Digital Cathedrals: The Information Infrastructure Era

REAL CLEAR BOOKS ……… My plan today is to paint a picture of the technological landscape in the near future. Let me start with the past. In 1913—106 years ago—the world witnessed an architectural marvel here in New York City, at 233 Broadway: the completion of the Woolworth building, a 792-foot-tall skyscraper, then the world’s…

How To Trigger A Global Recession In One Easy Step: Ban Fracking

REAL CLEAR ENERGY ………. In a time long ago, seven years this month, President Obama and candidate Mitt Romney sparred in their second debate over the extent to which Obama deserved credit for increasing America’s oil and natural gas production. Three years later President Obama would, without fanfare, sign epic legislation reversing a 40-year-old petroleum export ban.

The Electric Car Fantasy

CITY JOURNAL …… New York Senator Chuck Schumer has promised that if Democrats win the Senate in 2020, they’ll pass a law requiring that every car in America be electric by 2040. Chinese policymakers must be celebrating, because China makes the majority of the world’s batteries and has the most new battery factories under construction. The Chinese will need…

Debunking The New Energy Economy

HART ENERGY ……… A growing chorus of voices is exhorting the public, as well as government policymakers, to embrace the necessity—indeed, the inevitability—of society’s transition to a “new energy economy.” Advocates claim that rapid technological changes are becoming so disruptive and renewable energy is becoming so cheap, so fast, that there is no economic risk…

The Nobel Committee Dreams of a Post-Fossil-Fuel Future

NATIONAL REVIEW ………..  Silicon technology launched the computer age. But it took a breakthrough in chemistry to untether computers from desktops and connect over three billion people on earth to the Internet. Hence the well-deserved 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, shared by three scientists, for the lithium-ion battery.