years ahead?

A. “Let the market decide” is the straightforward classical-liberal, free-market answer. This means government neutrality in terms of not subsidizing or penalizing one energy technology versus another to determine what, when, where.

The decision to build new capacity, or the decision to operate-versus-retire, should be based on stand-alone economics, without government favor or penalty.

Q2. Under this standard, what is the future of nuclear in the energy mix as far as new capacity?…