Robert Bradley on resources

Resources come from the mind and not the ground.  Human ingenuity and advances in thinking and technology can access resources that were unaccessible before.

Robert L. Bradley, Jr., "The Climate Policy Threat," 6:40 mark, Freedom Adventure podcast, July 20, 2021

Jimmy Carter: "We've got about 35 years of oil left in the whole world" (1976)

We need to have a realization that we've got about 35 years of oil left in the whole world.  We're going to run out of oil. 

~ Jimmy Carter, 1976 presidential debate, "Jimmy Carter: The World Will Run Out of Oil in 2011," YouTube

Paul Ehrlich: "Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death" (1968)

The battle to feed humanity is over.  In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines.  Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.

~ Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (1968)

International Energy Agency revises sharply downward oil-supply forecast

The oil investments required may be much, much higher than what people assume. This is a dangerous situation.

We are of the opinion that the public isn't aware of the role of the decline rate of existing fields in the energy supply balance, and that this rate will accelerate in the future.

~ Fatih Birol, the IEA's chief economist, "Energy Watchdog Warns Of Oil-Production Crunch" (front page), WSJ, May 22, 2008

Kevin Duffy on sustainable development

The whole idea of “sustainability” is a bit off kilter. I remember listening to Austrian economist Walter Block talk about the environment. He said he thinks of the earth like a bus, i.e. that it temporarily takes us from point A to point B. At some point, the earth will be sucked into the gravitational pull of the sun and explode (or burn up, or something to that effect). The key is for man to accumulate enough knowledge and build the means to save himself from destruction (admittedly, eons away – enough time for man to self destruct).

The secrets to solving this puzzle are out there in the universe, but require discovery. And what is the most powerful, efficient discovery process known to man? The free market! And of course private property is the cornerstone of that system.

There has been a long running debate amongst economists regarding “natural resources.” Are we in danger of running out? Do we need some kind of government controls to prevent such a catastrophe? This debate is between the resource depletionists (like Thomas Malthus, 1766-1834) and resource cornucopians (led by Julian Simon, 1932-1998). The abundance argument – to which I subscribe – is that resources are simply nature’s materials (virtually unlimited) stamped with man’s ingenuity (which is only restrained by economic ignorance and the resulting state intervention). The Malthusians have been constantly proven wrong in their predictions, e.g. that oil would run out or that the world is overpopulated and incapable of feeding significantly more people. Yet every year the earth yields more food and man discovers more proven (i.e. economic) fossil fuels.

So how should each of us focus our efforts? On conservation or creating greater abundance? Or will that be different for each of us depending on the resources at our disposal – not just our property, but also our drive and creativity? Life is about making tradeoffs in a world of scarcity. The scarcest resource, however, is our time on this planet.

~ Kevin Duffy, May 5, 2008

Friedrich Hayek on conservationists vs. progress

Industrial development would have been greatly retarded if sixty or eighty years ago the warning of the conservationists about the threatening exhaustion of the supply of coal had been heeded; and the internal combustion engine would never have revolutionized transport if its use had been limited to the then known supplies of oil (during the first few decades of the era of the automobile and the airplane the known resources of oil at the current rate of use would have been exhausted in ten years). Though it is important that on all these matters the opinion of the experts about the physical facts should be heard, the result in most instances would have been very detrimental if they had had the power to enforce their views on policy.

~ Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (1960), p. 369

A.C. Pigou on resource depletion (1932)

It is the clear duty of Government, which is the trustee for unborn generations as well as for its present citizens, to watch over, and if need be, by legislative enactment to defend, the exhaustible natural resources of the country from rash and reckless despoliation.

~ A. C. Pigou, The Economics of Welfare (1932)