Our Journey

The story of how it all started. And what you can expect in 2026.

“When you find what you are meant to do in life, for heaven’s sake, just keep doing it.” - Doomberg

The story of how environMENTAL came to exist is something about which we have never written. On the eve of a New Year, having just quietly celebrated our third birthday, we thought the story might be a good way to end the year.

For nearly 15 years starting around 2005, the western world shifted its priorities from the very real, immediate, and pressing environmental problems (soil, air, surface water, groundwater) on which great progress had been made over the preceding two decades. Under the growing pretense that “climate change” is an existential crisis and “sustainability” will solve it as well as all the world’s other environmental problems, they became the new focus. The majority of environmental professionals went along with it.

A few had done the requisite homework to understand the risks, tradeoffs, costs, and benefits of the proposed “solution” set, and held deep convictions that this redirection was necessary if not critical. Many accepted the “consensus” science without bothering to read any of it, and simply saw a new, politically popular revenue opportunity across the multi-disciplinary environmental industry, without the least bit of understanding of the costs and consequences.

Seven of us, all experienced professionals across a variety of environmental disciplines, quietly watched these developments push unresolved, serious domestic environmental problems with much lower costs and higher returns on investment down the list of priorities. “Climate” and “sustainability” were the new paradigm, hydrocarbon energy was its target, “environmentalism” was its political tool, and computer modeled bastardizations of economics and physics were its scientific justification.

Even worse than shifting the focus from clean air, soil, and water was the stark realization that the priority change was – and is – a threat to ~7 billion people’s ability to reach our living standards, and to the backbone of humanity’s incredible and continuous progress over the last two centuries: affordable, reliable, abundant, on-demand energy.

But what to do about it was a question that we all struggled with for the next decade. The fear mongering, legislated non-solutions, and greenwashing that increased rapidly in the twenty-teens exacerbated our consternation. For me, it became a part-time obsession.

When Covid-19(84) hit in the spring of 2020, I was five years away from retirement. But I was still thinking about how to put my experience, time, energy, and passion into something that might contribute to changing modern “environmentalism’s” wayward drift once that day came in 2025.

I quickly dismissed the idea of starting a non-profit to produce research to help policymakers push back against the prevailing climate, energy and environmental narratives and policies with data, facts, reason, logic. But donors would a grantee to carry their political water, making editorial independence nearly impossible, and attacks claiming research work was biased by its funding sources by those wishing to defend the new “climate/sustainability” paradigm, ironic as it may be, was inevitable.

On a warm evening in late May of 2022, still ruminating on all of this, a neighbor (and former Wall Street trader) with whom I had occasionally discussed these frustrations emailed me an article shortly after walking our dogs together. That’s the day everything changed.

The clip art chicken logo belied the content. The tagline “Chicken Little gets a Bloomberg Terminal” was catchy and better hinted at what was to come.

The article was a cogent, concise, insightful, bring-the-data-receipts takedown of biofuel (soy-based diesel, in this case) written with such detailed understanding of the key issues that it could not have been written by a “journalist.” The data gathering, analysis, deep understanding of physics, and insights were clearly the domain of someone(s) with substantial industry experience and unusual writing ability. I subscribed instantly, and continued to regularly read Doomberg, then leader in the Finance category of Substack.

That was the spark. No non-profit, no fundraising needed. The Substack platform, publicly available data from government, industry, and other sources. Independent research and analysis. Complete editorial discretion, the unfiltered chance to scream from a worldwide mountaintop that which I had been preaching from a soapbox for more than a decade.

I explored the Substack publishers’ platform to familiarize myself with the system’s architecture and functionality. They made it so easy even a Boomer could do it.

Within a few weeks I called those six close environmental industry friends who’d shared my frustrations for years and with whom I’d kicked around the non-profit idea many times. “I found a way to do what I’ve been talking about in retirement. Only I’m not going to wait, I’m going to give a go, this fall.

“I’d like your help, no big time commitment. I’ll pick the topics; I’ll do research and the writing. You’ll mostly be an information scout, technical expert on matters where I’m weak, and review drafts.” To a man, all six liked the idea and enthusiastically agreed to help.

Imitation is the best form of flattery, and imitating the habits of the extraordinarily successful seemed like an obvious place to start. With no professional writing experience or any better ideas on the matter, I decided to try to imitate the anonymous pen name intrigue, catchy logo, tag line, witty picture captions, and other styles Doomberg popularized on Substack.

I told myself and the rest of the team the worst that could happen is my choice of topics, research, analysis, writing and grammar could suck so embarrassingly that we would get few if any subscribers, and none of us would be worse for the wear. Some people might find the data, critical analysis, knowledge, and insights (if not the writing style) interesting or even useful. At best, we might someday contribute to a much-needed wakeup call and policy conversation that could defend western civilization and 7 billion not yet at our living standards against the excesses of modern “environmentalism.”

And with some trepidation, just over three years ago on December 10, 2022, we launched our first post as environMENTAL, noting:

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.

People read and subscribed, slowly at first. We benefitted from the well-documented “Doomberg Effect” phenomenon in Spring 2023 when the spark responsible for this project restacked some of work and added us to their list of recommended Substacks.

Reader engagement in the form of “likes” and comments grew. Aside from typographical errors and my own horrible grammar, egregious data errors and other mistakes did not plague us and comments were enthusiastic and supportive. We took the fact that engineers, a wide variety of industry executives (energy, environmental, financial; many at senior levels, some from companies we greatly admire), academics, energy analysts, environmental professionals, and energy authors started to appear in our subscriber list as a positive sign.

We were more surprised when we started to receive subscription pledges from readers. The crazy idea appeared to have some potential. Meanwhile, something more important happened.

I immediately fell in love with the job: choosing topics, researching, analyzing, thinking critically, and writing. Digging for and then slicing and dicing data. Fumbling with Excel spreadsheets and graphs. It was instantly clear this work would heartily satisfy two burning desires in retirement: a) trying to contribute to a necessary policy conversation and b) digging deeper to understand more about the intersection of energy, the environment, and economy.

Three years and 92 posts later, environMENTAL is read in 98 countries by nearly 3,000 subscribers, with over 8,000 followers on Substack.

In March of this year, I was fortunate enough to retire, early and ahead of a date planned – for today - since 2021. Since our beginning in December 2022, three other members of the environMENTAL team also retired early. They are traveling, enjoying the well-earned fruits of decades of work, spending time with kids and grandkids, and simply don’t have the time to help much anymore. I am forever grateful for their contributions, support, and encouragement.

As I am to the other three members of the team, who remain engaged as they count the days until their own retirements. Without the help of all these long-time friends and experts in their fields, it is doubtful I would have had the testicular fortitude to even attempt to create environMENTAL.

As we put a wrap on 2025 and begin a new year, what can you expect? First, we will never take sponsors, never sell your email address, and never take advertisements. Editorial freedom is a core principle more valuable to us than money. Period.

I will continue to publish 2-3 articles per month. A proper retired man needs time for fly rods, shotguns and dogs and birds and an occasional round of golf. And to spend time with a patient, understanding and supportive wife (before she “accidentally” spills a gallon of water on this laptop.)

We may tinker with new subjects, article length, some video projects, or other aspects around the margins, but the core work and objective will remain the same. And for the record, we find AI an incredible tool for research, but AI has never written – and never will write – a single sentence of any article we ever post. You are stuck with our own genuine thoughts, complete with all my clumsy, improper grammar, syntax, and informal writing style.

Climbing Substack rankings or turning environMENTAL into a large source of income is not an objective. Philosophically we feel it is important that our work be accessible to all.

In that spirit, we have chosen not to go behind a paywall for another year. Instead, we are simply going to ask for your voluntary support in 2026.

Our plan was to offer monthly subscriptions at $3.50 per month, about the price of a tall Starbucks coffee. Annual subscriptions would be priced at $36/year, and a Founders-level subscription for those who wish to support our work at a higher level would be $80.

You might ask how we arrived at those figures. There were two factors.

Since our earliest days in 2023 dozens of readers have graciously pledged annual subscriptions. 92% of those were for $80 (the other 8% were for $150).

Some readers similarly pledged monthly subscriptions. 100% of the monthly pledges were for $8/month.

Next, I considered the fact that I am not a professional writer. Doomberg and Robert Bryce, two Substack authors we admire, are professionals and to varying degrees their income relies on their publications. Doomberg publishes 6-8 articles per month, with basic subscriptions priced at $300 annually. Bryce, author of several books, publishes 5-7 articles each month and charges $10/month or $100 annually.

I am not a professional writer. My income does not depend on this work. I will never publish 5-8 times per month. All of these considerations factored into the modest price we are requesting for voluntary subscriptions to support this work.

A minor glitch in our plan is that Substack does not (currently) allow monthly subscriptions for less than $5 so, with our apologies, that is the default minimum we had to set. (If you’d like to support but cost is an issue, consider a monthly subscription for however many months you’re comfortable and then simply cancel. You won’t lose access to the content).

Tomorrow, we will begin accepting – not requiring - paid subscriptions. And with much gratitude, we will monetize subscriber pledges.

To the dozens of loyal subscribers who made those pledges, please accept our most sincere gratitude for your expression of confidence and support. You can take pride in the fact you are environMENTAL’s founding supporters. After waiting three years, all of your pledges will be monetized this week.

For the dozens who pledged annual subscriptions, congratulations, your support conveys upon you the Founder-level title of ‘Mentalist. For renewal on January 1, 2027, your subscription will automatically be mapped by the Substack system to the ‘Mentalist level ($80, unless you change it). For those who pledged subscriptions of $8 per month, that figure will be automatically reduced to $5 per month by Substack’s system.

2026 promises to be an exciting year in the world of energy, environmental, economic policy and geopolitics. The Trump administration will have to show its cards and push efforts to rescind the 2009 EPA Endangerment Finding on CO2. The war in Ukraine looks to be coming to a dramatic close, and Europe’s related and mostly self-inflicted energy debacle look to face a dramatic political reckoning.

Energy and environmental policy are facing a reset in the western world and, ironically, after years of greenwashing, the tech industry’s necessary backtracking and grid-busting electricity demand is helping drive that reset. Environmental non-profits are under financial duress and face political pressures unseen in this century.

Meanwhile legacy media continues to largely sleepwalk (or worse, propagandize) through all of these evolutions. The information void they created is one we and other Substack energy and environmental writers are happy to fill. All of this adds up to a smorgasbord of endless, interesting, impactful, and exciting things to write about next year.

We close with a genuine and heart-felt note of appreciation. To the dozens of subscribers who pledged your financial support, thank you for your gracious and generous act and vote of confidence. To our thousands of subscribers across the world, thank you for becoming part of the environMENTAL community. To our approaching 10,000 followers, thank you for your interest and we hope you consider becoming a subscriber in 2026 and joining our community.

On behalf of the entire team at environMENTAL, we wish you and yours a healthy, safe, and prosperous New Year. See you soon.

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