"There’s a remarkable confusion in the modern debate over energy sources.
Informed by geological rather than economic considerations, energy sources and some raw materials are thought of either as “Renewables” or “Non-Renewables” — and the former is somehow much preferred to the later...
- How Non-Renewable Resources Don’t Run Out
In 1944 the world’s amount of proven oil reserves were 51bn barrels of oil.
In 2018 the world’s proven oil reserves were almost 1,500bn (BP estimates 1,730bn ), i.e., about thirty times that of 1944 — and this despite humanity’s pretty voracious appetite for oil during the seven-odd decades in between. Anyone immersed in the naïve resource depletion theory has to incredulously ask himself — how can this be?
In 2018 the world’s proven oil reserves were almost 1,500bn (BP estimates 1,730bn ), i.e., about thirty times that of 1944 — and this despite humanity’s pretty voracious appetite for oil during the seven-odd decades in between. Anyone immersed in the naïve resource depletion theory has to incredulously ask himself — how can this be?
Simply put: we found more of it.
Markets with well-defined property rights use prices and profit motives to guide the allocation of resources — including, in this case, the investment resources that go into prospecting for oil or digging up metals in the ground. Markets use prices to convey information about the present and future availability of raw materials — with innovation allowing us to find, extract, and use them more efficiently and substitution regulating our want for them.
The remarkable contrast to this point is the reverence often given to so-called renewables, i.e., energy sources that don’t run out.
The ideal example is the sun, ceaselessly blasting the Earth with more energy than we’ll ever need.
...Some of these are truly “renewable” in that their sources never run out (wind, thermal, ocean, sun), but they come with well-known problems of capture, scale, storage, and distribution.
...Simon pointed out that
- …But Renewables Do
The remarkable contrast to this point is the reverence often given to so-called renewables, i.e., energy sources that don’t run out.
The ideal example is the sun, ceaselessly blasting the Earth with more energy than we’ll ever need.
...Some of these are truly “renewable” in that their sources never run out (wind, thermal, ocean, sun), but they come with well-known problems of capture, scale, storage, and distribution.
...Simon pointed out that
Over the course of history, up to this very moment, copper and other minerals have been getting less scarce rather than more scarce, as the depletion theory implies … natural resources are not finite in any meaningful economic sense, mind-boggling though this assertion may be.
Simon’s assessment almost forty years ago still rings true today: raw materials have become more plentiful, not scarcer — contrary to what the depletion theorists would have you believe.
While renewable energy sources do run out — often as a result of insufficient property rights — non-renewable resources don’t.
The conclusion from a century-plus of raw materials’ extraction can thus be neatly summarized as: burn all you want — we’ll find more .-Read more at mises.org"
Read all.
While renewable energy sources do run out — often as a result of insufficient property rights — non-renewable resources don’t.
The conclusion from a century-plus of raw materials’ extraction can thus be neatly summarized as: burn all you want — we’ll find more .-Read more at mises.org"
Read all.
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