Editor note: Milton Friedman would be 98 this Saturday July 31. (He died on November 16, 2006.) This exchange with Robert Bradley–when Dr. Friedman was 91 years old–is testament to the mental powers of one of the greatest social thinkers of modern time.

Friedman had not met Bradley but was in the habit of actively communicating with scholars until his final illness.

I had heard that the great economist and social thinker Milton Friedman (1912–2006) was a prolific communicator with those who posed worthy questions to him. So when I got interested in mineral resource theory, which would culminate with my 2007 essay, Resourceship: An Austrian Theory of Mineral Resources, I asked Dr. Friedman in August 2003 about his views on the late Julian Simon (1932–98), specifically whether Simon’s work on resources, and his conception of the ultimate resource, merited a Nobel Prize in economics.…

“It took a decade in Texas, but the cancer grew and spread–thanks, in part, to the very projects that Mr. Howard lists on his resume. Between 3,000 and 4,000 MW of mostly wind but also solar projects are claimed, led by Los Vientos I, II, III, IV, V, and VI….

Milton R. Howard, one of the nation’s leading wind/solar developers (along with the spouse of the Houston Chronicle business editorialist, another story) sees himself as a great man, creating value for society in addition to his employer and himself.

He describes himself as a “people person” who is “making this world a better place than I found it.”

I am driven to make things better from an overall economic, social and environmental standpoint. I am passionate and a high achiever but also very much a people person.

Two planets are talking to each other. One looks like a beautiful blue marble and the other a dirty brown ball.

“What on earth happened to you?” the beautiful planet asks the brown one.

“I had Homo sapiens,” answers the brown planet.

“Don’t worry,” says the blue planet. “They don’t last long.”

Climate alarmism has turned into a big funny. The above, a joke at COP26 recalled by Thomas Friedman, says much about the stalled-out Church of Deep Ecology. It seems that enough governments are self-interested to slow down the march on road to serfdom–and a lot of Homo sapiens really care about energy affordability and reliability.

So much for the quixotic quest to substitute dilute, intermittent energies for dense mineral energies.

Of course, the energy intelligentsia refused to deal with that stubborn thing called Energy Density, opting for a blank check for wind, solar, and batteries.…

“This encyclopedic and even-handed survey of the evidence of global warming is a welcome corrective to the raging hysteria about the alleged dangers of global warming. [Thomas Gale] Moore demonstrates conclusively that global warming is more likely to benefit than to harm the general public.”

– Milton Friedman, back-cover endorsement, Thomas Gale Moore, Climate of Fear: Why We Shouldn’t Worry About Global Warming (1998).

“Of all my father’s accomplishments, I believe the one he was proudest of was his role in ending military conscription. I do not think he would be happy to be conscripted, posthumously, for someone else’s cause [of a carbon tax].” (David Friedman, below)

The son of the late Milton Friedman (1912–2006), David Friedman, called it “A Case of Posthumous Conscription.”

The controversy harks back to 2014 when Bob Inglis of RepublicEn (a fake, Left-funded Republican front group) chaired an event at the University of Chicago titled, “What Would Milton Friedman Do About Climate Change?”…