The much noted crisis in energy that is no crisis at all

THE BOTTOMLESS WELL: THE TWILIGHT OF FUEL, THE VIRTUE OF WASTE, AND WHY WE WILL NEVER RUN OUT OF ENERGY

By Peter W. Huber and Mark P. Mills

Basic, $26, 214 pages

REVIEWED BY DOUG BANDOW

We seem to be forever living in an energy crisis. A quarter century ago the U.S. suffered through gas lines, threats of rationing, and speeches on malaise. Today Congress struggles to pass an inefficient, pork-filled bill in the name of helping America become energy independent.

It’s all nonsense. Even as the United States and the industrialized world use vast quantities of oil every year, economically recoverable petroleum reserves worldwide increase. Changing economics and technology have put ever more natural reserves into people’s reach.

Peter W. Huber and Mark P. Mills, of the Manhattan Institute and Digital Power Capital, respectively, have produced a wonderful book, which confounds the conventional wisdom of limits and should put virtually every government energy program out of business.

It is widely believed that people should use less energy. Save money, protect the planet, ensure plenty for our descendents. Paul Ehrlich, the biologist who so spectacularly erred in predicting population disaster, once declared that “cheap abundant energy…would be equivalent to giving an idiot child a machine gun.”

Actually, say Mr. Huber and Mr. Mills: “More energy consumption isn’t worse, it’s better. The idiot children are right.”

The authors start by redefining the very concept of energy. They argue that the quantity of the supplies is almost irrelevant: Energy supplies are unlimited; it is energetic energy that’s scarce, and the order in energy that’s expensive.

Energy supplies are determined mainly by how cleverly we’re able to impose logic and order on the mountains and catacombs of energy that surround and envelop us. The more energy we seize and use, the more adept we become at finding and seizing still more.

Which means we should rethink demand. The largest expenditure of energy is to “extract, refine, process, and purify energy itself,” the authors report. Use more energy, make more energy.

It’s a provocative but persuasive thesis. The proverbial bugaboo of “running out of oil” simply won’t happen. Our ultimate energy supply is determined less by the amount of the resource and more by our ability to transform it. Note Mr. Huber and Mr. Mills: “What is scarce is not raw energy but the drive and the logic that is able to locate, purify, and channel it to our own ends.”

People exhibit such a voracious capacity to use energy. The authors point to history, in which more efficient energy production and consumption have always led to increased demand. Innovation has been constant, as ever more energy has been used to do ever more things. This process continues in the computer age. It’s hard to argue with the authors’ conclusion that “improving computing efficiency is not likely to reduce demand for power overall.

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