In this issue:
- New 2020 talking points on the Joe Biden energy plan
- California’s Energy Nightmare
- Influencing influencers
- Oil and gas professionals reach out to Joe Rogan
New 2020 talking points on the Joe Biden energy plan
Over the last couple months I’ve been working on helping political campaigns with talking points on energy and environmental issues. Starting next week I’ll be releasing these talking points publicly. Here’s a preview. Note that each talking point is tweet-length to make it easy to share.
Talking Points on the Joe Biden Energy Plan
By Alex Epstein
Joe Biden’s energy plan calls for outlawing reliable fossil fuel electricity and mandating unreliable solar and wind electricity. This will not stop CO2 emissions from rising but it will destroy American industry, impoverish American consumers, and jeopardize American security.
Quick summary
- Energy schemes around the world based on “unreliables”—solar and wind—have been driving up electricity costs, harming economies, destroying domestic industries, and harming consumers. Germans pay 3X US electricity prices to get just 1/3 of their electricity from solar and wind.
- Instead of learning from the failures of unreliable energy schemes, the Biden Plan seeks to do far worse by outlawing reliable fossil fuel electricity and forcing Americans to pay over $4 trillion–$15,000 a household–for a solar and wind-based grid that can’t possibly work.
- Joe Biden says that forcing Americans to rely on unreliable solar and wind will create jobs. But making electricity unreliable and unaffordable doesn’t create jobs, it destroys them. Just ask the UK aluminum industry, which “green energy” schemes is driving out of business.
- Joe Biden says that forcing Americans to rely on unreliable solar and wind will help middle-class Americans. But the cost of energy drives the cost of everything. Skyrocketing energy costs will drive skyrocketing food, housing, healthcare, and transportation costs.
- America is already too reliant on unreliable solar and wind. That’s why utilities are already blacking out many of their industrial customers. And why grids in TX and the Northeast are warning of blackouts for everyone if policies don’t change. Biden’s Plan will guarantee blackouts.
- Joe Biden’s support of a ban on fracking, which is required to produce over 60% of American oil and 75% of American natural gas, would destroy millions of jobs and once again make us dangerously dependent on the Middle East and Russia. Do we want to be at the mercy of the likes of Vladimir Putin?
- Joe Biden’s plan to force Americans to use unreliable solar and wind won’t stop global CO2 levels from rising, because China and others won’t be stupid enough to follow suit. The only thing it will bring about is an economic and security crisis in America.
- If Joe Biden and other Democrats want to lower global CO2 emissions, they should stop demonizing and criminalizing reliable, non-carbon nuclear energy and lower-carbon natural gas. Instead, the Biden Plan continues the overregulation of nuclear and supports banning natural gas.
If you know any candidates who would use good energy and environment talking points, forward them this email and encourage them to get in touch with me!
Also, share my Twitter thread on this issue.
California’s Energy Nightmare
On this week’s Power Hour I interview Ron Stein, author of Energy Made Easy and Just Green Electricity, about the decline of California’s energy system. On the show we discuss:
- How much oil California uses and where it comes from.
- The decline of California energy production and the rise of imports from the Middle East.
- Where California’s electricity comes from–hint: a lot of it isn’t from California.
- How California is shutting down 4 reliable power plants with no replacements on the horizon.
- How California’s regressive oil and electricity policies his poor and middle class Californians the hardest.
- How California can change its energy future.
On the podcast I also answer two Accelerator questions: one about “energy privilege” and one about the role of reliable, low-cost energy in fighting oppression. At the end of the second question I discuss how modern, high-powered communication systems are valuable for fighting many kinds of oppression, but how the current social media model is dangerously suppressive of open intellectual debate.
You can watch on YouTube or listen on Apple Podcasts.
Influencing Influencers
A phenomenon that always excites me is when I learn that my work has influenced some other “influencer”–that is, someone with a large following of their own.
One example of this is this week’s Power Hour guest Ron Stein. I didn’t realize until interviewing him that Ron, after having worked for decades in the energy industry, didn’t start writing about energy until reading The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. Now he is writing quite prolifically about energy.
On Twitter last week, influential economist Dr. Saifedean Ammous, author of The Bitcoin Standard, with 80,000 Twitter followers tweeted:
Technology advances by utilizing more energy to serve human needs, saving human time & producing good infinitely better in many ways. If a technology is valuable to people it’ll be worth the extra energy expenditure & more energy can be produced for it.
I highly recommend @AlexEpstein‘s wonderful book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels to get a sober perspective on the importance of modern energy sources, and what our lives would be like without them. This is an excellent recent interview of his: https://t.co/RBQkpAE2uC?amp=1
Several months ago he Tweeted:
The only proven alternatives to hydrocarbons are mass death in winter, mass poverty, immobility & deindustrialization. Until you can survive & thrive for an entire year without consuming any hydrocarbon energy or products, don’t pretend what you have are ‘alternatives’.
I highly recommend @AlexEpstein‘s book The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels for an eye-opening and sobering look at how indispensable hydrocarbons are for our well-being & how delusionally hopeless all the supposed alternatives are. Very different from the usual junk media’s take!
Oil and gas professionals reach out to Joe Rogan
Last week a group of oil and gas professionals released the follower open letter to Joe Rogan–the host of arguably the world’s most popular podcast–to encourage him to have me on his show.
One of the architects of the letter said to encourage readers of this newsletter to:
Join the oil and gas professionals who crafted this letter in encouraging Joe Rogan to invite me on his show”
This can be achieved by posting the letter to social media using the hashtag #JREtalksenergy or by pasting the letter on Joe’s guest request form found on his website.
Here’s the full letter, which I think is very well done.
Mr. Rogan,
I am one of the over 9 million oil and gas professionals in the United States. For well over two decades my contemporaries and I have listened to others from outside our industry lecture the public on who we are and what our products mean for humanity. This campaign has resulted in the complete elimination of our industry’s ability to defend itself from those who oppose us, quickly ‘canceling’ our views and those who hold them, or worse, simply labeling us ‘deniers’, another form of cancellation intended to immediately erode credibility and snuff out any attempt at intelligent debate.
In reality, however, our ranks are comprised of a vast group of educated professionals consisting of nearly every technical and scientific arena known to the modern world including engineering, programming, environmental science, geophysics, chemistry, mathematics, and economics. Beyond our technical demographics, our business is made possible by the millions of operations personnel and construction and manufacturing workers who commit to the daily hard work required to turn the gears of an industry that truly powers every other industry. Our products touch every aspect of modern life on the planet. With fossil fuels we can feed the world, treat disease, mobilize medical care, transverse the oceans and fly through the skies. Moreover, as a result of the ingenuity and grit from America’s energy sector in the past two decades, we have moved from a position of foreign energy dependence to a global energy powerhouse. This domestic energy renaissance has not only driven America’s economy into increased prosperity but has also allowed us to export our product across the world, undoubtedly accelerating developing nations rise from poverty.
Those who oppose us claim, despite all of the scientific and technical acumen that is commonplace in our industry, that we either refuse to believe the science of climate change or, worse, understand it but choose to ignore it in favor of our own self-interest. Of course, these claims could not be further from the truth. In reality, we agree and understand that the consumption of our product, which has increased the carrying capacity of the planet by more than 5 billion people in less than 100 hundred years, has likely contributed in some capacity to the warming trend observed in our global climate. However, we also understand another side to this ethical equation, which has been buried by rhetoric of catastrophism and impending peril; that being simply that the global prosperity created by fossil fuels far exceeds our impact on the environment and more than equips our society to handle it. On the other hand, the call for a deliberate move away from fossil fuels in favor of low energy density “renewable” alternatives is potentially the greatest threat to mankind’s ability to sustain itself and continue its ascendency from poverty since WWII. This is not a political belief, this is physics.
In closing, we are not asking you to personally champion our cause, but we plead with you to allow your listeners to hear our perspective. One of the most educated and thoughtful voices to do this with is Alex Epstein, an individual who has independently developed his perspective based on an objective analysis of the economic and scientific data surrounding the issue. Alex is not a lobbyist, nor do we pay him to spread our message. Rather, he is an individual who has chosen to give his career to this fight because he understands the gravity of the consequences should we move forward with the kind of policies being recommended. You are a strong voice in this country for minority views and honest discussion surrounding polarizing issues, please do not abandon those principles on this topic; invite Alex to have a conversation.
Sincerely,
The Men and Women of the Fossil Fuel Industry
Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter. On a personal note, I am turning 40 this Saturday. While there are many problems in the world right now there has still never been a better time to be alive. I’m grateful to live in an age with so much opportunity and to be able to do work that is stimulating and meaningful to me. Thanks for your continued interest in my work.
Thanks especially to all the Accelerators who are helping me reach as many people as possible. I’m still just getting started.
To Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Energy,
Alex