alternative energy — VOICES for REASON

One argument sometimes heard in favor of green energy is that sources such as wind and solar are “free, forever.”  Al Gore, in particular, has said repeatedly that to end our “overdependence on outdated, heavily polluting carbon-based technologies . . . we need sources that are free forever, like the sun, wind and earth.” (See also here, here and here.)

On a superficial glance, this might seem to have a certain ring of plausibility. To use the energy in oil, coal and natural gas takes a lot of work and resources: the fuels have to be discovered, extracted, transported, processed, refined, and distributed—all at great effort and expense.

By contrast, sunlight and wind are flows of energy that already occur all by themselves in nature. Sunshine is, literally, a stream of electromagnetic energy flowing onto the earth. Similarly with wind, which consists of air particles that carry kinetic energy by the very fact of their being in motion. We can feel the effects of such energy without effort, just by sitting in the sun and enjoying the breeze.

But if you give this even a tiny amount of additional thought, you should quickly realize that the “free forever” argument is just plain silly.

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Most people have become acclimated to an extremely slow rate of energy progress. While, say, our computers and electronics will rapidly decrease in price while increasing in quality, our energy bills look to be going nowhere but up. This despite the fact that today, as in the past several decades, government “energy planners” promise us an energy paradise of solar, wind, or whatever other technology they happen to favor.

My new essay, “Energy at the Speed of Thought,” tells the story of an entirely different sort of energy market.

[H]istory provides us ample grounds for optimism about the potential for a dynamic energy market with life-changing breakthroughs — because America once had exactly such a market. For most of the 1800s, an energy market existed unlike any we have seen in our lifetimes, a market devoid of government meddling. With every passing decade, consumers could buy cheaper, safer, and more convenient energy, thanks to continual breakthroughs in technology and efficiency — topped off by the discovery and mass availability of an alternative source of energy that, through its incredible cheapness and abundance, literally lengthened and improved the lives of nearly everyone in America and millions more around the world. That alternative energy was called petroleum. By studying the rise of oil, and the market in which it rose, we will see what a dynamic energy market looks like and what makes it possible. Many claim to want the “next oil”; to that end, what could be more important than understanding the conditions that gave rise to the first oil? 

In the essay, I argue that the amazing speed and impact of “the original alternative energy industry” is achievable today. What will it take? Go read “Energy at the Speed of Thought” to find out.

Next Monday I will be speaking about the destructiveness of policies aimed at cutting off fossil fuels and promoting “green energy.” I will be on a panel discussion at UCLA with Dr. Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Here is the description:

 It is now widely believed that man-made greenhouse gases are causing an unnatural warming of the earth that will have devastating consequences for human life. Environmentalists and politicians are pressing for severe restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions in order to prevent climate change. But what does the scientific evidence actually support regarding the causes of climate variability and the role of anthropogenic greenhouse gases? Are the predictions of catastrophic changes supported by scientific fact? Are governmental economic intervention and restrictions on emissions an appropriate policy response? Drs. Keith Lockitch and Willie Soon will address these critical issues in a lively panel discussion and afterward take your questions.

I’ve had the pleasure of appearing on several panels with Dr. Soon over the last year. He has excellent knowledge of the science at the center of the climate change debate. If you’re in Southern California, come check it out!

Whenever I make the point–in speaking and writing on climate policy–that green restrictions on carbon emissions would require a massive and economically devastating reduction in our use of energy, I am always confronted by the objection that I am ignoring “alternative energy.”

Environmentalists aren’t against energy, I am told, just fossil fuel energy; their goal is not to deprive us of energy but to replace carbon-based energy with “green energy,” to meet the world’s energy needs using “environmentally-friendly” sources such as wind and solar.

Yeah, right.

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Ordinarily, when a company has a long record of profits and a continually increasing stock price, it is recognized for its vision. But look at ExxonMobil. It just capped off the most profitable year in American business history, a year in which it hit its all-time-high stock price. And yet the company continues to be lambasted by critics as a “dinosaur.” Its product, oil, critics say, is on its way to obsolescence. These critics claim that oil is a fast-depleting, CO2-emitting, soon-to-be relic of the past. They say that Exxon and other oil companies should be investing in “alternative fuels,” the wave of the future, just like all those “visionaries” we hear about in Al Gore speeches or read about in Thomas L. Friedman columns. One particularly biting criticism of Big Oil has been waged by the Rockefeller family, which has banded together to claim that John D. Rockefeller, founder of the modern industry, would enjoin today’s oil companies to phase out this antiquated product. “ExxonMobil needs to reconnect with the forward-looking and entrepreneurial vision of my great-grandfather,” says family activist Neva Rockefeller Goodwin.

I’ve studied Rockefeller intensely over the last two years, and I can say for sure his descendants are right about one thing: he definitely was a visionary. When others in the oil industry were making kerosene using shanty refineries, Rockefeller envisioned and made real a large-scale, research-and-development, modern corporation that made kerosene more cheaply than anyone thought possible. So we should definitely look to Rockefeller to understand what real vision is. But are alternative fuels companies the visionaries we hear they are? Or is it possible that the oil companies are the real visionaries? Stay tuned.