Infinite Supplies Of Energy

by Stuart Shapiro

For generations liberal dogma has insisted that we are running out of fossil fuels and that we should conserve our resources.  But generations of new technologies and new-found deposits have made this a dubious proposition.  Charles Mann, in a great long article, explains the problem:

This perspective has a corollary: natural resources cannot be used up. If one deposit gets too expensive to drill, social scientists (most of them economists) say, people will either find cheaper deposits or shift to a different energy source altogether. Because the costliest stuff is left in the ground, there will always be petroleum to mine later. “When will the world’s supply of oil be exhausted?” asked the MIT economist Morris Adelman, perhaps the most important exponent of this view. “The best one-word answer: never.” Effectively, energy supplies are infinite.

But infinite resources are a bigger problem than finite ones.  Because of climate change and pollution, infinite resources means untold possible damage to the environment.  It turns out we don’t need to worry about too few resources, but rather too many.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.