Friday, October 24, 2014

Not Running Out of Oil Soon

The piece is probably on the other side of the WSJ pay-wall, and the title is accurate as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. Mills is one of those people whose views are similar to those of the retired chairman of the board of Texaco whom I was privileged to know back in the 80's. Mills believes we are not going to run out of energy, and the article bears witness to that belief. Mills, a Manhattan Institute Scholar, has just published a new book whose title tells it all, The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy.

We are having an interesting governor's race in Florida.  One of the attacks being made on the Republican incumbent is that Florida, unlike most of the other Southeastern states, does not subsidize solar energy significantly.  I don't know whether that's true.  (I believe nothing that the attack ads on the gubernatorial candidates are saying.)  If it is true, however, then I think this is a good thing.  It would seem to me that Solar needs to grow up and compete with the big boys for investment dollars and that the State should get-out and keep-out of the marketplace on this one.  (How long has it taken to get NASA out of the outer-space market?  Where would we be if it had gotten out earlier?  Pluto?)

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