You should have been the keynote speaker at both conferences. I have studied progress for 25 years, and you are definitely the person who understands it best and who writes about it most effectively.
I would be honored to be a keynote speaker, and I think many of the attendees would think it appropriate as many of them wrote glowing recommendations for my book, including Steven Pinker, Tyler Cowen, Marion Tupy, and Johan Norberg.
But I was very conspicuously not invited, and I am not the slightest bit surprised.
Let just say that the sponsor of the conference tries really hard to ignore my work and exclude me… but I am sure that it is nothing personal.
I am willing to bury the hatchet, but he is not. This vendetta has been going on for almost 4 years. It is getting pretty childish at this point…
"The Greens are right about one thing. There is a very real trade-off between protecting the natural environment and promoting long-term economic growth. It is just not the extreme binary choice that Green marketing presents.
Fortunately, I believe that it is possible to do both as long as we adopt the right policies. Indeed, economic growth gives us the resources for making progress on the second goal. A stagnant economy and developing nations trapped in poverty will only increase environmental destruction."
A lot of great data/cross correlated with feasibility of energy source. I think this is the elephant in the room no one will discuss. Kudos to you for saying the quiet part out loud. If the west is to be penalized for their CO2 budget, that actually harms the global south in terms of tech transfer and financial assistance. De-industrialization of the west actually will lead to more conflict not less. I think the greens are not willing to even publicly discuss this. Global growth (define growth differently, healthy food, water, soil, ecosystems, healthcare, education) not just on the tech front is a way out of this conundrum.
The trade-offs, more suffering vs short term losses and potential huge long term gains. I think trust is sorely missing in this equation and to be perfectly honest I can fully see why. Lying seems to be a competitive sport on the global. stage. ;-D
You claim the shale revolution is highly replicable and didn’t require government investment. But this is false for several reasons. 1) the shale revolution didn’t make much of a return for investors for about a decade in the 2010’s and likely couldn’t have happened in an era without low interest rates; 2) the DOE has been funding research into developing improved fracking technologies and continues to: https://www.energy.gov/fecm/shale-research-development; 3) that DOE research was key to unlocking some of the new modern shale gas techniques: https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2013/04/f0/how_is_shale_gas_produced.pdf
It’s not clear that other countries without our robust capital markets, technical know-how and government research support could replicate these advances as you describe.
First, you are mischaracterizing my article. I said "this Shale Revolution can be extended to much of the rest of the world with much faster and cheaper results than the Green Energy Transition."
1) The Shale revolution is not important because it gave a return to investors. It is important because it enables more affordable and abundant oil and natural gas. I really do not care about investment returns. My guess is that you do not either.
2 and 3) Yes, the DOE funded some research in the past, but it was hardly "the key to unlocking." This was overwhelmingly a private venture by small fracking companies working without government support. Now the majors are starting to get involved.
And the extent to which the DOE mattered is not relevant for other nations. Once a technology is invented and becomes profitable, it does not need additional government investment.
I agree with you on your last point, but the primary variable is whether government policy allows it to happen. The United States has the capital and know-how. Shale gas does not need subsidies or mandates. There is already recent news that Argentina is trying to do so:
But investors care about making a return. “In the grand scheme of things, how much gets invested in production depends a lot more on the price of oil, which the president has virtually no control over," McNally said.” Most experts think we’re entering an area of global over-supply of oil and gas. If you want to get investors to increase supply with a low or falling oil and gas price you’re talking about increasing subsidies, which are a variable you leave out of your analysis. You talk about oil and gas policy as a baseline but there are already significant government incentives for oil and gas that you’re not factoring in. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/12/10/what-the-oil-and-gas-industry-wants-from-trump-and-how-it-might-deliver.html
I am opposed to incentives for oil and gas and coal and solar and wind.
Your quote is about "oil." I never mentioned oil in this article.
Stay on topic.
If there is an oversupply of fossil fuels, then there is no reason to increase production.
Problem solved.
And I really do not think that you actually care about whether investor returns. Just like I really do not think that you actually care whether an article is peer-reviewed. You are obviously trying to advance an anti-fossil fuel (and hence anti-energy abundance) ideology.
The quote is from an investor speaking colloquially. The article talks about LNG expansion, but sure, it’s off topic. But you’re saying production can be expanded no problem. But that doesn’t seem to be on the horizon because of investor decisions being made now. They don’t want to lose their investment. Meanwhile, the electric interconnection queues are full of solar and wind and battery projects. MISO for instance expects 56% wind and solar by 2030 and is making its transmission decisions now accordingly. https://www.utilitydive.com/news/miso-regional-transmission-expansion-plan-2024-mtep/735483/
You keep mischaracterizing my statements. Most likely, this is deliberate on your part. I never said that natural gas "production can be expanded no problem."
The government can sabotage the industry.
If there is no possibility of natural gas expansion, then why are the energy majors suddenly getting involved in the industry?
Why are energy majors involved in the natural gas industry? Is that a serious question? Just because the industry won’t be drilling and ramping up the total production much there’s obviously the opportunity to export through LNG at a nice multiple. That’s the number one thing the Trump admin will deliver to the industry. Also, Exxon and others think their air capture business will be attractive to Silicon Valley. If that does take off I’d be willing to bet on more development over time but we’ll see.
Private investment is lower than it could be because of government policies by the Biden administration that are deliberately trying to take natural gas plants offline unless they are zero carbon.
This is just one of many examples where Green government policies are deliberately constraining natural gas and keeping carbon emissions higher than they could be.
I am very confident that the Trump administration will change that.
Yes, "the electric interconnection queues are full of solar and wind and battery projects." That is a problem for Green energy policies and yet one more reason why they will fail. This is not a problem for natural gas.
New natural gas plants do not need new interconnections. They are so small that they can be dropped within the footprint of existing coal plants that are already connected to the grid. Solar and wind cannot do that.
"38 trillion dollars in damages each year" to the world economy is ideological advocacy, not real economics analysis.
Even the IPCC claims that climate change will have only a mild impact on future economic growth. Expensive energy will have a massive negative impact that is far worse.
So without reading the paper, which unlike your substack was published in a peer reviewed journal, Nature, one of the most prestigious scientific journals, you’re just dismissing it because the number is big? I just find odd the idea that people have that fossil fuels are some kind of free lunch that don’t have major consequences. We’ve understood the greenhouse gas effect since the 19th Century. Exxon’s climate scientists were able to accurately predict that impacts of climate change were seeing today 50 years ago. Why is there this on-going hesitancy to accept that it’s not a free lunch? We will have to pay. Now you can increase in your mind the value of avoiding slowing down near term progress for future impacts but why you assume the impacts won’t be significant is odd. Humans have never seen atmospheric concentrations of these levels and the number just keep going up in a straight line.
I read the article, but it is off-topic. It is not plausible that changes in temperature will cut the global GDP, which is currently 105 trillion, by one-third.
It also clearly contradicts the IPCC. Why do you regard Nature magazine as a higher authority than the IPCC?
Science magazine knows nothing about economics, so its prestige in the field of science is irrelevant.
I never claimed that anything is a "free lunch."
The topic of this Substack column and article is promoting human material progress. It is not about climate change.
You obviously care more about the natural environment than human material progress. That is fine, but you do not have the right to change the topic of conversation.
A commenting rule is that you must stay on topic of the article.
if you persist in violating the commenting rules, you will not be able to comment in the future.
"the very clear trade-offs between two conflicting goals:
1) Promoting an affordable, abundant, and secure energy system as a key foundation for future material progress.
2) The goal of NetZero carbon emissions by 2050 (or something a little more moderate along those lines."
These are not in contradiction if we use least cost policies for achieving net zero: taxation of net emissions.
The solar/nuclear "debate" is equally senseless. There is simply no reason to they to predict how movement down cost curves, and technology will play out. Create the right incentives for demanding energy and for supplying CO2 emitting vs non-/co2 emitting energy and see what happens.
Ditto, "embracing" natural gas. Given taxation of net CO2 emissions, it will be around until some combination of other energy producing and storage technologies make it uncompetitive.
Sorry, but you are incorrect. There is zero evidence that a carbon tax will create long-term economic growth, which is largely what the Progress movement is about.
It is also disingenuous to claim that there are no trade-offs between economic growth and getting to global Netzero by 2050.
A tax on energy will obviously make energy less affordable. This undermines long-term economic growth.
I am not worried about “how they play out” in the distant future. This article is about now and the next few years.
The reality is that utilities need to choose between electricity generators. This article is about which energy source makes the most sense in North America right now.
If my plan is adopted, then there is absolutely no need for a carbon tax:
You should have been the keynote speaker at both conferences. I have studied progress for 25 years, and you are definitely the person who understands it best and who writes about it most effectively.
Thanks. Your kind words mean a great deal to me.
I would be honored to be a keynote speaker, and I think many of the attendees would think it appropriate as many of them wrote glowing recommendations for my book, including Steven Pinker, Tyler Cowen, Marion Tupy, and Johan Norberg.
But I was very conspicuously not invited, and I am not the slightest bit surprised.
Let just say that the sponsor of the conference tries really hard to ignore my work and exclude me… but I am sure that it is nothing personal.
I am willing to bury the hatchet, but he is not. This vendetta has been going on for almost 4 years. It is getting pretty childish at this point…
"The Greens are right about one thing. There is a very real trade-off between protecting the natural environment and promoting long-term economic growth. It is just not the extreme binary choice that Green marketing presents.
Fortunately, I believe that it is possible to do both as long as we adopt the right policies. Indeed, economic growth gives us the resources for making progress on the second goal. A stagnant economy and developing nations trapped in poverty will only increase environmental destruction."
A lot of great data/cross correlated with feasibility of energy source. I think this is the elephant in the room no one will discuss. Kudos to you for saying the quiet part out loud. If the west is to be penalized for their CO2 budget, that actually harms the global south in terms of tech transfer and financial assistance. De-industrialization of the west actually will lead to more conflict not less. I think the greens are not willing to even publicly discuss this. Global growth (define growth differently, healthy food, water, soil, ecosystems, healthcare, education) not just on the tech front is a way out of this conundrum.
The trade-offs, more suffering vs short term losses and potential huge long term gains. I think trust is sorely missing in this equation and to be perfectly honest I can fully see why. Lying seems to be a competitive sport on the global. stage. ;-D
You claim the shale revolution is highly replicable and didn’t require government investment. But this is false for several reasons. 1) the shale revolution didn’t make much of a return for investors for about a decade in the 2010’s and likely couldn’t have happened in an era without low interest rates; 2) the DOE has been funding research into developing improved fracking technologies and continues to: https://www.energy.gov/fecm/shale-research-development; 3) that DOE research was key to unlocking some of the new modern shale gas techniques: https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2013/04/f0/how_is_shale_gas_produced.pdf
It’s not clear that other countries without our robust capital markets, technical know-how and government research support could replicate these advances as you describe.
Thanks for the comment, but you are incorrect.
First, you are mischaracterizing my article. I said "this Shale Revolution can be extended to much of the rest of the world with much faster and cheaper results than the Green Energy Transition."
1) The Shale revolution is not important because it gave a return to investors. It is important because it enables more affordable and abundant oil and natural gas. I really do not care about investment returns. My guess is that you do not either.
2 and 3) Yes, the DOE funded some research in the past, but it was hardly "the key to unlocking." This was overwhelmingly a private venture by small fracking companies working without government support. Now the majors are starting to get involved.
And the extent to which the DOE mattered is not relevant for other nations. Once a technology is invented and becomes profitable, it does not need additional government investment.
I agree with you on your last point, but the primary variable is whether government policy allows it to happen. The United States has the capital and know-how. Shale gas does not need subsidies or mandates. There is already recent news that Argentina is trying to do so:
https://www.bbva.com/en/vaca-muerta-worlds-second-largest-shale-gas-deposit/
But investors care about making a return. “In the grand scheme of things, how much gets invested in production depends a lot more on the price of oil, which the president has virtually no control over," McNally said.” Most experts think we’re entering an area of global over-supply of oil and gas. If you want to get investors to increase supply with a low or falling oil and gas price you’re talking about increasing subsidies, which are a variable you leave out of your analysis. You talk about oil and gas policy as a baseline but there are already significant government incentives for oil and gas that you’re not factoring in. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/12/10/what-the-oil-and-gas-industry-wants-from-trump-and-how-it-might-deliver.html
I am opposed to incentives for oil and gas and coal and solar and wind.
Your quote is about "oil." I never mentioned oil in this article.
Stay on topic.
If there is an oversupply of fossil fuels, then there is no reason to increase production.
Problem solved.
And I really do not think that you actually care about whether investor returns. Just like I really do not think that you actually care whether an article is peer-reviewed. You are obviously trying to advance an anti-fossil fuel (and hence anti-energy abundance) ideology.
The quote is from an investor speaking colloquially. The article talks about LNG expansion, but sure, it’s off topic. But you’re saying production can be expanded no problem. But that doesn’t seem to be on the horizon because of investor decisions being made now. They don’t want to lose their investment. Meanwhile, the electric interconnection queues are full of solar and wind and battery projects. MISO for instance expects 56% wind and solar by 2030 and is making its transmission decisions now accordingly. https://www.utilitydive.com/news/miso-regional-transmission-expansion-plan-2024-mtep/735483/
You keep mischaracterizing my statements. Most likely, this is deliberate on your part. I never said that natural gas "production can be expanded no problem."
The government can sabotage the industry.
If there is no possibility of natural gas expansion, then why are the energy majors suddenly getting involved in the industry?
Are they stupid?
Are they not interested in making a profit?
Do you somehow have information that they do not?
Why are energy majors involved in the natural gas industry? Is that a serious question? Just because the industry won’t be drilling and ramping up the total production much there’s obviously the opportunity to export through LNG at a nice multiple. That’s the number one thing the Trump admin will deliver to the industry. Also, Exxon and others think their air capture business will be attractive to Silicon Valley. If that does take off I’d be willing to bet on more development over time but we’ll see.
Private investment is lower than it could be because of government policies by the Biden administration that are deliberately trying to take natural gas plants offline unless they are zero carbon.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/25/climate/biden-epa-power-plant-rule-climate/index.html
This is just one of many examples where Green government policies are deliberately constraining natural gas and keeping carbon emissions higher than they could be.
I am very confident that the Trump administration will change that.
Yes, "the electric interconnection queues are full of solar and wind and battery projects." That is a problem for Green energy policies and yet one more reason why they will fail. This is not a problem for natural gas.
New natural gas plants do not need new interconnections. They are so small that they can be dropped within the footprint of existing coal plants that are already connected to the grid. Solar and wind cannot do that.
Are you willing to accept a gentlemen's bet on whether American natural gas production will expand in the next ten years?
I say yes...
I don’t care enough to bet. I’d just ask if you’re right why is the 2034 price going down?
https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/futures/NGG34
Also there’s the issue of climate change reducing economic growth that you haven’t dealt with in your claims about the benefits of gas.
https://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/38-trillion-dollars-in-damages-each-year-world-economy-already-committed-to-income-reduction-of-19-due-to-climate-change
"38 trillion dollars in damages each year" to the world economy is ideological advocacy, not real economics analysis.
Even the IPCC claims that climate change will have only a mild impact on future economic growth. Expensive energy will have a massive negative impact that is far worse.
So without reading the paper, which unlike your substack was published in a peer reviewed journal, Nature, one of the most prestigious scientific journals, you’re just dismissing it because the number is big? I just find odd the idea that people have that fossil fuels are some kind of free lunch that don’t have major consequences. We’ve understood the greenhouse gas effect since the 19th Century. Exxon’s climate scientists were able to accurately predict that impacts of climate change were seeing today 50 years ago. Why is there this on-going hesitancy to accept that it’s not a free lunch? We will have to pay. Now you can increase in your mind the value of avoiding slowing down near term progress for future impacts but why you assume the impacts won’t be significant is odd. Humans have never seen atmospheric concentrations of these levels and the number just keep going up in a straight line.
Feel free to comment on these articles, which are actually related to the topic that you want to discuss:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/pop-quiz-how-much-does-eliminating
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-the-green-energy-transition-is
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/a-simple-and-cost-effective-plan
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/how-greens-increased-carbon-emissions
I read the article, but it is off-topic. It is not plausible that changes in temperature will cut the global GDP, which is currently 105 trillion, by one-third.
It also clearly contradicts the IPCC. Why do you regard Nature magazine as a higher authority than the IPCC?
Science magazine knows nothing about economics, so its prestige in the field of science is irrelevant.
I never claimed that anything is a "free lunch."
The topic of this Substack column and article is promoting human material progress. It is not about climate change.
You obviously care more about the natural environment than human material progress. That is fine, but you do not have the right to change the topic of conversation.
A commenting rule is that you must stay on topic of the article.
if you persist in violating the commenting rules, you will not be able to comment in the future.
"the very clear trade-offs between two conflicting goals:
1) Promoting an affordable, abundant, and secure energy system as a key foundation for future material progress.
2) The goal of NetZero carbon emissions by 2050 (or something a little more moderate along those lines."
These are not in contradiction if we use least cost policies for achieving net zero: taxation of net emissions.
The solar/nuclear "debate" is equally senseless. There is simply no reason to they to predict how movement down cost curves, and technology will play out. Create the right incentives for demanding energy and for supplying CO2 emitting vs non-/co2 emitting energy and see what happens.
Ditto, "embracing" natural gas. Given taxation of net CO2 emissions, it will be around until some combination of other energy producing and storage technologies make it uncompetitive.
Sorry, but you are incorrect. There is zero evidence that a carbon tax will create long-term economic growth, which is largely what the Progress movement is about.
It is also disingenuous to claim that there are no trade-offs between economic growth and getting to global Netzero by 2050.
A tax on energy will obviously make energy less affordable. This undermines long-term economic growth.
I am not worried about “how they play out” in the distant future. This article is about now and the next few years.
A carbon tax is a bad idea for many reasons:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-a-carbon-tax-will-not-work
The reality is that utilities need to choose between electricity generators. This article is about which energy source makes the most sense in North America right now.
If my plan is adopted, then there is absolutely no need for a carbon tax:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/a-simple-and-cost-effective-plan