Reducing Energy Options Doesn’t Work – Just Ask Europe
We spotted a must-read article from Scott Tinker, the director of the Bureau of Economic Geology at The University of Texas at Austin. In his column, Tinker points out the failure of Europe’s energy policies for the past quarter century–policies that shut down energy options like nuclear, coal, and natural gas, believing that wind and solar would take their place. It hasn’t worked. The brilliance of Tinker’s column is in comparing what’s happening in states like California and New York to what happened in Europe. Those two states (among others) are following in the footsteps of Europe, doing the same things–eliminating energy choice before alternatives can handle the load. And we are seeing the same identical results in CA and NY that we see in Europe–energy scarcity and skyrocketing energy prices.
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As happens at the beginning of most winters (at least in recent years), we are beginning to see articles with warnings from the electric grid operator in New England, ISO New England Inc., that if the region experiences “an extremely cold winter,” it’s a pretty safe bet there will be electric blackouts. The region relies almost exclusively on natural gas to generate electricity. The reason there will be blackouts is due to Maura Healey. Healey is the Attorney General of Massachusetts. During her tenure as AG, Healey has blocked two different natgas pipeline projects–because she irrationally hates (yet still uses) fossil energy. Healey is now running for governor of MA and is likely to win. You know what? Massachusetts residents will get the blackouts they deserve if they elect Healey.
Here’s the latest ingenious way radicalized anti-fossil fuelers are attempting to cut off and strangle the Marcellus and Utica shale industry: Deny drillers any kind of means to dispose of the brine (naturally occurring water from the depths) that comes out of the borehole for years after a well is drilled. One of the best, most environmentally safe ways to dispose of brine is via injection wells. Antis are trying to strip Ohio’s right to regulate injection wells in the Buckeye State, hoping if the feds take over, many of those wells would get shut down.
More states are looking to divest state pension funds from BlackRock and other woke ESG investment banks that push anti-fossil fuel agendas. BlackRock, the largest investment firm in the world with some $10 trillion under management, is hemorrhaging customers. Last week we told you that South Carolina had joined Louisiana, Texas, West Virginia, and Florida in announcing it is divesting its state pension funds from BlackRock (see 
ESG investing is a euphemism from the left that means divesting from fossil energy companies. ESG investing has become all the rage in recent years. We have shared a number of articles about large pension funds in places like New York City divesting from fossil energy companies. As is typical, California is way ahead of the rest of the country in this regard. The huge California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), with $479 billion in assets under management, has been investing using ESG guidelines for more than a decade. A recent Wall Street Journal article revealed CalPERS has lost huge amounts of money by focusing on ESG investing (see 
This is how deeply global warming brainwashing has gone in our children. A couple of kids (judging from media pictures) who belong to a fringe group called Just Stop Oil want to influence the British government to stop ALL new oil and natural gas projects–onshore and offshore. The tactic chosen by the kids to convince the adults to stop all new drilling was to throw tomato soup on a priceless Vincent van Gogh painting called “Sunflowers” in London’s National Gallery last Friday.
In March 2019, MDN told you about a new Williams plan to beef up the Transco pipeline in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, to deliver an extra 829 MMcf/d (originally 1 billion cubic feet per day) of Marcellus gas to PA, NJ, and Maryland (see 
The attacks against American energy by the Biden administration come so fast and so frequently, we can’t keep up with them. Here’s one that slipped by us. On July 7, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), under the “leadership” of the very dull Jennifer Granholm, proposed rulemaking for Energy Conservation Standards for Consumer Furnaces, which would amend the energy conservation standards for non-weatherized gas furnaces and mobile home gas furnaces, eliminating natgas furnaces used in millions of American homes. The American Gas Association (AGA) filed a blistering response on Oct. 6, saying the new rule would be harmful to consumers, counterproductive to energy efficiency goals, and unlawful.
In just the past week, woke/leftist investment firm BlackRock (the largest investment firm in the world) has lost over $1 billion of investment money from two states: Louisiana (see 
The laughably misnamed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is now law. Hopefully, a Republican takeover in Congress in November will mute some of the aspects of this terrible new law, but we’re not holding our breath. IRA is the law and we must now deal with it as such. While there is a mini-gold-rush mentality about the law and its $8 billion allocated for hydrogen projects, the overall aim of the IRA is to transition the entire economy of the United States away from using fossil energy to using so-called renewable energy by showering renewables with mountains of money. We predict here and now that the effort to convert America to renewables using the IRA will utterly and completely fail–for one main reason…
If fossil energy companies believe they can make their chosen business and industry more palatable to radical environmentalists, like Food & Water Watch (FWW), by jumping into hydrogen whole-hog, they need to think again. As we’ve been warning for months, the kook/left/fringe of the environmental movement has declared hydrogen as big of an enemy as natural gas (see 
Help! We’re in a nightmare, and we can’t wake up! It feels like we’re in one of those interminable Halloween movies (there’s a new one coming out this month called Halloween Ends, can you believe it?). Picture this: A president who already tilts far to the left and has dementia manages to sucker a “moderate” Democrat from West Virginia to vote for a falsely named climate bill (calling it Inflation Reduction), getting the bill passed. And that bill contains $40 BILLION for the federal EPA to use for (among other things) concocting new regulations to impose on the oil and gas industry, circumventing states’ rights as enumerated under the U.S. Constitution. The EPA is about to unleash those onerous new regulations–this week–just in time for Halloween! God help us all.
For years the left has not been able to win debates, nor win the hearts and minds of citizens, because there are conservatives willing to stand up and air an opposing view. The conservative view often makes the most sense. And so conservatives win arguments and win the support of a majority of citizens by using sound and rational reasoning. The left simply cannot compete with common sense. How does the left combat the situation? By demanding an end to free speech. In the same way the left labels some people as racists in order to shut them up and stop any debate, the left now insists that anyone with a viewpoint they don’t hold is spreading “disinformation” and is “dangerous” and must be stopped. It is most noticeable in the debate over global warming. If you say anything other than the accepted leftist meme that mankind is destroying the earth by burning fossil fuels, you are spreading disinformation and are a danger to society. Free speech is very close to dying in this country–because of the left.
On Monday, MDN told you that the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) Graduate School of Public Health and the Pennsylvania Department of Health (DOH) had “suddenly” pulled out of an event scheduled for yesterday to update the public on Pitt’s research on the potential health effects of hydraulic fracturing in Pennsylvania (see