No Need to Greenwash: Fossil Fuels Winning (Kudos to Chris Skates, Southern States Energy Board)

“Chris Skates, a top energy advisor to Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, said he figures he helped emit millions of pounds of carbon dioxide in a 30-year electric utility career, adding ‘and I am damn proud of it.’”

– Quoted in Inside Climate News, September 26, 2019.

“Southern State Energy Officials Celebrate Fossil Fuels as World Raises Climate Alarm,” an article is titled in Inside Climate News (September 26, 2019). The subtitle adds:

The message from the industry-supported meeting: Push as much deregulation as possible while Trump is in power and never apologize for promoting oil, gas and coal.

“There was a sense of defiance in the hotel’s meeting rooms,” James Bruggers wrote. The author seems shocked that

[Kentucky Governor Matt] Bevin, a Republican and the host of the meeting, was dismissive of 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, calling the young Swede who has inspired a global climate movement and who spoke at the UN on Monday, “remarkably ill informed.” He and other speakers at the conference tried to cast doubt on mainstream climate science. They said they needed to get their fossil fuel message into the schools to influence children.

Bruggers adds:

Chris Skates, a top energy advisor to Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, said he figures he helped emit millions of pounds of carbon dioxide in a 30-year electric utility career, adding “and I am damn proud of it.”

Bruggers also notes some other highlights from the meeting:

Kentucky lawmaker Jim Gooch, a Republican, talked about cracking down on pipeline protesters. He defended a bill he filed that would make acts of civil disobedience against pipeline operations in Kentucky a felony. It would be like a wave of similar laws passed by other states that critics say block free speech.

“So much of the people who are protesting are so emotional,” Gooch said. “It can get violent. We can’t have that.”

And

Former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt … received a standing ovation at the conference. He said the nation is locked in a debate over “what is true environmentalism?”

“One segment of our country is saying ‘keep it in the ground,’” Pruitt said, in an apparent reference to oil, gas and coal. “That’s prohibition,” he said, and argued there is no language in federal laws to provide for that.

Hurray for Offense, not Defense!

Congratulations are due to the organization and participants of this convention. The intellectual case for carbon dioxide is strong. Politically, climate alarm/forced energy transformation is losing at home and abroad.

The market share of fossil fuels–80 percent in the US and 85 percent globally–remains strong. And expect it to rise to the extent that government mandates and subsidies wane.

Playing offense is the best defense when it comes to free-market climate policy.

There is no need to greenwash. There is reason to wholly reject the so-called Green New Deal. Wind turbines, solar panels (on-grid), electric vehicles, and ethanol (past the oxygenate additive) are no match for what consumers naturally prefer.