There are many elements needed to secure economic growth. Certainly, people must be politically free to innovate, invest, build, and create things, and they must be incentivized to do so by knowing they can keep the rewards for their efforts.
— Robert Zubrin
I own a small aerospace company that does some business with the U.S. government.
In any economy, the entire population is supported by the part of it that is working. All other things being equal, it thus follows that the most attractive acquisition a society can have is a young adult, whose childhood and education has already been paid for, but whose entire working life still lies ahead.
Prosperous communities are much better able to survive hurricanes or other natural disasters because they have greater resources, both public and private, to fall back upon.
In the wake of the disaster caused by Tropical Storm Sandy, various allies of the Obama campaign have rushed to claim that the event was caused by anthropogenic global warming, thereby justifying the president's program of crushing the economy with regressive carbon taxes, a supposedly necessary measure to prevent future bad weather.
From 1859 to 1971, the U.S. oil industry grew virtually continuously, in the process serving mightily to drive our economy and win our wars. But that growth was stopped dead in 1971 and sent into decline thereafter, as the advent of the EPA and the accompanying National Environmental Policy Act made it increasingly difficult to drill.
The natural-gas industry is screaming for new markets, and there are only two sectors where these can be found: transportation and power generation.
The Earth is not endangered by humanity. But humanity is being seriously threatened by those who follow the guides of the WWF.
Putting aside for the moment the question of whether human industrial CO2 emissions are having an effect on climate, it is quite clear that they are raising atmospheric CO2 levels. As a result, they are having a strong and markedly positive effect on plant growth worldwide. There is no doubt about this.
We need to improve our horrible position within the petroleum game by eliminating the EPA and other crippling bureaucracies that have turned the U.S. from the game's biggest winners into its worst losers.
Despite being bailed out - in some cases repeatedly - by the public purse, the automakers have shown little public spirit.
The problem is that the automobile companies are not independent entities capable of pursuing their own interests. Rather, they are owned and controlled by organizations that are much more heavily invested in oil.
Trillions of dollars in out-of-control entitlement spending cannot be remedied by cuts in NASA, or even in the entire discretionary budget, defense included. Rather, the financial bleeding needs to be staunched where the hole is and nowhere else.
Would offering the Mars Prize damage NASA? I don't think so.
The anti-American policy is the one that keeps oil prices up. The way to do that is to help OPEC limit the amount of liquid fuel available.
Every dollar added to the price of oil weakens America and strengthens her enemies.
The Soviet Union used the exploitation of workers under capitalism as an agitational issue to subvert Western democracies even as it practiced slave labor at home.
Carbon is the stuff of life, and it's the stuff of everything used by human society. All of our materials are made of carbon or of substances, such as steel or glass, which are produced through the utilization of carbon.
Starting as a few bands of hunter-gatherers, humanity expanded the food resources afforded by the land a thousandfold through the development of agriculture.
The bedrock foundation of any rational immigration policy should be to benefit America rather than benefiting potential or existing immigrants, or any other specific group, whether favorable or antagonistic to them.
No one can prevent hurricanes, but prosperous communities are much better able to withstand them than poor ones.
The EPA code needs to set forth a clear, regular, and rational system of penalties for violations of its code, with the amount of the penalty set in proportion to the amount of pollutant released by a given defendant, and no penalties imposed in the absence of any pollutant released.
As one of its first acts after coming into existence, the EPA banned the vital pesticide DDT.
In addition to virtually banning methanol outright, the EPA has created regulations to prevent cars from being modified by small businesses to optimize their performance, including through the use of methanol.
Through our CO2 emissions, we are making the earth a more fertile world.
By enriching the carbon-dioxide content of the atmosphere from its impoverished pre-industrial levels, human beings have increased the productivity of the entire biosphere - so much so that roughly one out of every seven living things on the planet owes its existence to the marvelous improvement in nature that humans have effected.
In the 1940s, the petroleum business was an American game, and it was enormously to our advantage that the world ran on oil.
If the auto companies were free agents, they would act to break the fuel monopoly that is so damaging to their own interests and those of their customers. But they are not, and so they won't.
Mars is key to humanity's future in space. It is the closest planet that has all the resources needed to support life and technological civilization. Its complexity uniquely demands the skills of human explorers, who will pave the way for human settlers.
The U.S. federal government may be going broke, but it's not because of NASA.
When people have their own money at stake, it's a lot easier to find and settle on practical, no-nonsense solutions to engineering problems than is ever the case in the complex and endless deliberations of a government bureaucracy.
The pro-American policy is the one that forces oil prices down. The way to do this is to flood the world market with liquid fuel from every source possible.
Europe certainly needs a genuine conservative movement to combat the creeping bureaucratic collectivism that is stifling the human potential of the Continent.
Federal lawmakers need to change the rules so that vehicles converted to use new fuels can be put on the road; the only restriction should be that they pass the same standard state tests that all other cars do.
The relationship between carbon consumption and human well-being is causal, not coincidental.
America is a country defined by a set of ideas, and when people choose to accept those ideas, they should be able to become Americans, as fully so as any - and perhaps more so than most - regardless of how recently they or their ancestors arrived upon our shores. This is the true American tradition, which as conservatives we must defend.
Some conservatives say that whether it's popular or unpopular, imposing strict limits on immigration is the right thing to do, and it must be defended.
Weather systems are natural heat engines, and like all other heat engines, both natural and artificial, they are driven not by temperature per se, but by differences in temperature between one location and another.
The EPA must be forbidden to seize or destroy the property of any person until and unless such person has been found guilty of a crime in a court of law.
The EPA could act to open the transportation-fuel market to vigorous competition from natural gas as well as coal, biomass, and trash, by legalizing methanol. This would force oil prices down, expand the economy, and create millions of jobs.
It should be noted that the EPA's banning of methanol is categorically absurd from the point of view of environmental protection.
Global warming would increase the rate of evaporation from the oceans. This would increase rainfall worldwide. In addition, global warming would lengthen the growing season, thereby increasing still further the bounty of both agriculture and nature.
We need to drastically reduce the importance of the petroleum game itself by enacting flex-fuel-vehicle legislation that will open the transportation market to fuels derived from non-petroleum sources.
As I explain at some length in my book 'Energy Victory,' during World War II, the American strength in oil production was a decisive advantage for the Allies. Airplanes, ships, and tanks all ran on oil, and we controlled the supply.
The largest automobile company in the world is Volkswagen. Who owns it? The answer is the government of Qatar.
Ideas have consequences.
The American people want and deserve a space program truly worthy of a nation of pioneers.
In August 1994, I was invited to have dinner with House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich. At that time, I was a senior engineer working for Martin Marietta Astronautics in Denver, where I had been responsible for inventing a new plan called 'Mars Direct.'
Every dollar cut from the price of oil weakens the enemies of freedom and strengthens America.
In their efforts to discredit human freedom, the Putinites denounce the sins that may occur under the reign of liberty with the same ardor, the same sincerity, and the same purpose that animated their Soviet forebears.
