Environmental, Energy and Economics

Literally Matters of Life & Death

“The planet is fine. The people are f*#ked!” – George Carlin

There is a lesson to be learned from the enormous use of human power and natural resources used to build, transport and erect hundreds of “moai” by the collapsed society at Easter Island in the Pacific.  But it’s probably not the one you’re expecting.

Giant carved rock statues up to 32 feet tall made from volcanic rock (tuff) - some including 12 ton “pukaos” of red scoria (rock) balanced on their heads - were hauled in some cases miles over land, with no cranes. While we don’t know the precise details of how they transported these statues, we do know that it involved trees.  Lots of trees.

Did this turn out to be the highest and best use of those resources for the Easter Islanders in the end?  Looking back a few hundred years later, the answer seems evident today. 

At any point on the road to collapse did anyone ask, “Is this smart? Should we really be using our limited resources for this?

Easter Island Moai Wikimedia

As experienced professionals from a variety of disciplines in the environmental sector, we have serious questions about the environmental and energy policies of western “leaders” who’ve chosen to “transition” away from fossil fuels and nuclear energy.  We believe it is not only fair, but as we will show critical, to peel away the layers of this very complex onion using reason, data, science, risk assessment, cost/benefit analysis, and prioritization.

Despite any good intentions, we believe western “leaders” are overconfident in their present solution set.  In short, they do not understand physics or economics, and that failure comes at great peril to their constituents and especially the world’s poorest. We see patterns and evidence that two decades of mistakes in energy and environmental policy could result in long-term consequences worse than the problems they set out to solve.  Some of those effects are already occurring, right now.

Here's a pro-tip for western leaders from the team at environMENTAL.  When your environmental and energy policies cause (just in 2022):

• a developing nation’s agriculture to collapse (Sri Lanka)

• a developing nation to receive NO BIDS on tenders for 3 of 4 month-ahead natural gas deliveries, and have to decline the only bid they received on the 4th tender due to cost (Pakistan)

• former Soviet-bloc citizens to line up at coal plants for 3 days to buy coal so they don’t freeze to death, with those old enough to remember communism saying “I remember the communist times but it didn't cross my mind that we could return to something even worse.” (Poland)

• farmers in Europe’s largest food exporting country by value to spray your offices with manure and block roads because you threaten to expropriate their farms for environmental objectives (Netherlands)

• Europe’s climate hawk and global fossil fuel woke-scold to knock down wind turbines to expand a (lignite, dirtiest of all) coal mine to avoid citizens freezing and collapse of its industry (Germany)

• The leader of Europe’s largest economy to beg for natural gas from a Canadian leader who could not “make the business case” because he has landlocked his own country’s natural gas from reaching the Atlantic or Pacific (Germany, Canada)

• An air emissions regulator in the largest state in the U.S. to pass a law outlawing the sale of internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles after 2035, the state’s electricity grid operator to then beg citizens not to charge their electric vehicles 4 days later, and its governor to then issue an Executive Order 21 days after that to ban ICE car sales after 2035 (California)

• For the first time in recorded history - 75 million MORE people to have insufficient access to energy this year than last (International Energy Agency World Energy Outlook 2022)

….these are signs your environmental and energy policies are failing the very people they purport to be saving.

The data show – clearly - this is not “just Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.” It’s not “just” a temporary dislocation as part of the energy “transition” to renewables. And it is certainly not – in terms of the poorest in the advanced and developing world – a “just transition”.

We can distill our concerns visually into our own version of the well-known “Dunning-Kruger Effect”:

Death Valley?

Where does current environmental and energy policy, forcing us toward wind and solar, put humanity in this figure? Are we closer to the Peak of Mt. Stupid or the Plateau of Actual Sustainability?

The 1987 United Nation’s Brundtland Commission’s report “Our Common Future” defined the term “sustainable development” as (emphasis ours):

“Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”

Is it possible the core elements of the present renewable energy transition – wind, solar, EVs, battery storage - could be present day civilization’s environmental, energy, and economic moai? 

Is it clear that the primary energy used, resources extracted, and subsidies from wealthy nations for wind and solar energy wouldn’t have been better used for something else?  

If we knew replacing fossil fuels and nuclear energy with renewables would require mining something on the order of 5 times the total amount of copper ever mined by all of humanity since the dawn of civilization, would we even try? How does that not risk “compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”?

Do we really understand the unintended consequences of getting this energy transition wrong?

These are not rhetorical questions.

8 billion people depend on getting these policies right. The present energy crisis proves the world’s poorest are the most at risk urgently. But even those living in modern advanced industrial nations fail to understand the critical assumptions involved at the peril of their own living standards and quality of life. These are non-trivial matters.

Around 3 billion people on earth lack access to reliable electricity, sufficient clean water, nutritious food and basic sanitation, and live off less than $3 per day. Their poverty is in great part a direct consequence of lack of access to affordable, reliable, abundant, on-demand electricity. 

Western nations have spent well over $5 TRILLION on “climate change” policy since the Kyoto Protocol was signed by Europe + 37 nations in 1997.  The recently passed U.S. “Inflation Reduction Act” itself adds another $369 BILLION to that tab over the next ten years.  A Congressional Budget Office report from 2009 documents that the U.S. (alone) spent $99 BILLION on “climate policy” from 1999 – 2009.

For almost two decades, we have asked ourselves, “what good could have been done for the lot of humanity worldwide with this amount of money”?

We have been quietly stewing thinking about this for a long time.  Until now.

The thesis of environMENTAL is simple: “Leaders” of the advanced industrial nations who imposed the transition to “renewables” on the entire world did so without understanding science (physics and economics), resource constraints and the potential unintended consequences of their actions.  We fear this could be a human prosperity disaster in the making and an enormous waste of resources , will achieve virtually nothing to alter the trajectory of climate change, will cause more harm to the environment than it reduces, and threatens to condemn the world’s poorest to misery.

This requires critical examination. We intend to do so.

There is still time to avoid the worst of the potential consequences. For now. If we change direction. Fast.

“Who are you?” you may be asking.

The team at environMENTAL consists of environmental engineers, geologists, geophysicists, risk management, finance, legal and other relevant industry professionals. Our combined industry experience exceeds two hundred years.

We came of age at the dawn of the environmental movement in western civilization: Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”, Paul Ehrlich’s “The Population Bomb”, and famous environmental catastrophes like Love Canal, Times Beach (Missouri), and the Cuyahoga river on fire.  We’ve spent our adult lives cleaning up environmental threats caused by industrialization in the 20th century at the most hazardous and complex sites in the U.S. and abroad.

Our experience informs everything we write, the hard questions we’re not afraid to ask, and the positions we take.

We are going to ask difficult questions. We are going to make people - on both sides - uncomfortable. Buckle up.

We are agnostic in terms of fuel or energy source. We appreciate hydrocarbons (and the companies and people who make them possible) for their energy density, reliability, capacity factors, transportability, etc. We would be thrilled if wind and solar were able to match their physical properties, but that they can’t. Our principal requirements are that energy be manageably “clean” (we know how to do that), affordable, reliable, abundant, on-demand and as widely available to all citizens across the planet at as low a cost as possible.

Our first article (late December) is a 3-part series looking at the present energy crisis, how modern environmentalism and the ESG (environmental, social, governance) movements contributed to this crisis, how it’s already impacting the world’s poorest, and why we believe it may usher in a global geopolitical sea change few see coming. 

You may be curious about our logo and banner. Do they imply all “environmentalists” are crazy and should be in straightjackets?  Or instead that getting environmental and energy policy wrong has consequences for humanity that could be like confining it to a straitjacket? Read our work. Judge for yourself.

These are complex, multi-layered issues, with potential second, third and fourth order unintended consequences to civilization, many of which we believe are the forks in the road between prosperity and privation. Or starvation. So, let’s think about this critically, not ideologically. That got our species this far.

Here are just a few examples of the types of things we will delve into that traditional media (and NGOs) can’t, won’t or don’t do very well (or as honest brokers), in our opinion:

• How green energy policies threaten the well-being and advancement of the world’s poorest (and everyone else)

• The green hypocrisy of the advanced world

• The tragedy of the commons and futility of restricting emissions in the developing world

• “Sustainability” – materiality, window dressing, and “greenwashing”

• The physical and resource constraints of renewables and the irony of how environmentalism makes it a moot point

• The relationship between fossil fuels, global food production and other life-critical products

• How much taxpayers subsidize various forms of energy vs. how much usable energy they get in return

• Why attribution of weather events to greenhouse gas emissions is absurd

• How pelletizing U.S. trees and shipping them to be burned in the UK in former coal-fired power plants isn’t “green”

Here is what you can expect.

We are unapologetic capitalists, all of whom achieved financial independence before we ever embarked on this project. But we believe the effort is important enough we are providing all our content free for all of 2023.  That doesn’t mean we won’t go to a subscription model someday. You will decide that for us.

We do not/will not take advertisements or sponsorships. Period. Absolute editorial freedom is a first principle for us.  

We want environMENTAL to become the preferred public square for a badly needed, civil, healthy, detailed debate on environmental and energy policy.  That means we especially welcome and need voices who disagree with us. If you think we’re off-base, explain to us cogently where and why in the comments section.

Science does not yield to green ideology. Proper balance in environmental and energy policy could be the inflection point between prosperity and misery for billions.

Welcome to environMENTAL. We’re going to try to help humanity get the right balance.

If you’re interested in our work and would like to automatically receive our upcoming inaugural 3 Part Series via email, please subscribe. It’s free.

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