History is filled with apocalyptic predictions from respected intellectuals. Thomas Malthus predicted inevitable starvation as the geometric growth in fertility passed the linear growth in food supply. But the future is hard to predict and few saw the dramatic growth in agricultural productivity or the leveling off of fertility. The Club of Rome predicted the exhaustion of our fuels in a few decades, but failed to predict cars getting 40 miles to the gallon.

Our history is one of technology addressing scarcity. Recently the shale oil technology being exploited in North Dakota is making us less dependent on oil imports while this administration is wasting money financing failed ‘green’ technology for some of their top campaign contributors.

George Will writes in The Jewish World Review, Confident Conservatives, 1/1/2012.

Excerpt:

In 2011, for the first time in 62 years, America was a net exporter of petroleum products. For the indefinite future, a specter is haunting progressivism, the specter of abundance. Because progressivism exists to justify a few people bossing around most people and because progressives believe that only government’s energy should flow unimpeded, they crave energy scarcities as an excuse for rationing — by them — that produces ever-more-minute government supervision of Americans’ behavior.

Imagine what a horror 2011 was for progressives as Americans began to comprehend their stunning abundance of fossil fuels — beyond their two centuries’ supply of coal. Progressives responded with attempts to impede development of the vast, proven reserves of natural gas and oil here and in Canada.

HKO further notes:

A history of unfulfilled predictions of doom was harmless until it became tools for those who used it to justify government control. They will fight reality if it undermines the basic assumptions of their defunct political ideology.

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