The Unstoppable Rise of Energy Realism

It’ll beat climate catastrophism every time.

For the last decade, Democrats and the left have ever more eagerly embraced a climate catastrophist narrative on energy policy. That narrative may be summarized as follows:

Climate change is not a danger that is gradually occurring, but an imminent crisis that is already upon us in extreme weather events. It threatens the existence of the planet if immediate, drastic action is not taken. That action must include the immediate replacement of fossil fuels, including natural gas, by renewables, wind and solar, which are cheap and can be introduced right now if sufficient resources are devoted to doing so, and which, unlike nuclear power, are safe. Not only that, the immediate replacement of fossil fuels by renewables will make energy cheaper and provide high wage jobs.

People resist rapidly eliminating fossil fuels only because of propaganda from the fossil fuel industry. Any of the problems with renewables that are being cited, such as their intermittency and reliability, are being solved. This means that as we use more renewables and cut out fossil fuels, political support for the transition to clean energy should go up because of the benefits to consumers and workers.

That’s been the mantra that’s dominated Democrats’ policy commitments on energy and their rhetoric and philosophy on climate issues. Indeed, it is not uncommon for Democrats to apply the term “climate denialist” to those who, while they accept the reality of global warming, refuse to endorse the climate catastrophist mantra and its maximalist policy agenda.

So what have the Democrats gained from their fervent advocacy for climate catastrophism? Not much. Sure, they did manage to pass the misleadingly named Inflation Reduction Act which pumped hundreds of billions of dollars—if not over a trillion—into the renewable energy and electric vehicle industries.

But the needle is moving very slowly indeed on a renewables-based clean energy transition. During the Biden administration, the share of renewables in the country’s primary energy consumption has increased only very modestly from 10.5 percent to 11.7 percent. And the share of energy consumption from fossil fuels remains over 80 percent just as it does in the world as a whole.

It is just very hard to bring that share down quickly while keeping an advanced industrial economy chugging along. That’s why, despite the Biden administration’s professed commitments, energy realities have forced them to preside over record levels of oil production (both on federal lands and overall), record natural gas production, and record LNG exports.

Nor have Democrats been rewarded with a political bonanza for their embrace of climate catastrophism. Quite the contrary. They just lost the presidential election to an opponent who says “drill, baby, drill” and whose priority is cheap, abundant energy—not clean energy. And Trump’s nominee to be Secretary of Energy is Chris Wright, CEO of a fracking company, who has been forthright in his advocacy of energy realism, or as he puts it, “energy sobriety.”

It's interesting to look at Wright’s actual views on climate and energy because they represent what Democrats’ climate catastrophism is now up against. While Wright has been accused of being a climate denialist, this is not, as noted above, because he refuses to accept the reality of global warming but rather because he does not accept the Democrats’ current climate catastrophist narrative and policy approach. Here is what he actually says:

The expansion of the global energy supply by adding fossil fuels has greatly improved the human condition; it also brought the risk of climate change caused by increased atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases…. Climate change is a real and global challenge that we should and can address.

And his basic stance on meeting this challenge is:

Two things are required for positive progress on climate change: a sober understanding of the issue and the tradeoffs required, and massive improvements in energy technologies that can deliver low-carbon energy that is also low cost, reliable and secure.

That seems….pretty reasonable. Here’s his own 10 point summary of his perspective:

1. Energy is essential to life and the world needs more of it!

2. The modern world today is powered by and made of hydrocarbons.

3. Hydrocarbons are essential to improving the wealth, health, and life opportunities for the less energized seven billion people who aspire to be among the world’s lucky one billion.

4. Hydrocarbons supply more than 80 percent of global energy and thousands of critical materials and products.

5. The American Shale Revolution transformed energy markets, energy security, and geopolitics.

6. Global demand for oil, natural gas, and coal are all at record levels and rising – no energy transition has begun.

7. Modern alternatives, like solar and wind, provide only a part of electricity demand and do not replace the most critical uses of hydrocarbons. Energy-dense, reliable nuclear could be more impactful.

8. Making energy more expensive or unreliable compromises people, national security, and the environment.

9. Climate change is a global challenge but is far from the world’s greatest threat to human life.

10. Zero Energy Poverty by 2050 is a superior goal compared to Net Zero 2050.

Again, all pretty reasonable and empirically defensible though one could quibble here and there with how he formulates some of his points. But I would not quibble with his last point; it underscores the moral problems with the standard climate catastrophist/net zero approach. Lifting up the billions in the world who suffer from energy poverty and the stunted lives and living standards such poverty produces is or should be a moral imperative—a moral imperative about which net zero definitionally has nothing to say.

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But Wright’s approach is more than a strong empirical and moral competitor to Democrats’ approach—it also overlaps in important ways with emerging voter sentiment about these issues. This is particularly true among working-class (non-college) voters where Democrats have rapidly been bleeding support. Consider these data from a YouGov survey conducted for an AEI project comparing scientific understandings of energy and climate with dominant public narratives on these issues and comparing both to the views of actual voters.

The survey found that, by 74 percent to 26 percent, working-class voters prefer an energy approach that uses a mix of energy sources including oil, coal, and natural gas along with renewables to an approach that seeks to phase out the use of oil, coal, and natural gas completely.

In terms of the energy they consume, cost and reliability are way, way more important to working-class voters than possible effects on the climate. Given four choices, 41 percent of these voters said the cost of the energy they use was most important to them and 35 percent said the availability of power when they need it was most important. Just 17 percent thought the effect on climate of their energy consumption was most important and 6 percent selected the effect on U.S. energy security.

In terms of proposals to mitigate the effects of climate change, getting to “net zero” as quickly as possible is relatively unimportant to working-class voters. Asked to consider proposals to reduce the effects of global climate change, these voters were least likely to say “getting the U.S. to net zero carbon emissions as quickly as possible” was very important to them personally (26 percent), fewer than said “limiting the burden of regulations on business” was very important (33 percent). Working-class voters were most likely by far to say keeping consumer costs low (66 percent) and increasing jobs and economic growth (60 percent) were very important aspects of climate mitigation proposals.

Consistent with many other surveys, the YouGov survey found that climate change as an issue has very low salience to working-class voters. Voters were asked to evaluate a list of 18 issue areas and rate their priority for the president and Congress to address in the coming year. As a “top priority,” dealing with global climate change ranked 16^th out of these 18 areas among working-class voters, well behind strengthening the national economy, fighting inflation, defending the country from terrorist attacks, and keeping Social Security financially sound—and also behind reducing health care costs, dealing with immigration, improving the educational system, keeping energy costs low, reducing the budget deficit, reducing crime, improving how the political system works, improving the job situation, strengthening the military, dealing with the problems of poor people, and dealing with drug addiction. The climate issue only ranked above global trade and issues around race.

Finally, by 30 points (59 to 29 percent) working-class voters flat-out favor more domestic production of fossil fuels like oil and gas. But only 15 percent of these voters are aware that the Biden administration increased oil production on federal lands. However, when informed that the U.S. has, in fact, increased domestic production of oil and gas in the last several years, they are delighted. Almost three-quarters (73 percent) of working-class voters said “this is a positive development, which brings good jobs for U.S. workers, ensures our energy supply and helps the U.S. support our allies who need similar resources” compared to 27 percent who thought “this is a negative development, which brings more pollution, climate change, and continued reliance on fossil fuels.”

How about that. Perhaps instead of hiding this achievement away Democrats should have featured it. Their failure to do so obviously has a lot to do with the climate catastrophist narrative they have felt obliged to embrace and defend. That narrative is clearly getting in the way of Democrats’ ability to reach working-class voters and is leaving an open lane for Chris Wright’s version of energy realism.

Can Democrats wean themselves away from climate catastrophism and their obsession with net zero? It could be difficult. Their net zero commitment stems from the extremely high priority placed on this goal by the educated elites and activists who now dominate the party. These elites and activists—unlike working-class voters—believe that nothing is more important than stopping global warming since it is not just a problem, but an “existential crisis” that must be confronted as rapidly as possible to prevent a global apocalypse. President Biden said in September, 2023:

The only existential threat humanity faces even more frightening than a nuclear war is global warming going above 1.5 degrees in the next 20—10 years. That’d be real trouble. There’s no way back from that.

He also said in November of that year:

I’ve seen firsthand what the reports made clear: the devastating toll of climate change and its existential threat to all of us. And it is the ultimate threat to humanity: climate change.

More frightening than nuclear war, eh, from which there is presumably a way back? Up and down the Democratic Party, rhetoric has been more similar than not to Biden’s absurdly histrionic take. That’s an awful lot of rhetoric to walk back.

It also seems unlikely that the climate movement, with its intransigent radical wing, is going to do much to help Democrats do a reset on on these issues. Instead it seems like they’re inventing new ways to make their movement irrelevant to normie voters. A recent innovation is “intersectional environmentalism” which emphasizes how “injustices happening to marginalized communities and the earth are interconnected”. Somehow that’s going to result in a movement “rooted in joy and radical imagination and community building.”

Intersectionalism and a radical politics of joy? This does not sound like a movement prepared to grapple with reality. The reality is that climate change policy, to be politically successful, must be embedded in and subordinate to, the goal of energy abundance and prosperity. In other words, as energy abundance is pursued, efforts to mitigate climate change should be undertaken within those constraints, rather than pursuing climate change as the paramount goal and trying for energy abundance within those limits. There’s a big difference and only the former approach offers a viable way forward for Democrats.

Such an approach will require Democrats and the left to develop a more realistic understanding of what is feasible in terms of climate action. There is no point in setting goals and timelines that cannot be met. Discarding these will make it much easier to pursue an energy abundance path that also includes reasonable progress on reducing emissions over what will undoubtedly be a very lengthy time period. Democrats would be well-advised to develop this path—their own version of energy realism—rather than pursuing the dead-end of climate catastrophism. The latter is and has been a loser. Energy realism will beat it every time.