Unleashing American Energy: America’s Silver Bullet

Todayville

Published

11 months ago

9 minute read

Alex Epstein

It’s said that in politics there’s no silver bullet that’ll make everything better.

But we do have 1 silver bullet in the chamber: the opportunity to unleash American energy, which Donald Trump has rightly vowed to do.

The single most important thing government can do to make our lives better—something that will lead to a better economy, a lower cost of living, more job opportunities, a lower deficit, greater security, and a better environment—is unleash abundant, affordable, American energy.
If we unleash abundant, affordable, American oil, natural gas, and coal production from the anti-energy policies holding it back, we can go from crippling inflation—substantially driven by energy costs—to affordable food, housing, transportation, and heating bills.
Unleashing American energy will take us from nationwide electricity shortages to affordable, reliable power for all—and from losing good job opportunities to China, which we’ve allowed to outcompete us on energy costs, to creating millions of new well-paying jobs here at home.
Unleashing American energy will take us from begging OPEC+ for oil, depending on Russia for uranium, and being at China’s mercy for critical minerals, to producing an abundant and secure supply of these crucial commodities at home.
Many Americans are hesitant to embrace policies that unleash abundant, affordable energy because they think it will harm environmental progress—progress in air and water quality, safety from climate, and enjoyment of nature. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Environmental progress isn’t in conflict with abundant, affordable energy; it requires abundant, affordable energy—to afford pollution controls, to clean up natural environmental hazards, and to protect ourselves from the always-dynamic and dangerous climate.

Thanks to abundant, affordable energy, America has been wealthy enough to innovate and adopt pollution controls that make our air far cleaner—which is why America was able to increase its fossil fuel use 25% since 1970 while reducing air pollution 78%.¹

Thanks to abundant, affordable energy, America has been able to clean up natural environmental hazards such as undrinkable water, which requires affordable, reliable energy to purify, or mosquito-infested swamps, which require abundant, affordable energy to drain.

Thanks to abundant, affordable energy, we can protect ourselves from the always-dangerous climate by powering heating and A/C systems, storm warning and evacuation systems, and irrigation systems; witness the 98% drop in climate-related disaster deaths over the last century.²

Thanks to abundant, affordable energy we have the wealth we need to enjoy and preserve the most valuable and beautiful parts of nature—which is why America is able to be both the world’s economic superpower and a place of unsurpassed access to the great outdoors.
The key to supporting America’s energy abundance and environmental progress is maintaining steadfast support of individual and economic freedom, including the protection of property rights.
Property rights allow our energy companies to produce and innovate as they judge best. The shale revolution happened here because we alone protect underground property rights. Producers used this freedom to figure out how to extract abundant oil and gas from once-useless rocks.
Property rights allow us to care for our environment on our own property—and people tend to care best for what they own. And property rights are the basis for laws protecting our air and water from dangerous levels of pollution.
America has shown time and again that pro-freedom energy and environmental policies drive energy and environmental progress. And we can do it again, if we reverse the anti-freedom policies of the past several decades and embrace the following “energy freedom” policies.
To aid America in unleashing American energy, I’ve created the Energy Freedom Plan—a comprehensive plan that includes hundreds of high-leverage policy changes for every aspect of energy, from drilling to pipelines to electricity to nuclear to rare earth elements.
The Energy Freedom Plan is based on 5 game-changing goals:
1. Unleash responsible development
2. End preferences for unreliable electricity
3. Set environmental standards using cost-benefit analysis
4. Address climate danger through resilience and innovation
5. Unleash nuclear energy
Unleash responsible development
Anti-development policies prevent the drilling, mining, transporting, and building all energy needs to reach its potential—from natural gas to nuclear to solar.

Liberating responsible development will create unprecedented US energy abundance.
End preferences for unreliable electricity
Our grid is being ruined by systemic preferences for unreliable electricity, which cause prices to rise and reliability to decline.

Ending these preferences and prioritizing reliability is needed to make power cheap and reliable again.
Set environmental standards using cost-benefit analysis
The EPA harms prosperity and health via emissions standards that impose huge costs for little or no benefit.

Real cost-benefit analysis, including objective health science will promote prosperity and environmental quality.
Address climate danger through resilience and innovation, not punishing America
“Climate policy”” that singles out US emissions makes us poorer and less resilient while global emissions go up.
Becoming more resilient and unleashing innovation are the keys to climate safety.
Unleash nuclear energy from pseudo-scientific restrictions
The strangulation of nuclear has made it 10 times more expensive than it needs to be.
Unleashing nuclear, including getting rid of pseudoscientific policies like LNT and ALARA, will make possible a nuclear renaissance.
This week I will be releasing the FULL Energy Freedom Plan, including over 100 SPECIFIC game-changing policies that can unleash American energy like never before.
To make sure you see the whole plan, follow me @AlexEpstein and especially subscribe to alexepstein.substack.com.

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1 https://www.epa.gov/air-trends

2 UC San Diego – The Keeling Curve

For every million people on earth, annual deaths from climate-related causes (extreme temperature, drought, flood, storms, wildfires) declined 98%–from an average of 247 per year during the 1920s to 2.5 per year during the 2010s.

Data on disaster deaths come from EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain, Brussels, Belgium – www.emdat.be (D. Guha-Sapir).

Population estimates for the 1920s from the Maddison Database 2010, the Groningen Growth and Development Centre, Faculty of Economics and Business at University of Groningen. For years not shown, population is assumed to have grown at a steady rate.

Population estimates for the 2010s come from World Bank Data.

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Net Zero goal is a fundamental flaw in the Ottawa-Alberta MOU

Published on November 30, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Jason Clemens and Elmira Aliakbari

The challenge of GHG emissions in 2050 is not in the industrial world but rather in the developing world, where there is still significant basic energy consumption using timber and biomass.

The new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the federal and Alberta governments lays the groundwork for substantial energy projects and infrastructure development over the next two-and-a-half decades. It is by all accounts a step forward, though, there’s debate about how large and meaningful that step actually is. There is, however, a fundamental flaw in the foundation of the agreement: it’s commitment to net zero in Canada by 2050.

The first point of agreement in the MOU on the first page of text states: “Canada and Alberta remain committed to achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.” In practice, it’s incredibly difficult to offset emissions with tree planting or other projects that reduce “net” emissions, so the effect of committing to “net zero” by 2050 means that both governments agree that Canada should produce very close to zero actual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Consider the massive changes in energy production, home heating, transportation and agriculture that would be needed to achieve this goal.

So, what’s wrong with Canada’s net zero 2050 and the larger United Nations’ global goal for the same?

Let’s first understand the global context of GHG reductions based on a recent study by internationally-recognized scholar Vaclav Smil. Two key insights from the study. First, despite trillions being spent plus international agreements and regulatory measures starting back in 1997 with the original Kyoto agreement, global fossil fuel consumption between then and 2023 increased by 55 per cent.

Second, fossil fuels as a share of total global energy declined from 86 per cent in 1997 to 82 per cent in 2022, again, despite trillions of dollars in spending plus regulatory requirements to force a transition away from fossil fuels to zero emission energies. The idea that globally we can achieve zero emissions over the next two-and-a-half decades is pure fantasy. Even if there is an historic technological breakthrough, it will take decades to actually transition to a new energy source(s).

Let’s now understand the Canada-specific context. A recent study examined all the measures introduced over the last decade as part of the national plan to reduce emissions to achieve net zero by 2050. The study concluded that significant economic costs would be imposed on Canadians by these measures: inflation-adjusted GDP would be 7 per cent lower, income per worker would be more than $8,000 lower and approximately 250,000 jobs would be lost. Moreover, these costs would not get Canada to net zero. The study concluded that only 70 per cent of the net zero emissions goal would be achieved despite these significant costs, which means even greater costs would be imposed on Canadians to fully achieve net zero.

It’s important to return to a global picture to fully understand why net zero makes no sense for Canada within a worldwide context. Using projections from the International Energy Agency (IEA) in its latest World Energy Outlook, the current expectation is that in 2050, advanced countries including Canada and the other G7 countries will represent less than 25 per cent of global emissions. The developing world, which includes China, India, the entirety of Africa and much of South America, is estimated to represent at least 70 per cent of global emissions in 2050.

Simply put, the challenge of GHG emissions in 2050 is not in the industrial world but rather in the developing world, where there is still significant basic energy consumption using timber and biomass. A globally-coordinated effort, which is really what the U.N. should be doing rather than fantasizing about net zero, would see industrial countries like Canada that are capable of increasing their energy production exporting more to these developing countries so that high-emitting energy sources are replaced by lower-emitting energy sources. This would actually reduce global GHGs while simultaneously stimulating economic growth.

Consider a recent study that calculated the implications of doubling natural gas production in Canada and exporting it to China to replace coal-fired power. The conclusion was that there would be a massive reduction in global GHGs equivalent to almost 90 per cent of Canada’s total annual emissions. In these types of substitution arrangements, the GHGs would increase in energy-producing countries like Canada but global GHGs would be reduced, which is the ultimate goal of not only the U.N. but also the Carney and Smith governments as per the MOU.

Finally, the agreement ignores a basic law of economics. The first lesson in the very first class of any economics program is that resources are limited. At any given point in time, we only have so much labour, raw materials, time, etc. In other words, when we choose to do one project, the real cost is foregoing the other projects that could have been undertaken. Economics is mostly about trying to understand how to maximize the use of limited resources.

The MOU requires massive, literally hundreds of billions of dollars to be used to create nuclear power, other zero-emitting power sources and transmission systems all in the name of being able to produce low or even zero-emitting oil and gas while also moving to towards net zero.

These resources cannot be used for other purposes and it’s impossible to imagine what alternative companies or industries would have been invested in. What we do know is that workers, entrepreneurs, businessowners and investors are not making these decisions. Rather, politicians and bureaucrats in Ottawa and Edmonton are making these decisions but they won’t pay any price if they’re wrong. Canadians pay the price. Just consider the financial fiasco unfolding now with Ottawa, Ontario and Quebec’s subsidies (i.e. corporate welfare) for electric vehicle batteries.

Understanding the fundamentally flawed commitment to Canadian net zero rather than understanding a larger global context of GHG emissions lays at the heart of the recent MOU and unfortunately for Canadians will continue to guide flawed and expensive policies. Until we get the net zero policies right, we’re going to continue to spend enormous resources on projects with limited returns, costing all Canadians.

Daily Caller

John Kerry Lurches Back Onto Global Stage For One Final Gasp

Published on November 29, 2025

Todayville

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

John Kerry, one of the grandest and most persistent climate scolds of the 21^stcentury, lurched back into the news this week when he was knighted by Britain’s King Charles, a prominent climate scold in his own right.

In fact, their shared efforts involving flying off on carbon-spewing private jets to lecture the masses to live smaller, more costly lives in the name of fighting climate change was the motivation for the award, as the King thanked Kerry for his “services to tackling climate change.” That seems to be a bit of a grammatical error, but when royalty is involved, no one really cares, do they?

“King Charles and I share the same point of view — that there’s an urgency to doing things,” Kerry told the Globe in an interview. “He’s been ahead of most folks on this from the time I can remember… He always had a commitment to nature.”

Unfortunately for the U.K.’s citizens, the Labour government’s “commitment to nature” mainly appears to involve covering thousands of acres of bucolic British farmland with massive solar arrays and felling thousands of forest trees to make home to big wind installations these days.

Projects like those – frequently forced by the central government on objecting rural communities – form the centerpiece of Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero Ed Miliband’s program to deindustrialize the formerly formidable British economy.

That program – based on the shared philosophy of King Charles and Kerry – has sent the U.K.’s utility rates skyrocketing to the highest on earth. It has also rendered the former global power dependent on imports from foreign nations for its energy security, with China the most prominent among them.

Such are the fruits of the King Charles/Kerry “point of view.” Most would agree with Kerry’s statement that “there’s an urgency to doing things.” The problem is that pretty much everything he and the King have been doing in this realm across the first quarter of the 21^st century leads inevitably to serfdom to the Chinese Communist Party.

In an interview with the Financial Times the same day, Kerry repeated much of the tiresome dogma of his alarmist religion, in the process excoriating President Donald Trump as a “denier” and calling U.S. corporate leaders cowards for straying from the narrative he and the King prefer. “It is not that they don’t believe [in climate change] or they don’t want to move forward. They are just scared,” Kerry said of the corporate CEOs, adding, “The process of Donald Trump in the last months, coupled with the justice department, coupled with his vengeance programs, has scared… a lot of people.”

But a more believable alternative explanation for the shift away from the twin manias of ESG and DEI by many companies in recent years is that these corporate leaders have a fiduciary duty to maximize returns on capital to their investors. The problem for Kerry and his disciples is that the preferred alternatives they have advanced too often devolved into unprofitable boondoggles that fail to satisfy that duty. Kerry wants to place the entire blame on Trump – who, ironically, was recently honored by King Charles himself with an unprecedented second state dinner. But the truth is that shift started in earnest in 2023, when Joe Biden’s autopen was still in charge of the ship of American state.

That shift has certainly accelerated this year, as companies have been freed from the incessant hectoring of the Biden government and are now being denied access to the ruinous green subsidies from the IRA that so radically distorted energy markets. This has little to do with climate denialism or cowardice and much to do with sound business practice and CEOs properly carrying out the mandates of their high positions. No amount of hyperbolic talking points from Kerry or the King can change that reality.

In the end, Kerry’s remarks come off as a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. Now in the twilight of his career, he has become a relic, a totem of a fading global religion whose end cannot come soon enough.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.