The so-called “all-of-the-above” Energy Policy was that of the Obama Admin. Shortly after leaving office in 2017, Obama himself boasted that on his watch, US had become a net exporter of Petroleum. It was only w Biden Admin that you got this talk of an “existential crisis” brought about by Fossil Fuels and an urgent need to get rid of them entirely. Biden Admin moved on this from Day One, hobbling exploration, production, refining and transportation/storage. U.S. has continued to set records on Oil and Gas production despite, not because of Biden Admin policies. More recently, Energy Sec Gramholm has moved to limit, not expand LNG exports, which would be a big boost to Putin and other unsavory characters. Harris is moving toward the center rhetorically, but Biden Admin still seems firmly committed to averting an “existential crisis” by eliminating Fossil Fuels ASAP. Only Wind, Solar and EVs are supported. Why haven’t they pressed NYState to eliminate its fracking ban?
Wow! I see nothing at all in VP Harris’s remarks that come anywhere close to forecasting that current policies will lead to “incredible technological gains”. Nearly all the money from the IRA goes toward wind, solar and batteries. I have yet to see a credible argument that those 3 elements can get us to net-zero. At first, I thought that your 2x2 matrix was clever, but the view that world energy use won’t grow is so unrealistic that it doesn’t deserve mention. What does deserve mention is the view that the doom and gloom scenarios won’t happen, and that we will survive through adaptation and resilience. Also, your view that the Democrats now embrace “all of the above” is just plain wrong. Both of their proposed nominees to the NRC are obstructionists to much needed regulatory reform for nuclear. Finally, I commend to the readers a recent conversation between Mark Mills and Steve Koonin on Youtube that is relevant to this topic - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0F-P6cYS3Q
Koonin's comments about assigning blame for the ludicrous and destructive initiatives around Netzero and climate alarmism are spot on. He first calls out the scientists who limit their integrity to the rigorousness of their scientific studies and their papers but fail to call BS when the media and politicians mischaracterize their results.
Recently Roger offered the pages of his Substack "The Honest Broker" to these scientists as a venue to publicize the misuse of their results. Total silence so far as I can tell.
I have to disagree on one point. I do not believe the Realists (me) dismiss the Impact leg of the stool, but we do think the climate impacts of CO2 are negligible to the point where we cannot really even measure the impact. We do understand the Impact of wasting vast amounts of national wealth on net zero folly. We are better to use the fossil fuels widely and encourage their use not only to mitigate any marginal impacts from natural climate change but to improve human flourishing. The more productive capacity (including GDP growth) we get from all of humanity, the more problems we can solve, including long term energy security, poverty, food security, health care, child care etc..
The world experienced its highest GDP growth in 2021 since 1973, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine started in 2022, so the world demand for oil and gas would have been elevated during the Biden administration. The blowout Democratic spending that caused inflation also contributed to elevated energy demand in the US. Hence elevated oil prices during the Biden administration.
So regardless of the headwinds and obstacles erected by Democratic governors and by the Biden administration, the elevated prices motivated our domestic oil and gas industry to increase output.
The Biden administration was clearly aware of the electoral consequences of high energy prices, but its response seemed schizophrenic. It would bend the rules to allow the bad boys Venezuela and Iran to pump more oil, set a price target on Russian oil to allow it to continue exporting, and told Ukraine not to target Russian oil facilities. At the same time his administration bowed to the many demands, at least rhetorically, of his very influential progressive left wing to attack the oil industry.
So it’s possible to have high prices and high output over the short run period of mid-2021 to mid-2024, while if you average production over the four years of the Trump administration you’ll be including the pandemic year 2020 when oil production collapsed.
Also, I think it’s likely than any fossil fuel restraining effects from Democratic policies, state and federal, will emerge over future years and be harder to clearly identify back to specific polices. My impression is that so far most of the damage to the production and use of fossil fuels has been done by state restrictions on drilling, pipelines and refining, not the federal government.
Any serious discussion on the impact of the Democrat’s position on energy has to account for the fact that Biden or Harris are not alone, they are part of a Democratic establishment that has permeated the branches of government. Harris doesn’t need to promise a ban of fracking and endanger her election; decisions by activist judges on environmental technicalities can shut down large segments of the oil and gas industry, as it has been recently threatened for Gulf of Mexico production. The activists will be satisfied , while Harris has “plausible deniability” for her sudden claims to moderation.
As a subscriber, I feel the need for a clarification. As a scientist who got his PhD in the US, I think Mr. Pielke severely overestimates the integrity and reliability of scientists publishing on climate change,as well as the value of the peer review system, while underestimating the tremendous political pressure that can extinguish easily the career of a researcher who doesn’t walk the line on a topic that has transitioned from science to ideology and now to pseudo-religion.
Therefore, I trust much less the results of the IPCC than Mr. Pielke does, but I highly value (and therefore subscribe to THB) because he does an excellent job of exposing how the mainstream media, who still forges much of the public opinion, and the politicians, who lately take economy-shattering decisions, do not actually respect the conclusions of the IPCC, while pretending to base their opinions on the “scientific consensus”.
However, Mr. Pielke’s scientific skills seem to be of little use in understanding politics in the Age of Absurdity. The notion that reason, economic reality and national interest should be overall guiding politicians has indeed worked for a long time but now it seems completely outdated. Mr. Pielke’s forays into politics, including this article, display a deadly dose of naivity. That may honor his natural honesty, but the lack of understanding for the unfortunate times we’re living through severely diminishes the value of his articles. To put it bluntly, I already have a subscription to New York Times, and I’m on the verge of cancelling it. I don’t need more of the same.
Lest somebody would imagine this is a partisan rant, let me be clear that I don’t see a significantly better alternative to Kamala Harris and her pre-election sudden and highly dubious conversion to realism. I doubt that somebody who cares most about the size of “his crowds” will be able to formulate and implement an adequate energy policy. We are stuck between a rock and a hard place, but we don’t need to stuck our heads in the sand.
This article shows a stunning amount of naivety. Would Roger consider the possibility that… just maybe… Kamala Harris is simply lying in order to get past the little bump in the road called election, and after it she will continue to pander to activists? Would Roger consider the idea that things have drastically changed since 2020? Politicians have talked about “doing something” about climate change for more than two decades, but they would always go back to being realistic, because they fully understood that the public does not want much more expensive and unreliable energy, de-industrialization and threats to energy security in a world reverting to Cold War. Everything changed with the pandemic, and the elites now believe that they can ram anything they want down the throat of the public - endless trillions to reduce Earth’s temperature as if it’s driven by a thermostat, mandates on what cars should be produced and bought, censorship on anybody who disagrees. This is how we’ve ended by seeing a supposedly “moderate”, “unifying” and “old school” politician like Joe Biden becoming the standard bearer of extremist leftists. The illusion that reality and national interest tempers ideology has been broken into shards when Biden has, for instance, declared effectively a ban on new LNG projects.
This article proves that scientists, especially honest ones, can be abysmally bad at politics, particularly the new kind, dominated by extremist activists.
The White House graphic at the end of your post entitled Average Monthly U.S. Energy Production is a typical example of visual communication designed to mislead. At first glance it appears to show that energy production under the Biden administration is about twice that under Trump. However, a close examination of the (deliberately small?) numerical scale at the right hand side shows the difference to be only about 7 to 8 percent. Moreover, since energy production projects typically take several year to bring to fruition, this increase was most likely initiated under Trump.
And we wonder why utterances from politicians are taken with a very large pinch of salt?
It is disappointing to find any liberals in any box but the Eco modernist. But I support that merely reflects not understanding the relative low deadweight loss of taxing net CO@ and methane emissions.
Roger, I think your idea of accountability for campaign promises is a great one. How could it be done? Maybe find a billionaire or foundation to fund “the federal accountability project” with a bipartisan board of directors. A website that keeps track. Fun to imagine.
“I have tried to make sense of the Democrats remarkable turn towards embracing fracking and fossil fuels.”
Much more of this type of analysis and i will have support elsewhere. There is not a single example of the current administration aiding, supporting, accelerating etc an actual FF project. Words spoken in stumping for political office carry no weight
I think the spectrum of low and more energy that appear on the x-axis can be explained differently. I am not talking about how the quadrants are labeled, just the more/less energy spectrum. The observation in this post draws polar opposites, but I can see some truths (and incorrect things) in both.
I would hypothesize those in the upper left are versed in climate policy or public health/see progress/use universal metrics of human well-being/technology trends to say everything is getting better (good to use more) whereas the upper right are people that are versed in very local issues related to extractive industries/see severe exploitation of natural resources and people, deforestation/land use change or biodiversity loss/and use local observations to arrive at the conclusion things are getting worse (need to use less). This is why I think the conclusions drawn in the descriptions do not reflect the scholarship I am familiar that might be sympathetic to ecomod/degrowth, more/less. I am not talking about folks the make grand theories of degrowth/ecomod (the usual suspects). But people who study topics sympathetic to the idea we need to use more or less energy/natural resources.
Your interesting classification of folk including voters still has the fundamental problem that most of them have been impregnated with the concept of Environment Protection (EP). This dominates their attitudes and hence your classes.
EP has been placed too high in the priority list of best ways to spend scarce funds. Even politicians are indoctrinated, example here if you treat indigenous matters as akin to EPA involvement.
When the EPA claims a success from its intervention, there is seldom a study to show if the remedy would have happened routinely in any case - and at lower cost to all.
Example. In my career we found a dozen new mines here in Australia and operated some more, including sensitive, world scale ones like beach sands for heavy minerals and others for uranium. We were not lacking plans for rehabilitation that would be done at a time when the internal funds were generated to allow the work. Historically, the EPA here arrived in white knight costume and proceeded to set timetables with threats. Around 1990 we tested this prioritising with a Victorian court case and won, with costs. However, our EPA continued on its path of seeking dominance, so today we cannot start a new mine without EPA approval. If it is much the same in the US, then I am suggesting that the role of the EPA is unbalanced. For many projects with a green tint, the remedy is too large and expensive in relation to the problem demonstrated.
Industrial development has long had a history of outside influence. A generation or two ago religion affected timetables, for example no work on Sundays. No feasible harm came when work went round the clock. I am further suggesting that no real harm will be done when the EPAs of the world are sidelined. There should be conscious, continuing effort to sideline them through public education about their harm. That is, the harm that comes from brainwashing people to believe that EP should be a front of mind when in reality it is a self-promoted bit player.
In my (experienced) opinion, we need active effort to do away with the concept and existence of EP bodies in articles like yours.
Here is what an absolutely principled leftist sounds like. Matt hasn’t announced his voting intentions and I doubt he will, but it’s clear he’s conflicted, this guy who wrote Insane Clown President.
The so-called “all-of-the-above” Energy Policy was that of the Obama Admin. Shortly after leaving office in 2017, Obama himself boasted that on his watch, US had become a net exporter of Petroleum. It was only w Biden Admin that you got this talk of an “existential crisis” brought about by Fossil Fuels and an urgent need to get rid of them entirely. Biden Admin moved on this from Day One, hobbling exploration, production, refining and transportation/storage. U.S. has continued to set records on Oil and Gas production despite, not because of Biden Admin policies. More recently, Energy Sec Gramholm has moved to limit, not expand LNG exports, which would be a big boost to Putin and other unsavory characters. Harris is moving toward the center rhetorically, but Biden Admin still seems firmly committed to averting an “existential crisis” by eliminating Fossil Fuels ASAP. Only Wind, Solar and EVs are supported. Why haven’t they pressed NYState to eliminate its fracking ban?
Wow! I see nothing at all in VP Harris’s remarks that come anywhere close to forecasting that current policies will lead to “incredible technological gains”. Nearly all the money from the IRA goes toward wind, solar and batteries. I have yet to see a credible argument that those 3 elements can get us to net-zero. At first, I thought that your 2x2 matrix was clever, but the view that world energy use won’t grow is so unrealistic that it doesn’t deserve mention. What does deserve mention is the view that the doom and gloom scenarios won’t happen, and that we will survive through adaptation and resilience. Also, your view that the Democrats now embrace “all of the above” is just plain wrong. Both of their proposed nominees to the NRC are obstructionists to much needed regulatory reform for nuclear. Finally, I commend to the readers a recent conversation between Mark Mills and Steve Koonin on Youtube that is relevant to this topic - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0F-P6cYS3Q
Koonin's comments about assigning blame for the ludicrous and destructive initiatives around Netzero and climate alarmism are spot on. He first calls out the scientists who limit their integrity to the rigorousness of their scientific studies and their papers but fail to call BS when the media and politicians mischaracterize their results.
Recently Roger offered the pages of his Substack "The Honest Broker" to these scientists as a venue to publicize the misuse of their results. Total silence so far as I can tell.
Koonin and Mills make a great 1-2 punch. Great video.
I have to disagree on one point. I do not believe the Realists (me) dismiss the Impact leg of the stool, but we do think the climate impacts of CO2 are negligible to the point where we cannot really even measure the impact. We do understand the Impact of wasting vast amounts of national wealth on net zero folly. We are better to use the fossil fuels widely and encourage their use not only to mitigate any marginal impacts from natural climate change but to improve human flourishing. The more productive capacity (including GDP growth) we get from all of humanity, the more problems we can solve, including long term energy security, poverty, food security, health care, child care etc..
The world experienced its highest GDP growth in 2021 since 1973, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine started in 2022, so the world demand for oil and gas would have been elevated during the Biden administration. The blowout Democratic spending that caused inflation also contributed to elevated energy demand in the US. Hence elevated oil prices during the Biden administration.
So regardless of the headwinds and obstacles erected by Democratic governors and by the Biden administration, the elevated prices motivated our domestic oil and gas industry to increase output.
The Biden administration was clearly aware of the electoral consequences of high energy prices, but its response seemed schizophrenic. It would bend the rules to allow the bad boys Venezuela and Iran to pump more oil, set a price target on Russian oil to allow it to continue exporting, and told Ukraine not to target Russian oil facilities. At the same time his administration bowed to the many demands, at least rhetorically, of his very influential progressive left wing to attack the oil industry.
So it’s possible to have high prices and high output over the short run period of mid-2021 to mid-2024, while if you average production over the four years of the Trump administration you’ll be including the pandemic year 2020 when oil production collapsed.
Also, I think it’s likely than any fossil fuel restraining effects from Democratic policies, state and federal, will emerge over future years and be harder to clearly identify back to specific polices. My impression is that so far most of the damage to the production and use of fossil fuels has been done by state restrictions on drilling, pipelines and refining, not the federal government.
Any serious discussion on the impact of the Democrat’s position on energy has to account for the fact that Biden or Harris are not alone, they are part of a Democratic establishment that has permeated the branches of government. Harris doesn’t need to promise a ban of fracking and endanger her election; decisions by activist judges on environmental technicalities can shut down large segments of the oil and gas industry, as it has been recently threatened for Gulf of Mexico production. The activists will be satisfied , while Harris has “plausible deniability” for her sudden claims to moderation.
As a subscriber, I feel the need for a clarification. As a scientist who got his PhD in the US, I think Mr. Pielke severely overestimates the integrity and reliability of scientists publishing on climate change,as well as the value of the peer review system, while underestimating the tremendous political pressure that can extinguish easily the career of a researcher who doesn’t walk the line on a topic that has transitioned from science to ideology and now to pseudo-religion.
Therefore, I trust much less the results of the IPCC than Mr. Pielke does, but I highly value (and therefore subscribe to THB) because he does an excellent job of exposing how the mainstream media, who still forges much of the public opinion, and the politicians, who lately take economy-shattering decisions, do not actually respect the conclusions of the IPCC, while pretending to base their opinions on the “scientific consensus”.
However, Mr. Pielke’s scientific skills seem to be of little use in understanding politics in the Age of Absurdity. The notion that reason, economic reality and national interest should be overall guiding politicians has indeed worked for a long time but now it seems completely outdated. Mr. Pielke’s forays into politics, including this article, display a deadly dose of naivity. That may honor his natural honesty, but the lack of understanding for the unfortunate times we’re living through severely diminishes the value of his articles. To put it bluntly, I already have a subscription to New York Times, and I’m on the verge of cancelling it. I don’t need more of the same.
Lest somebody would imagine this is a partisan rant, let me be clear that I don’t see a significantly better alternative to Kamala Harris and her pre-election sudden and highly dubious conversion to realism. I doubt that somebody who cares most about the size of “his crowds” will be able to formulate and implement an adequate energy policy. We are stuck between a rock and a hard place, but we don’t need to stuck our heads in the sand.
This article shows a stunning amount of naivety. Would Roger consider the possibility that… just maybe… Kamala Harris is simply lying in order to get past the little bump in the road called election, and after it she will continue to pander to activists? Would Roger consider the idea that things have drastically changed since 2020? Politicians have talked about “doing something” about climate change for more than two decades, but they would always go back to being realistic, because they fully understood that the public does not want much more expensive and unreliable energy, de-industrialization and threats to energy security in a world reverting to Cold War. Everything changed with the pandemic, and the elites now believe that they can ram anything they want down the throat of the public - endless trillions to reduce Earth’s temperature as if it’s driven by a thermostat, mandates on what cars should be produced and bought, censorship on anybody who disagrees. This is how we’ve ended by seeing a supposedly “moderate”, “unifying” and “old school” politician like Joe Biden becoming the standard bearer of extremist leftists. The illusion that reality and national interest tempers ideology has been broken into shards when Biden has, for instance, declared effectively a ban on new LNG projects.
This article proves that scientists, especially honest ones, can be abysmally bad at politics, particularly the new kind, dominated by extremist activists.
So both parties are about getting votes and raising money. What's new here?
The White House graphic at the end of your post entitled Average Monthly U.S. Energy Production is a typical example of visual communication designed to mislead. At first glance it appears to show that energy production under the Biden administration is about twice that under Trump. However, a close examination of the (deliberately small?) numerical scale at the right hand side shows the difference to be only about 7 to 8 percent. Moreover, since energy production projects typically take several year to bring to fruition, this increase was most likely initiated under Trump.
And we wonder why utterances from politicians are taken with a very large pinch of salt?
It is disappointing to find any liberals in any box but the Eco modernist. But I support that merely reflects not understanding the relative low deadweight loss of taxing net CO@ and methane emissions.
Roger, I think your idea of accountability for campaign promises is a great one. How could it be done? Maybe find a billionaire or foundation to fund “the federal accountability project” with a bipartisan board of directors. A website that keeps track. Fun to imagine.
“I have tried to make sense of the Democrats remarkable turn towards embracing fracking and fossil fuels.”
Much more of this type of analysis and i will have support elsewhere. There is not a single example of the current administration aiding, supporting, accelerating etc an actual FF project. Words spoken in stumping for political office carry no weight
I think the spectrum of low and more energy that appear on the x-axis can be explained differently. I am not talking about how the quadrants are labeled, just the more/less energy spectrum. The observation in this post draws polar opposites, but I can see some truths (and incorrect things) in both.
I would hypothesize those in the upper left are versed in climate policy or public health/see progress/use universal metrics of human well-being/technology trends to say everything is getting better (good to use more) whereas the upper right are people that are versed in very local issues related to extractive industries/see severe exploitation of natural resources and people, deforestation/land use change or biodiversity loss/and use local observations to arrive at the conclusion things are getting worse (need to use less). This is why I think the conclusions drawn in the descriptions do not reflect the scholarship I am familiar that might be sympathetic to ecomod/degrowth, more/less. I am not talking about folks the make grand theories of degrowth/ecomod (the usual suspects). But people who study topics sympathetic to the idea we need to use more or less energy/natural resources.
Roger,
Your interesting classification of folk including voters still has the fundamental problem that most of them have been impregnated with the concept of Environment Protection (EP). This dominates their attitudes and hence your classes.
EP has been placed too high in the priority list of best ways to spend scarce funds. Even politicians are indoctrinated, example here if you treat indigenous matters as akin to EPA involvement.
When the EPA claims a success from its intervention, there is seldom a study to show if the remedy would have happened routinely in any case - and at lower cost to all.
Example. In my career we found a dozen new mines here in Australia and operated some more, including sensitive, world scale ones like beach sands for heavy minerals and others for uranium. We were not lacking plans for rehabilitation that would be done at a time when the internal funds were generated to allow the work. Historically, the EPA here arrived in white knight costume and proceeded to set timetables with threats. Around 1990 we tested this prioritising with a Victorian court case and won, with costs. However, our EPA continued on its path of seeking dominance, so today we cannot start a new mine without EPA approval. If it is much the same in the US, then I am suggesting that the role of the EPA is unbalanced. For many projects with a green tint, the remedy is too large and expensive in relation to the problem demonstrated.
Industrial development has long had a history of outside influence. A generation or two ago religion affected timetables, for example no work on Sundays. No feasible harm came when work went round the clock. I am further suggesting that no real harm will be done when the EPAs of the world are sidelined. There should be conscious, continuing effort to sideline them through public education about their harm. That is, the harm that comes from brainwashing people to believe that EP should be a front of mind when in reality it is a self-promoted bit player.
In my (experienced) opinion, we need active effort to do away with the concept and existence of EP bodies in articles like yours.
Geoff S
To me the important question is this: after the election what will Democrats support for energy policy?
Sorry, hard to stop, too much at stake.
Here is what an absolutely principled leftist sounds like. Matt hasn’t announced his voting intentions and I doubt he will, but it’s clear he’s conflicted, this guy who wrote Insane Clown President.
https://www.racket.news/p/beyond-the-law?utm_source=post-banner&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&triedRedirect=true