Ann McElhinney is one of the gutsiest critics of anti-industrialists–self-proclaimed “environmentalists”–around. She is spearheading the upcoming documentary, FrackNation, which aims to educate the public about the incredible technology that is hydraulic fracturing (see our recent piece, “Fracing Amazing,” for more). The Objective Standard blog recently conducted an interview with McElhinney, which is well worth reading. Here’s one of my favorite parts …
Kern River and Hydraulic Fracturing
In 1899, eight men dug a 70 foot deep well by hand, creating the first oil well in Kern River, Kern County, California. Many wells and hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil followed, and by WWII it was estimated that there were still another 54 million barrels of oil in reserve. By 1986, technology had developed and the field had been made to produce 740 million …
Power Hour: Alex Epstein on How You, Individually, Can Change the World – The Power of the Moral Narrative
What is the highest-leverage thing that you as an individual can do to advance liberty and industrial progress in America? This speech and Q&A, which I gave to Berkeley Students for Liberty in February, is my answer to that question. It’s based on a powerful idea I call “reframing the moral narrative.” Download this special feature with Alex Epstein
Fracing Amazing: The Story of the Eagle Ford Shale
As President Obama observed in his 2012 State of the Union Address, “American oil production is the highest that it’s been in eight years.” This is truly exciting news. Just five years ago, US oil production was on a multi-decade decline that was widely expected to be terminal. Then, all of a sudden, production began booming–and today we are producing …
The “Skeptic” Smear
Those of us who do not believe in catastrophic global warming are often smeared as “skeptics” or “deniers” of the findings of modern climate science–findings that are treated as on par with, say, the theory of evolution by natural selection. In his latest article at MasterResource, CIP’s Eric Dennis, who has an extensive background in both physics and mathematical modeling, …
Justice for Jobs
Although Americans admire Steve Jobs more than any other businessman of our era, I don’t think most of us admire him enough. Exhibit A is Walter Isaacson’s famous biography of Jobs. While I enjoyed reading that book, and derived inspiration from it, I felt that it didn’t do justice to the mind of Jobs–the mind with the judgment to oversee revolutions …
8 Secrets About Gas Prices Every American Needs to Know
Do you want to know a secret? Oil companies don’t control gas prices. Yes, you heard that right. So what does control gas prices? The simple law of supply and demand. And supply and demand are impacted by many other factors (like global events and inflation). American consumers need to know the real story behind gas prices because they’re the …
Coal is Clean
Over the past month and a half, I’ve been speaking at numerous universities, including Stanford, Berkeley, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Toronto. One point I like to stress is that we should think of coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear, as clean energy. Why? After all, don’t these each have byproducts and risks that are undesirable? Sure, as do all forms of …
Gas Prices 101 — Power Surge with Alex Epstein and Eric Dennis
Why do gasoline prices rise and fall more than other prices? Dr. Eric Dennis and I break it down in the latest edition of Power Surge. Download Power Surge: Gas Prices
An Unreasonable Bill
We all know that the United States has a graduated income tax. The more money you earn annually, the higher a percentage of your marginal income that you pay in taxes. Depending on how one defines it, the average marginal tax rate that middle class citizens pay to the Federal government is around 20 percent. The top marginal rate is …