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Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper: How Innovation Keeps Proving the Catastrophists Wrong

15
Thursday May 2014

Speakers

Robert Bryce Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute

In the face of today’s environmental and economic challenges, doomsayers preach that the only way to stave off disaster is for humans to reverse course: to de-industrialize, re-localize, ban the use of modern energy sources, and forswear prosperity. But in this provocative and optimistic rebuke to the catastrophists, Robert Bryce, who has been with the Manhattan Institute since 2010, shows how innovation and the inexorable human desire to make things Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper is providing consumers with cheaper and more abundant energy. It is also giving us faster computing, lighter vehicles, and myriad other goods and services. That same desire for Smaller Faster is fostering unprecedented prosperity, greater liberty, and yes, better environmental protection.

Utilizing on-the-ground reporting from Ottawa to Panama City, and Pittsburgh to Bakersfield, Bryce shows how we have,for centuries, been pushing for smaller, faster solutions to our problems. From the vacuum tube, mass-produced fertilizer, and the printing press to mobile phones, nanotech, and advanced drill rigs, Bryce demonstrates how cutting-edge companies and breakthrough technologies have created a world in which people are living longer, freer, healthier lives than at any time in human history.

212-599-7000

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