Macdonald-Laurier Institute Says Resources are Infinite
I’ve heard a lot of BS over the years from the right-wing think tanks which are springing up in the wake of the Fraser Institute, spinning gibberish to advance privatization and deregulation. But I have to say, I really never imagined it would come to this:
We are nowhere near to running out of natural resources. Human creativity and financial resources together will ensure a continued supply of all the resources we need. The exact form those resources will take cannot be known today, however. It relies on future innovations, which are, by their nature, unpredictable because they will be the fruit of our imagination and curiosity. That is why the human mind is the greatest natural resource of all.
That’s Brian Lee Crowley, of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, the think tank movement’s new branch plant in Ottawa. In this article he argues not only that we haven’t reached peak oil, which is an understandable sentiment, but that there is no need to have a resource conservation policy ever, because we will never run out of a valuable resource. If this isn’t a religious faith, I don’t know what is. Such irrational garbage has no place in the thinking of what claims to be an independent, non-partisan, evidence-based analysis. History is full of examples of cultures that did exactly that. And promptly perished.
Updated: Even worse, the MLI’s website discusses the “mistaken premise that fossil fuels are finite.” That’s right, folks. They’re infinite! Good Lord…
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Crowley may – or may not – actually believe this rubbish.
More’s the pity if he does.
But I doubt the credibility of his comments concerns him.
I would suggest that his concern is how he may derive benefit from promoting this view, regardless of whether or not he knows it to be falsified.
An opportunist with an agenda.
It would be lovely to have a “Think Tank” list here to complement the Patronage List and Lobbyist Watch, complete with names and connections.
You know, in your spare time…..
Thanks for your work.
Sixth Estate
Actually I’m working on that, ohoh. Gradually. First I have to complete some spreadsheets about where the various “independent” think tanks get their funding from. But one day I’ll have it ready to go.
Alex
This thing reads like an undergraduate term paper.
Is this an example of what is typically churned out by
“think” tanks?
Sixth Estate
Yes and no, Alex. For one thing, there’s a definite difference in the quality of the BS. The Macdonald-Laurier Institute is new and appears to fall on the lower end of the spectrum, somewhere below the Fraser Institute, which in turn is usually below the CD Howe Institute. For another, usually their special reports are of a slightly higher quality than their op-eds.
As a general rule they are not to be treated as serious research, though.
chris
I went to the MLI site but couldn’t stomach very much.
They have an Issues page. Curiously there is no environment category. Says it all I think.
Holly Stick
Surely you realise that down the road someone will figure out how to extract oil from human beings, so the ones not fit to eat will still be useful.
Holly Stick
They can call it Ethical Soylent Green Oil.
Sixth Estate
Actually the Yes-Men already developed a method for human oil, Holly: see here, if you haven’t heard of it already. Albertan oil companies were not impressed by their announcement of this “invention” a couple years ago.
Holly Stick
Darn, I forgot about that trick they pulled, but my subconscious apparently didn’t.
Sam Gunsch
Crowley vs. Grantham (below) would be interesting
“Grantham is the head of GMO LLC, a hedge fund with $100 billion under management. His latest letter to his investors was headlined “Time to Wake Up: Days of Abundant Resources and Falling Prices Are Over Forever”—”
http://www.gmo.com/websitecontent/JGLetterALL_1Q11.pdf
Which I found in this post:
Steady State post
http://steadystate.org/two-schools/
http://www.gmo.com/websitecontent/JGLetterALL_1Q11.pdf
“Last month, though, brought a significant development: the manager of a major hedge fund registered a carefully reasoned dissent from infinite planet theory. And in doing so, Jeremy Grantham offered a glimpse of how and why steady state economic theory will ultimately come to prevail.
Grantham is the head of GMO LLC, a hedge fund with $100 billion under management. His latest letter to his investors was headlined “Time to Wake Up: Days of Abundant Resources and Falling Prices Are Over Forever”—”
The Sixth Estate » Right-Wing Think Tank Accepts Reality of Climate Change… Sort Of
[...] blog (which is the newest of Canada’s kooky free market think tanks) he was proposing that resources were effectively infinite, a claim which says all you need to know both about the intellectual bankrupty and, to be frank, [...]