As energy champions go, Chris Wright has an important distinction
There are those who understand the issue, and there are those who understand the moral philosophy
President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination for Secretary of Energy, Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright, is a powerful statement that there’s a new sheriff in town.
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Trump’s pick to head the Department of the Interior, is an energy champion, and the management of America’s natural resources will be better off with such a person leading it. But Wright is among a circle of energy champions who understand that the argument for increasing fossil fuel use is not just a political issue. It’s a moral imperative, and Wright hasn’t been afraid to promote that message.
In 2021, Wright trolled outdoor apparel maker The North Face in what has got to be one of the most courageous acts of defiance against the climate crisis narrative I’ve seen. As I explained when I interviewed Wright in 2022 for Cowboy State Daily:
In the summer of 2021, Innovex Downhole Solutions Inc., a competitor of Liberty, wanted to give its employees co-branded apparel from The North Face for Christmas. North Face refused because it didn’t want its brand associated with petroleum companies.
Wright found it peculiar that North Face, a company with very few products that aren’t derived from oil and gas, wouldn’t want to be associated with companies that produce it.
“It’s so ridiculously hypocritical,” Wright told Cowboy State Daily. “I spent 15 years speaking on energy and climate change. I love this discussion and debate, and I think the public in general is just ignorant on it.”
After North Face turned its back on Innovex, Liberty launched a campaign to thank North Face for being such a great customer of the oil and gas industry, which included YouTube videos that went viral and billboards in downtown Denver.
Wright said it took two months to find a billboard company willing to sell him space for the ads.
On top of that clever stunt, the company’s ESG statement actually defends the product they produce, and argues that fossil fuels have a net-positive impact on the world:
This report covers in some detail the profound changes in the human condition — life expectancy, emergence from poverty, nutrition, rising education, and more — brought about by the emergence and spread of hydrocarbon energy. A thriving society must be energized by affordable, reliable, and secure technologies. So far in modern history and for the foreseeable future, hydrocarbons are essential to this goal.
Compare this to Exxon CEO Darren Woods, who told the Wall Street Journal Tuesday that President-elect Donald Trump shouldn’t withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change. Trump had pulled the U.S. out of the agreement in his first term, and President Joe Biden reversed the decision. Trump is expected to reverse the reversal upon taking office.
Woods argued the “stops and starts” are bad for business, because it “creates a lot of uncertainty.” While regulatory uncertainty is a problem for any business, it’s odd Woods would want a stable policy that will require Exxon to either stop producing oil and gas or make its products enormously expensive to use.
Over the past several decades, as well-funded activist groups convinced the world that fossil fuels were destructive, expensive and the cause of all bad weather, oil, gas and coal companies’ public relations strategy was to capitulate to the activists. Either they remained silent, refusing to defend the life-giving value of their product, or they conceded the activists’ claims that fossil fuels are harmful and should be dispensed with, hoping that they would be the last one eaten.
Without these companies standing up for the product they produce, there wasn’t much opposition to climate hysteria. Policies seeking to destroy fossil fuel companies flowed unimpeded, which included massive subsidies to support these allegedly cheaper energy forms. Soon, the oil companies were among the lambs feeding at the net-zero subsidy trough that the wolves kept filling.
Elmer “Bud” Peter Danenberger, an engineer who spent 38 years in the Interior Department's offshore oil and gas program, speculated on his “Bud’s Offshore Energy” blog that Woods’ comments may have been motivated by Exxon’s interest in carbon capture subsidies.
Exxon projected a $4 trillion carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) market by 2050. The company was a primary driver behind the late additions to the 2021 Infrastructure Bill. That bill authorized carbon disposal on the OCS, exempted such disposal from the Ocean Dumping Act, and authorized $2.5 billion for commercial CCS projects.
The outcome of the U.S. election creates a fertile landscape for a philosophical shift away from anti-humanist ideologies that are driving self-destructive energy policies of the West. Woods’ comments in the Journal had me concerned this opportunity would be squandered.
However, oil companies never needed a voter mandate to stop apologizing for being oil companies. Even at the height of climate hysteria, which appears to be in retreat as far as public opinion is concerned, they could have fought back successfully. If they had, the West wouldn’t be so energy illiterate.
Another energy champion who understands the moral case for fossil fuels is Alex Epstein, who articulated the philosophy in his book “The Moral Case For Fossil Fuels,” which was followed up with “Fossil Future.” In my personal opinion, these are the two best books on energy ever written. Like Wright, Epstein is not afraid to defend his positions.
In 2022, Washington Post anti-fossil fuel reporter Maxine Joselow set out to destroy Epstein’s reputation. Epstein’s clear methodology on energy issues makes it very hard to refute his arguments, so Wretched Hive activists like Joselow resort to ad hominem smears.
Documented, a liberal publication that’s very secretive about who funds it, dug up an article that Epstein wrote in college when he served as editor and publisher of a conservative student newspaper. In this article, Epstein wrote that students should be required to take courses on Western civilization, because its values are superior to those of “anti-reason cultures.” These values, Epstein argued, have facilitated greater human improvement than cultures, such as those in Africa.
Locke, Aristotle, and Newton have no equivalents in Africa or Asia, and the advancements in those areas have been almost exclusively due to Western influence. Just compare New York to Chad. No benefit can be gained by focusing an education on anti-reason cultures, their only academic merit lies in contrasting them to Western civilization as models of inferiority.
Epstein argues it’s immoral for developed countries that have grown fat and rich on fossil fuels to deprive undeveloped countries the same opportunity with net-zero policies. It’s something my friend Jusper Machogu, a Kenyan farmer, argues from the perspective of someone who is trying to prosper without access to fossil fuels – an impossible feat.
Joselow and Documented had hoped they could characterize Epstein’s arguments as being about race and thereby make him out to be a white supremacist. Then, they could discredit his arguments about how net zero hurts the poor without actually having to demonstrate his arguments aren’t sound, something of course they can’t do.
Instead of remaining silent in the face of this smear campaign or offering an apology over something he never said, Epstein went on the offensive. He launched a social media campaign against his accusers and demanded that Joselow and Documented apologize to him.
Tomorrow the @washingtonpost plans to "cancel" me and my new book Fossil Future by publishing a 100% slanderous hit-piece labeling me as "racist." Please join me in calling for The Post to spike the piece, fire the "journalist," and publicly apologize.
The level of dishonesty with which the campaign operated is astounding. The idea that some races are superior to others is something Epstein repudiated in other writings, which Joselow and Documented just ignored.
In addition to @washingtonpost owing me an apology and owing the world a commitment to stop smearing, @ItsDocumented owes the same. These “journalists” *deliberately ignored my most prominent college writings*. They did not do “research,” they did scumbag activism.
Keep in mind, this was before Musk took over Twitter. Despite operating on a social media platform that was at the time hostile to free speech, including challenges to climate dogma, Epstein’s plight got the attention of Blaze TV, Fox News and Scott Adams. They overwhelmed Joselow’s smear campaign.
In typical leftist activist fashion, Joselow cried that by defending himself, Epstein was harassing her. There never is any self-reflection among these people. In the end, however, the piece came out much more watered down without any references to racism. Epstein fought climate activists, and Epstein won.
Climate activists aren’t going to just roll over and go away. They are outrageously fanatical and have even romanticized acts of terrorism to advance their cause. I predict their rhetoric and actions will get worse before they are finally relegated to history’s dustbin of bad ideas.
Exxon’s Woods and those like him would have made it a lot easier for the activists to find a voice going forward. Trump’s cabinet nominations show that the times, they are a changing.
the pendulum is clearly swinging back toward sanity
Being a fossil fuel champion has nothing to do with being an energy champion. Your entire premise is intentionally disingenuous bullshit.