In this issue:
- My Take on Last Night’s Debate
- Overcoming a Blackout to Give a Speech About Reliable Energy
- The Speech That Was Supposed to Be a Debate With Michael Mann
- Quick Updates
My Take on Last Night’s Debate
Here’s my quick take on last night’s debate. Pence did a much better job emphasizing energy issues and explaining energy issues than Trump did in the first debate.
Rumor has it that EnergyTalkingPoints.com might have helped.
In any case, there is still a lot of room to improve.
For example:
- Give much more direct and powerful answers to questions about climate. Distinguish between climate change and climate crisis, talk about how climate-related deaths are at an all-time low due to adaptation, and explain how the US destroying our economy with unreliable energy is not going to lower global emissions–just shift them to the countries that use fossil fuels to outcompete us.
- Bring up the California blackouts and how they were caused by a mini-mini-Biden plan. It’s crazy that any pro-energy person is not bringing up the California blackouts all the time.
- Pin the California wildfires on the green movement’s opposition to active forest management, including controlled burns and logging.
Thanks to everyone who has been sharing EnergyTalkingPoints.com with candidates and fellow citizens. Keep it up! Thanks also to the Accelerators who help make EnergyTalkingPoints.com possible.
Overcoming a Blackout to Give a Speech About Reliable Energy
Last Thursday, 45 minutes before my scheduled speech to the Southern Gas Association (SGA), Laguna Beach had a blackout–one of several we’ve had in the last two weeks.
As someone who has been talking about the risks of “green blackouts” for over a decade, and been warning the nation not to follow California’s electricity example, this was poignant.
Fortunately, the SGA was very adaptable and I was able to give my speech with the low bandwidth of my cell phone’s hotspot connection.
Here’s what Suzanne Ogle, CEO of the SGA, had to say about the event.
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And check out this graphic she posted in the same post about being a climate thinker.
I’m proud to be influencing industry communications in this direction.
We need to keep talking about the blackouts in California and what they tell us about unreliable energy.
In the first Presidential debate, Joe Biden talked about how cheap solar and wind are. But as anyone who is experiencing a blackout goes, there are few things more expensive than unreliable electricity.
The Speech That Was Supposed to Be a Debate With Michael Mann
On Tuesday evening I spoke to a social-distancing-limited group of students at Lafayette College as part of their Mill Series of lectures.
This event has been in the making for two years. In 2018 Mill Series director Professor Brandon Van Dyck asked me if I wanted to debate the prominent climate scientist Michael Mann. I immediately accepted. Surprisingly, Mann accepted soon after.
But then he pulled out abruptly without explanation.
In the introduction to my speech, Van Dyck gave a full explanation of what happened.
The video of the event is not available yet but I have shared the audio of the speech on this week’s Power Hour.
Next week I’ll release the video. In my view it’s the best version of my moral case speech yet. In particular I think I gave by far my best explanation to date of “climate mastery.”
Next week I’ll also release the extended Q&A, which is one of my favorite Q&As I’ve ever done.
The next morning I also did a podcast interview with Van Dyck that went more in depth on philosophy than any interview I can remember doing.
Throughout the speech, Q&A, and podcast, I had the thought that many of the points I was able to make were points I could not make, or make as well, even a year ago. The major cause is all the time I’ve been putting into The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels 2.0, including the advisors I’ve brought on to help me make my case far stronger.
I’ve only been able to invest so much time in research and development because of the generosity of Accelerators. Thanks to those of you who have helped. If you’d like to become an Accelerator (or increase your contribution) go here.
You can watch on YouTube or listen on Apple Podcasts.
Quick Updates
- Last week I made an appearance on the One America News Network’s “After Hours” with Alex Salvi. It turns out Salvi had already read my book and watched a lot of videos. (He even pronounced my last name correctly!) The interview focused on the environmental benefits of fossil fuels.
- “Snappy answers to energy questions” and “Snappy answers to climate questions” are now up at EnergyTalkingPoints.com!
- I was recently a guest on the Mineral Rights Podcast. We covered the 2020 elections, the moral case for fossil fuels, and—a great topic I don’t talk about enough—the importance of property rights in energy.
Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter. And please keep sharing EnergyTalkingPoints.com!
To Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Energy,
Alex