In this issue:
- CEO Adam Anderson’s courageous letter gets national attention
- Power Hour: The Physics of Freedom with Professor Adrian Bejan
- New talking points
- Some quick items
CEO Adam Anderson’s courageous letter gets national attention
Last week I praised the CEO of Innovex Downhole Solutions, Adam Anderson, for his courageous open letter to the North Face for refusing to sell oil and gas jackets. Here’s a link to the PDF of the letter (apologies to those of you who had difficulty accessing it last week).
I am happy to see that Adam’s letter is getting national attention, including from Congressman Dan Crenshaw, The Daily Wire, and Snopes.
This Hart Energy story summarizes some of the developments, including this section that I particularly liked (and not only because it mentions me).
“I was flabbergasted by the attention the thing has gotten,” Anderson said. “I’ve gotten feedback from a couple of folks at much larger businesses that said they had the exact same issue with North Face in the last year or two years and they didn’t do anything about it.
“I guess everyone gets themselves wound up in the ESG world and wants to apologize for what we do,” he continued. “It’s a problem. Leaders in our industry have become focused on this idea of what we do is a ‘necessary evil.'”
Anderson also pointed out that he was inspired by the Alex Epstein book “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.”
Let’s keep publicizing this story and keep standing up for what’s right. As Adam is showing, the combination of courage and clarity is a powerful one.
Power Hour: The Physics of Freedom with Professor Adrian Bejan
On this week’s Power Hour I had another interesting discussion with Professor Adrian Bejan. Here’s the description:
On this episode of Power Hour Alex Epstein continues his discussion with physicist Adrian Bejan, of “constructal law” fame, to discuss the central ideas of Bejan’s book Freedom and Evolution.
They cover:
- Professor Bejan’s broad-ranging conception of freedom, including change and movement.
- How freedom of change and movement naturally leads to economies of scale for humans, for other life forms, and for the inanimate.
- How freedom of change and movement naturally leads to hierarchies, for other life forms, and for the inanimate.
- How Bejan explains the continued dominance of the Northeast United States in the university world.
- Why Bejan expects energy use to keep increasing.
- Why Bejan agrees with the moral case for fossil fuels.
- The role of bad ideas in restricting freedom and progress
If you haven’t listened to last week’s episode, I highly recommend listening to it first.
You can watch on YouTube or listen on Apple Podcasts.
New talking points
Here are some new talking points I’ve been sharing on Twitter
and with elected officials who are part of Energy Talking Points on Demand.
Paris Climate Accords
If every nation met their climate commitments under the Paris Climate Accords it would, using mainstream climate models, impact temperatures less than 1 tenth of 1 degree F. https://www.lomborg.com/press-release-research-reveals-negligible-impact-of-paris-climate-promises
Paris Climate Accords economics: The nonpartisan National Economic Research Associates concluded that pursuing the Obama/Biden plan to achieve the Paris Climate Accords would destroy 6.5 million American industrial jobs by 2040.
In 2025, the manufacturing sector alone could potentially lose 440,000 job-equivalents relative to the baseline jobs and about 3.1 million in 2040…the job-equivalents impact for the overall industrial sector could be about…6.5 million in 2040.”
https://www.nera.com/content/dam/nera/publications/2017/170316-NERA-ACCF-Full-Report.pdf
Paris Climate Accords economics: The nonpartisan National Economic Research Associates concluded that pursuing the Obama/Biden plan to achieve the Paris Climate Accords would cause rising economic damage reaching $2 trillion a year—about $15,000 a household—by 2040.
“The losses become larger in the long run as the ‘mid-term’ deep decarbonization target constrains the economy significantly….about 6% of its GDP on average between 2034 and 2040 amounting to a loss of greater than $2 trillion annually…”
https://www.nera.com/content/dam/nera/publications/2017/170316-NERA-ACCF-Full-Report.pdf
If you want to know what standard of living the Paris Agreement would bring about, consider that one of only two countries Climate Action Tracker considers “1.5 C Paris Agreement Compatible” is The Gambia, which is desperately poor and in need of low-cost, reliable fossil fuels.
Fracking on federal lands
Calls for a fracking ban on federal lands treat “federal lands” as one giant, scenic park that must be undeveloped. This is wildly inaccurate. Federal lands include 10% of US surface area, along with 30% of underground minerals. Development is morally and legally required.
https://www.blm.gov/about/our-mission
The Bureau of Land Management’s mission statement includes sustaining the “productivity of public lands” for “use.” The BLM website is clear: “Congress tasked the BLM with a mandate of managing public lands for a variety of uses such as energy development…”
https://www.blm.gov/about/our-mission
The Bureau of Land Management is legally and morally required to facilitate safe and beneficial forms of development on the massive surface and underground areas it controls. Fracking definitely qualifies. energytalkingpoints.com/fracking
Fossil Fuels and COVID-19 Vaccines
In order to be effective, Pfizer’s new vaccine must be kept continuously at -94 degrees F. Who wants theirs refrigerated in a wind-powered freezer?
Bad Terminology: “climate hawk”
Using the term “climate hawk” to describe advocates of expensive, unreliable energy like Janet Yellen is absurd. Low-cost, reliable energy is essential to mastering our naturally dynamic and dangerous clime. It has driven the climate death rate down by 98% over the past century.
Opponents of fossil fuels like Janet Yellen are not “climate hawks,” they’re “climate doves.” They think that if we just aspire to not impact the climate that the climate will somehow be nice to us. Real “climate hawks” advocate the energy and industry needed to *master* climate.
Some quick items
- My debate with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is finally in a prominent place on YouTube. Long story, but please share this link. I think it’s my best debate overall.
- Climate scientist Judith Curry mentioned my work in her article “The blame game.“
- I was interviewed two weeks ago on the Yaron Brook Show on “The Great Reset.”
One final note this week:
In this story about Congresswoman-elect Lauren Boebert she mentions me and the messaging help I give to participants in Energy Talking Points on Demand.
“There certainly is uranium that we could work to extract, and I would love to be a part of that. In fact, I have been having conversations with Alex Epstein, and if you don’t know who he is, he wrote the book, ‘The Moral Case For Fossil Fuels,’ and nuclear is something that he discusses a lot.
This is something that’s always frustrated me when we hear about reducing CO2 emissions or being carbonless by 2050. It’s just very disingenuous to me, because there’s no opportunity to explore using uranium to create nuclear energy, which we know is the cleanest form of energy. It’s even hard to get something as simple as hydro electricity classified as a renewable.
Most of the work I do with Energy Talking Points on Demand will inevitably be behind the scenes, but I expect mentions like this will become more frequent as I continue to work with elected officials to give them the best pro-energy, pro-freedom messaging.
So please continue to refer any elected officials you know to EnergyTalkingPointsOnDemand.com and anyone interested in energy, environment, and climate to EnergyTalkingPoints.com.
Thanks to all the Accelerators who have helped support our research and development and promotional efforts this year. Without that support my Energy Talking Points work would not be nearly as far along and fast-growing as it is.
To Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Energy,
Alex