Comments on: Matt Ridley: How Fossil Fuels Helped End Slavery

By: Commodities Broker | Drumbeat: November 19, 2011 | Commodities Options | Commodities Futures | Commodities Prices

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 13:15:47 +0000

[...] Matt Ridley: How Fossil Fuels Helped End Slavery This excerpt from Matt Ridley’s brilliant 2010 book The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves explains how non-renewable, finite energy sources paradoxically made economic growth sustainable. With inanimate objects doing the work instead of slaves, we can, as he says, all “live the life of a Sun King.” [...]

By: Drumbeat: November 19, 2011 | Rigging Up.com

Drumbeat: November 19, 2011 | Rigging Up.com — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 03:01:03 +0000

By: Lawrie Ayres

Lawrie Ayres — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 01:30:00 +0000

There are some however who would see a return to the pre industrial era as a positive and necessary step for us to take although not necessarily for them.

By: In Defense of People: Julian Simon, “The Ultimate Resource Is Mankind”

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 15:34:23 +0000

[...] Bradley). 4) Non-renewable, finite, depletable energy sources made economic growth sustainable (Matt Ridley). Today’s excerpt from brilliant resource economist Julian Simon’s The Ultimate [...]

By: Industrialization and fossil fuels ended slavery and made economic growth sustainable | JunkScience.com

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 05:38:00 +0000

[...] Matt Ridley: How Fossil Fuels Helped End Slavery – In 1807, as Parliament in London was preparing to pass at last William Wilberforce’s bill to abolish the slave trade, the largest factory complex in the world had just opened at Ancoats in Manchester. Powered by steam and lit by gas, both generated by coal, Murrays’ Mills drew curious visitors from all over the country and beyond to marvel at their modern machinery. There is a connection between these two events. The Lancashire cotton industry was rapidly converting from water power to coal. The world would follow suit and by the late twentieth century, 85 percent of all energy used by humankind would come from fossil fuels. It was fossil fuels that eventually made slavery–along with animal power, and wood, wind and water–uneconomic. Wilberforce’s ambition would have been harder to obtain without fossil fuels. ‘History supports this truth,” writes the economist Don Boudreaux. ‘Capitalism exterminated slavery.’ (Cooler Heads) Share this:PrintEmailMoreStumbleUponTwitterFacebookDiggRedditLike this:LikeBe the first to like this post. This entry was posted in Coal, Green hell, Oil and gas, Sustainability. Bookmark the permalink. ← 14,000 abandoned monuments to Green stupidity [...]