For years, my friends and I in the oil and natural gas industry have applauded Chris Wright’s leadership in articulating the huge benefits of fossil fuels to humanity, the insanity of a quick “energy transition” and realistic approaches to climate change. Well now it’s time to show our leadership as well and support the Trump administration as it seeks to reverse the very damaging policies Energy Secretary Wright has been standing up to for years.
The Department of Energy (DOE) recently released a scientific analysis of the impacts of GHGs on the climate and is taking public comment. The Federal Register notice has Wright’s fingerprints all over it, as anyone who’s read his annual Bettering Human Lives reports would recognize. Whereas the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) review of the endangerment finding (see below) adheres to the legal and regulatory issues surrounding the endangerment finding, the DOE report takes on the science.
DOE’s report forces the climate industrial complex to engage. For years, they’ve refused to “debate” those who have challenged the climate change orthodoxy and have labeled them as deniers or skeptics, as if skepticism isn’t a fundamental component of science. The five authors of the report have for years provided countervailing analysis, raising concerns with the body of climate science and how it’s portrayed to the public. If they’re wrong, then engage and show why.
Others such as Bjorn Lomborg and Roger Pielke, Jr., who have never denied that climate change is a huge issue, are labeled and shunned as deniers simply because they dig through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports and highlight what the scientific studies actually say. Unlike the media gobbling up the political spin, they reveal the best available science used in the IPCC reports regarding weather events and economic impact, for example. Lomborg, Pielke, and the five authors of the DOE report have long been ostracized because they don’t adhere to the climate orthodoxy and alarmism.
In conjunction with DOE’s review, EPA has embarked on a reconsideration of the 2009 Endangerment Finding, which forms the basis for all subsequent regulation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and climate change since. The review is a bold step by Administrator Lee Zeldin to reconsider over $1 trillion worth of regulatory cost that has emanated since, with little environmental benefit to show. EPA is reconsidering whether GHGs from vehicles contribute significantly to air pollution that endangers public health. See this Texas Public Policy Foundation piece, which succinctly explains how a proper endangerment finding would have to show that U.S. GHG emissions contribute significantly to overall global temperatures in order to be subject to the Clean Air Act.
Secretary Wright and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin are forcing a real debate. Those who have refused to engage must do so now or the comment periods will close and U.S. climate policy will be shaped without them. Should be fascinating.
Unfortunately, in the “What They’re Saying” EPA release, almost no industry groups voiced support for reconsidering the endangerment finding, other than the Specialty Equipment Market Association and I. A few industry groups expressed support for proposing to repeal the tailpipe emissions standards designed to force a switch from the internal combustion engine to electric vehicles, but that’s noncontroversial and bipartisan. I encourage the oil and natural gas industry to engage and am available to help in that regard. Besides providing comments by September 2nd and September 15th, respectively, there are virtual public hearings on August 19th and 20th. The industry has followed Chris Wright’s leadership for years. Now is the time to support him in this important endeavor.
