Executive summary: To achieve our goal of changing the national energy debate by the end of 2016 we are a) recruiting for new outreach talent to work with us full-time and b) building a volunteer Champions Network who are willing to work at least two hours a week between now and the end of the year to help us achieve 4 goals:
- Get our messaging, including the Moral Case for Fossil Fuels and America’s Energy Opportunity, used by dozens of political campaigns this election season–and above all the Presidential campaign.
- Get hundreds of thought leaders to publicly comment on The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.
- Get the moral case for fossil fuels discussed in the mainstream media.
- Build a Twitter following of influencers to change the social media conversation on energy.
If you’re interested in learning more, read on.
The goal of my work is to create, educate, and empower a humanist movement. Our culture has become dominated by an anti-human environmental philosophy whose ideal is to minimize human impact on the world. I want to replace it with a pro-human environmental philosophy whose ideal is to profoundly impact the world so as to maximize human flourishing and human progress.
So far, the focus of that quest has been the realm of energy. Energy is the industry that powers every other industry, the technology that powers every other technology, the resource that expands every other resource—and it is under attack. I have focused above all on the question of fossil fuels because fossil fuels are the most important, vital source of energy now and in the foreseeable future—but bad thinking, based on the anti-human environmental philosophy, has convinced most people that they are a planet-destroying addiction. (See chapters 1 and 9 of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.)
Eventually, and by eventually I mean in the next several years, I want to expand our focus to the many important realms of human progress that are in need of a humanist reorientation—from GMOs to chemicals to mining to aquaculture.
But for now, the mission is to create, educate, and empower a humanist movement in energy—because energy is so important and because if we can figure it out in energy we can figure it out in all the other areas.
To create such a movement comes down to two things:
- We need to create a new caliber of content on energy issues that is profoundly clarifying and profoundly persuasive.
- We need to employ a new caliber of strategy to disseminate that content throughout the culture, particularly to the “influencers”—those who influence hundreds, thousands, or millions of others.
If you’ve followed my work at all, you can guess that area 1, content, is my passion and specialty. I am obsessed with getting clear on issues myself and then clarifying them for others. And over time, the resources I have created (especially The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels) have, by the evidence we have, persuaded many, many people who were previously unpersuadable on these issues. And I have many ideas in R&D that I think will take things do another level, such as ideas such as “visual communication” and “mental environments.”
Area 2, dissemination, is where I have struggled—not, actually, because I am inept at it but because I am good at it and, like many entrepreneurs, I tend to take on projects in areas I am merely good at instead of taking the time to find and recruit people who are great at it. As a result, I spend lots of time on thinking about and implementing innovative ways to distribute our content—which dramatically eats into my time to create content.
From a certain perspective, including a business/financial perspective, everything is going great. 4 and a half years ago when I started CIP, I was an unknown and literally nobody was talking about a moral case for fossil fuels. Even three years ago the number of organizations in the energy industry that had taken an interest in my work was less than 10. Now, we are swamped with speaking engagements and consulting requests, the ideas are mentioned in Congress (I’ll be testifying there next month) and the book is a hit.
If my goal was to become a successful author, I have have achieved it.
But that’s not my goal. My goal is to create a humanist movement that will liberate people’s minds and businesses from toxic environmental ideas and enable them to enjoy life and create value like never before. My goal is to completely change the way people think about energy. By that standard, we’re moving way too slowly.
So we need help. As a movement, we need to do more to share resources (especially the moral case for fossil fuels) with influencers. Mention it on Facebook, on Twitter, hand it to people, send them the free first chapter, whatever).
But as a company, we need to bring on more talent. In particular, we need talented, passionate people in the realm of outreach—someone who can relentlessly reach out to influencers in politics, media, popular culture and expose them to the humanist perspective.
Rather than give a standard job description I’ll give a list of goals of ours that I would like you to help us achieve:
- Get our messaging, including America’s Energy Opportunity, used by dozens of political campaigns this election season.
- Get hundreds of thought leaders to publicly comment on The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.
- Get the moral case for fossil fuels discussed in the mainstream media.
- Build a Twitter following of influencers to change the social media conversation on energy.
Do these sound like goals that you could help with? They will not be easy to achieve—but they will be satisfying and they will be fun.
If you’re interested, email support@industrialprogress.net with the following:
- Resume giving your work background, particularly any experience in the realm of outreach and marketing.
- Any ideas you have about how you’d help us accomplish our goals.
- Any similar goals you’ve helped accomplish in the past.
- Why you want to work with CIP.
If the idea of our mission excites you as something you’d potentially like to work on for a living, I encourage you to reach out, whether you are currently a senior executive or an up-and-comer.
And if you’d like to work with us in a volunteer capacity, see below.
Also: CIP Champions Network
We have many, many talented, passionate, and influential members of our network. From now until the end of the year, I want to build a small Champions Network of volunteers who are willing to commit at least 2 hours a week to strategically targeting influential people and audiences to learn about the humanist approach to energy and energy policy.
Every week we will have a 30 minute call to discuss strategy, promote best-practices, and answer questions.
If you’re interested, email the information requested for job candidates and we’ll get back to you. I plan to cap the group at 20 people so we can be as focused as possible.
To progress,
Alex