The Last Optimist

Jan 17 2024 133
The Last Optimist Podcast artwork

The Last Optimist is hosted by Mark P. Mills—author, businessman, physicist, contributing editor to the City Journal, and distinguished senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation—and features discussions about inventing our future. Mark's latest book is “The Cloud Revolution: How The Convergence of Emerging Technologies Will Unleash the Next Economic Boom and a Roaring 2020s.

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Information About Energy is More Critical Than Ever: Time to Reboot the IEA

Jan 17 2024 36 mins  
The International Energy Agency (IEA) is 50 years old this year, created because of the 1973/4 “oil shock” that triggered a global recession. Today’s energy markets and geopolitics are just as vulnerable to similar disruptions, but the IEA has since shifted its mission to advocate for abandoning hydrocarbons, erasing its ability to serve as a credible, unbiased source of the

The Imminent Prospect of a Very Bad Idea: A Carbon Tax

Jan 08 2024 33 mins  
At the end of 2023, Congress had four different pieces of proposed legislation directed at creating a carbon tax; three had bipartisan support. Thus, bookmakers see a rising prospect for some form of carbon tax. We return to unbundling why that’s such a bad idea, and the flaws in claiming that it would unleash “market forces” to create alternatives. For a summary of the state

Chemicals, Climate, Carbon, and a Cri de Coeur for Rational Dialogue

Dec 04 2023 48 mins  
Joining this episode, Peter Huntsman - CEO of a multi-billion-dollar US-based multinational with operations in 30 countries - for a far ranging-conversation about the role and nature of chemicals (used in everything from batteries to Boeings), workplace culture, regulations, energy issues, and the challenges of global competition. Biography of Peter Huntsman, Chairman, CEO, Huntsma

Will Climate Policies Throttle the A.I. Era?

Nov 20 2023 42 mins  
We revisit, with new research, the astonishing energy appetite of artificial intelligence (A.I.), a reality completely absent from the just-released 18,000 word Executive Order on A.I. Yet the Administration's “whole-of-government” pursuit of climate policies is seen everywhere else. Meanwhile, fueling A.I. will propel the world beyond today’s zettabyte of digital traffic int

Hybrid-electric Cars: Faster, Cheaper, Better and Fairer Way to Cut Oil Use

Nov 03 2023 32 mins  
If one feels compelled, and by that, I mean if Congress and state policymakers feel compelled to subsidize ways to reduce the amount of oil used by vehicles on the roads, the facts point to hybrids making far more sense. Sales figures in recent months suggest that consumers think so too.Related to this episode’s topic, to watch or listen to the October 2023 “great debate” ove

Artificial Intelligence and its Energy Appetite

Sep 26 2023 42 mins  
The invention of useful artificial intelligence (AI), epitomized by the hype over ChatGPT, is the latest example of a basic truth about technology: There have always been many more inventions that use energy than those that can produce it. Only a few inventions over history are as energy-hungry as AI; it ranks up there with the invention of the automobile and aircraft.

EVs and the Simplicity Trope

Sep 11 2023 34 mins  
At the core of the belief that EVs inevitably displace conventional cars is the claim that EVs are, inherently, just simpler machines. That means, we’re told, fewer jobs—hence the ostensible reason for the UAW’s anxiety. But the simplicity claim is a canard. EVs entail a complexity swap, not a simplification.Electric Vehicles for Everyone? The Impossible Dream, Manhattan Inst

Harold Hamm, Icon of the Oilfields

Aug 14 2023 41 mins  
We talk with Harold Hamm, founder and former CEO, now Exec Chairman of Continental Resources.Hamm, one of the key pioneers of the American shale revolution, has written a book about his life’s journey and the critical role of the U.S. oil and gas industry.Game Changer: Our Fifty-Year Mission to Secure America's Energy Independence, Harold Hamm, Forefront Books, 2023.

The Impossible Dream of EVs for Everyone: Part 4 of 4 Inconvenient Geopolitics

Aug 08 2023 48 mins  
The refrain, the claim, from EV and green-tech advocates is that EVs and the massive alternative energy subsidies will free us from “our geopolitical adversaries” and the “manipulation of the price of oil.” Instead, supply chain realities show just how profoundly misguided those claims are.Electric Vehicles for Everyone? The Impossible Dream, Manhattan Institute Policy Pape

The Impossible Dream of EVs for Everyone: Part 3 No Salvation from Magic Battery Tech

Aug 01 2023 43 mins  
The ubiquitous clickbait headline about some new battery innovation that “changes everything” is just that; clickbait. The underlying realities of energy physics and electrical engineering determine the usefully foreseeable future and it’s not one with EVs cheaper, better and universal.Electric Vehicles for Everyone? The Impossible Dream, Manhattan Institute Policy Paper, Jul