[Editors note: This is part 2 of 4 in Alex Epstein’s exploration of innovation and creative destruction of the early oil market. Read Part 1 here. References are at the bottom. This post was originally published in The Objective Standard.]

Today, we know oil primarily as a source of energy for transportation. But oil first rose to prominence as a form of energy for a different purpose: illumination.

For millennia, men had limited success overcoming the darkness of the night with man-made light. As a result, the day span for most was limited to the number of hours during which the sun shone—often fewer than ten in the winter. Even as late as the early 1800s, the quality and availability of artificial light was little better than it had been in Greek and Roman times—which is to say that men could choose between various grades of expensive lamp oils or candles made from animal fats.…

[Editors note: This four-part post examines the innovation and creative destruction of the early oil market. It was originally published by The Objective Standard.]

The most important and most overlooked energy issue today is the growing statist threat to global energy supply.

There is no substitute for available, affordable, and reliable supply. Cheap, industrial-scale energy is essential to building, transporting, and operating everything we use, from refrigerators to Internet server farms to hospitals. It is desperately needed in the undeveloped world, where 1.6 billion people lack electricity, which contributes to untold suffering and death. And it is needed in ever-greater, more-affordable quantities in the industrialized world: Energy usage and standard of living are directly correlated.1

Every dollar added to the cost of energy is a dollar added to the cost of life.…

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.…

[Editor note: This interview with Rob Bradley from the April 2006 issue of The New Individualist, published by The Atlas Society, is reproduced for two reasons: 1) the role of Lay and Enron in launching the global warming debate within the energy industry in the late 1980s and 1990s; 2) the role of Bradley during his 16 years at the company brought up by critics of the Institute for Energy Research/American Energy Alliance.]

TNI: Why should Objectivists, libertarians, and individualists take an interest in the collapse of Enron and particularly in the fall of Ken Lay?

Bradley: Enron will prove to be one of the most important episodes in the history of American business, and its story, from beginning to end, is inseparable from Ken Lay, its founder and long-time chairman.…