Happy Oil Day, everybody!

I received this press release from the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights yesterday:

Celebrate Oil Day!

WASHINGTON, D.C., August 26, 2009--Tomorrow, August 27, marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of the oil industry in the United States.

According to Alex Epstein, an analyst with the Ayn Rand Center, “Nearly every item in your life would either not exist or be far more expensive without oil; there is simply no comparable source of practical, portable energy.

“Yet today people increasingly label oil a pollutant that damages rather than enhances our lives and, even worse, an addiction--likening our consumption of oil to a junkie’s self-destructive heroin habit. This is profoundly ignorant, not to mention unfair to the petroleum industry that tirelessly innovates, year after year, to find more oil and extract it more efficiently.

“In previous generations, the birth of the oil industry was celebrated, and deservedly so. Oil has sustained and enhanced billions of lives for more than 150 years by providing superior, affordable, ultra-convenient energy--and is as vital today as ever.

“Today, though, we should be celebrating petroleum and the industry, past and present, that uses it to work miracles in our lives.”

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Mr. Epstein is an analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, focusing on business issues.

Mr. Epstein’s op-eds and letters to the editor have appeared in such publications as the Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Philadelphia Inquirer, Canada’s National Post, and the Washington Times. He is also a contributing writer for “The Objective Standard,” a quarterly journal of culture and politics. Mr. Epstein has been a guest on numerous nationally syndicated radio programs.