Critically Thinking about our Energy Policies

How do we get them to make sense?

I was asked by a competent, actively involved energy person: “What needs to be done to fix our dismal national energy policies?”

After 40± years of working with this and other related issues, here are my brief overview comments about the causalities of our repeated technical policy failures:

1 - The number one deficiency with our energy policies is that they are written by lobbyists — for the benefit of their clients (e.g. NGOs and other special interests). Unfortunately, citizens have no lobbyists representing them, so any benefits of these policies to the public are accidental.

2 - Science exists to give us answers to technical problems. Energy issues are technical matters. As such energy policies should be thoroughly rooted in Science. However, our technical policies (e.g., energy, climate, COVID) are NOT based on real Science, but rather on political science — aka politics.

[Note such ideas as the "all-of-the-above" energy policy are concocted by lobbyists and are devoid of real Science — e.g., see here.]

3 - Ninety-nine percent of the public is technically challenged. Although the public strongly supports Science, they have almost no understanding of what Science actually is. Lobbyists and other bad actors know this, so they continually misrepresent what Science says about technical issues (energy, climate, COVID, etc.). Most citizens do not understand the difference between actual Science and political science, so they are easily fooled into thinking that our technical policies are based on real Science when they almost never are.

[Note: I put together a unique list of good books about energy matters. Publicizing these books would help in educating citizens.]

4 - Conservative organizations are the primary candidates to educate the public about the deceptions they are being fed on technical matters. However, for a variety of nonsensical reasons, Conservative organizations simply do not work well with each other or their allies. On the other hand, organizations on the Left work together much better, so Conservative organizations are continually out-maneuvered. The net effect of this is that America and its citizens are more and more harmed — which is exactly what is happening today (e.g., see here).

5 - Another major failing of Conservative organizations is that they are poor communicators. Even though they have winning messages, they repeatedly get outfoxed by their Left counterparts— who pay much more attention to terminology, messaging, etc. [For some examples of the latter, see here.]

6 - An extraordinary problem that is receiving almost zero meaningful attention by any Conservatives, is the nonsense being taught (and omitted) in Science classes in our K-12 education system. The net effect of the purposeful propagandizing of our children is that every year, 4± million misinformed graduates join the ranks of voting citizens. This is an unmitigated disaster, that MUST be fixed. I explain the problem (and solutions) in my recent Education Report.

So my short answer is that if we want better technical policies, we need to fix the above problems. What are YOU willing to do to help?

PS — the typical consequences of not basing technical policies on Science are: 

   1) the results are far less than promised, 
   2) the costs are much higher than expected, and  3) there are many unintended consequences — like a net loss of jobs.

Sound familiar?

---

Here are other materials by this scientist that you might find interesting:

WiseEnergy.org: discusses the Science (or lack thereof) behind our energy options.

C19Science.info: covers the lack of genuine Science behind our COVID-19 policies.

Election-Integrity.info: multiple major reports on the election integrity issue.

Media Balance Newsletter: a free, twice-a-month newsletter that covers what the mainstream media does not do, on issues from COVID to climate, elections to education, renewables to religion, etc. Here are the Newsletter’s 2023 Archives. Send me an email to get your free copy. When emailing me, please make sure to include your full name and the state where you live. (Of course, you can cancel the Media Balance Newsletter at any time - but why would you?)

Thanks for reading Critically Thinking About Select Societal Issues! Subscribe for FREE to receive new posts (typically about once a week).