Are there really depletable resources? The answer was “yes” if and only if there was an associated “cessation, once and for all, of technological progress.” This is clearly not the case for natural gas development.  Technological progress is alive and well, and technology is the most powerful non-price determinant of supply.  The “theory of the mine” (Harold Hotelling, 1931), not the mine, has been abandoned. (Enron Corp., The 1995 Enron Outlook. Houston, Texas: 1995, p. 8.)

Part I yesterday described my early effort to sell the idea of natural gas as a bridge fuel to environmental NGOs as part of their climate strategy. Behind this effort was Enron’s case for an expanding resource base for gas.

After severe shortages with natural gas during several winters in the 1970s, partial gas price deregulation resulted in artificially high prices, which quickly led to a supply glut and a price crash.…

“We created a way of raising standards of living that we can’t possibly pass on to our children. It has to collapse, unless adults stand up and say, ‘This is a Ponzi scheme. We have not generated real wealth, and we are destroying a livable climate.’” (Joe Romm, quoted in Thomas Friedman, Is the Inflection Point Near?, New York Times, March 7, 2009)

“Is there any more single-minded, simple pleasure than viewing with alarm? At times it is even better than sex.” (Kenneth Boulding (1970), p. 160. [1]

Are free-market optimists the dumb ones who jump off tall buildings and report that everything is fine, even breezy, on the way down? Or are those who fear, rant, and make this analogy bungee-jumping with reality?

The optimists have been jumping off buildings ever since Robert Thomas Malthus’s An Essay on Population was published in 1798–and not hitting the ground.…

“From time to time a statute gets written with a really good intention but reality does not follow that intention. That’s why we’re looking at these rules and regulations from a common-sense approach, we’re looking to get the best result we can.”

– DOE Secretary Rick Perry, quoted in Politico, July 16, 2019.

“According to Consumer Reports, the highest-ranked was an electric heat pump water with an average price of $1,200 (twice that of the runner-up gas water heater) and an average annual operating cost of $240. Second place was an apparently ordinary gas water heater with an average price of $600 and an average annual operating cost of $245.” (below)

On July 11, the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) and request for comments on a petition by the natural gas industry (a.k.a.…

Bradley has tackled a vast and dynamic energy landscape through the big prism of Enron. He was wise to include necessary contexts for 15 chapters of markets and personalities. Navigating FERC deregulation orders over a decade was a fearsome writing task, done well. Pipeline and power plant deals at home and abroad; solar, wind, and other alternative energies, the list goes on. Politics in Austin, Washington, DC, and foreign capitals. Enron was everywhere.

Robert L. Bradley Jr. has written a very important book about Houston’s most controversial company. This is the first of a two-volume corporate biography chronicling the rise, fall, and aftermath of Enron; his tetralogy has already produced a book on worldview (Capitalism at Work: 2009) and prehistory (Edison to Enron: 2011).

Few observers have been as ideally located to chronicle this modern-day version of a Greek tragedy.…