All Posts Tagged With: "renewable energy"
A Free-Market Energy Vision
Energy is the master resource. Without it other resources could not be produced or consumed. Even energy requires energy: There would not be usable oil, gas, or coal without the energy to manufacture and power the requisite tools and machinery. Nor would there be wind turbines or solar panels, which are monuments to embedded fossil-fuel [...]
29Jun2010 | Robert L. Bradley Jr. | 5 comments | ContinuedT. Boone Pickens is Right About Oil Imports? It Just Ain’t So!
The $700 billion that Americans spend annually to purchase oil from other countries (according to Pickens) is a price not a transfer. For the $700 billion we send to oil exporters, we get something in return—oil. Our receipt of millions of barrels of oil in exchange for that money is hardly a transfer. We receive a versatile commodity that can be used for everything from making plastics to fueling family vacations. The exporters receive the $700 billion that they can then use to purchase other goods and services.
1Apr2009 | E. Frank Stephenson | 6 comments | ContinuedGusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of “Energy Independence.”
Al Gore recently called for a ten-year plan to phase out all electric plants powered by fossil fuels and replace them with windmills and other “renewable” energy sources. While the media fawned over Gore’s speech, I decided to read Robert Bryce’s Gusher of Lies to see if the speech made sense. It doesn’t. Bryce’s book [...]
2Feb2009 | William L. Anderson | 2 comments | ContinuedEthanol versus the Poor
Gardner Goldsmith is a freelance writer in New Hampshire. It is nearly axiomatic that anything Cuban “President” Fidel Castro says will be false, incorrect, misleading, and downright pernicious. It’s not as if the bearded relic from the Cold War—who seems to have replaced his traditional olive military clothing with a more sedate sweatsuit look—has a [...]
1Jul2007 | P. Gardner Goldsmith | 5 comments | ContinuedMandating Renewable Energy: It’s Not Easy Being Green
Environmentalists abhor all fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, and petroleum) and nuclear energy. They collectively refer to this type of energy as “brown” power. Along with a bipartisan collection of Washington politicians, they instead advocate “green,” or “renewable,” power. This earth-friendly alternative energy includes geothermal, hydroelectric, biomass, solar, and wind. While we all know that [...]
1Oct2006 | Michael Heberling | 5 comments | ContinuedThe Governmental Habit
In 1977 the late economic historian Jonathan R. T. Hughes published a book called The Governmental Habit (updated in 1991 as The Governmental Habit Redux). It showed how pervasive government intervention in the economy has been since colonial times. The title captures an important phenomenon. People are in the habit of looking to government—the only [...]
1Sep2006 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedPower to the People?
Michael Lynch is a research affiliate with the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In his piece “The Power to Change the World: A Hydrogen-Based System Replacing Our Reliance on Oil Would Revolutionize Society” (Los Angeles Times, September 2, 2002), political activist Jeremy Rifkin lays out an argument for switching to [...]
1Jan2003 | Michael C. Lynch | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Sustainable–and Young–Hydrocarbon Energy Age
As the Bush administration confronts the economy’s growing need for affordable and reliable energy, the critics of the hydrocarbon-based energy economy are back to the drawing board. The “soft” energy path of subsidies and mandates for conservation and nonhydro renewable energy—hatched during the 1970s energy crisis and popularized during the eight years of Clinton/Gore—was not [...]
1Nov2001 | Robert L. Bradley Jr. | 3 comments | ContinuedNuclear Power: Our Best Option
Mr. Oliver is a retired engineer living in Carson City, Nevada. Dr. Hospers, this month’s guest editor, is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Southern California, and is the author of numerous books such as Understanding the Arts, Human Conduct, and Introduction to Philosophical Analysis. He was the first Libertarian Party candidate for [...]
1Jan1995 | Mike Oliver | 1 comment | Continued-
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