My appearance in the new documentary "Red Power"
A new documentary analyzes some of the biggest threats to the future of our electric grid.
Texas Scorecard recently released a documentary called Red Power, focused on threats to the Texas and US electric grid. There is a ton of valuable information in this documentary, and I was happy to be extensively featured—focusing on the false and anti-human ideas that are at the root of bad electricity policies.
Here are videos and transcripts from my segments, followed by some comments on where my perspective differs from Red Power’s.
Highlights
1. Introducing Alex Epstein
Interviewer (Michael Quinn Sullivan):
No one’s done more to explore and celebrate the rise of human prosperity and flourishing than philosopher Alex Epstein. Alex founded the Center for Industrial Progress based in Laguna Beach, California where I caught up with him recently. He’s an avowed critic of the push for so-called “net-zero carbon” policies that are used to justify attacks on reliable energy production and therefore used to push for wind and solar.
Alex Epstein:
You’re either evaluating the Earth on a pro-human standard, like human flourishing, or an anti-human standard.
Interviewer (Michael Quinn Sullivan):
In some ways it feels like the opponents of fossil fuels—it’s not so much that they hate fossil fuels, but they hate the independence and the prosperity that fossil fuels bring.
Alex Epstein:
Yeah, let’s put it in the context of a term that the anti-fossil fuel people like to use, which is the “livable planet,” which is to say the reason we’re opposing fossil fuels is because we want a livable planet for our children and grandchildren, et cetera.
Now, what is a livable planet? Well, a livable planet is a planet in which the organisms you care about can flourish, which means live long lives, healthy lives.
And if you look at the planet from the perspective of livability, what you see historically is it was not a very livable place. So even as recently as 200 years ago, but going back thousands and thousands and thousands of years, life expectancy was sub 30 years.
So people were just poor and the population was very small. We had an Earth that could support a very small population, very short lives, very low standard of living, including very low opportunity. And then suddenly 200 years ago, it went from this flat stagnation to just jumping up to this incredible level of flourishing. It’s the same planet, same rock, same atmosphere.
We’ve changed the atmosphere a little bit and they said, “Well, we changed the atmosphere. It must’ve made it unlivable.” But whatever’s happened in the atmosphere, the planet has become incredibly livable. Because now we have 8 billion people who live to around 70 on average and have stratospherically high income compared to the past. And everyone should be interested in what caused this.
Interviewer (Michael Quinn Sullivan):
For Epstein, the answer is found in harnessing reliable energy to power machines that have allowed humanity to flourish. The experts promoting so-called “green energy” don’t like that.
Alex Epstein:
In particular, they have this idea that human impact can only ruin the Earth. When in fact, human impact can actually make the Earth much better. But then also it points to if they don’t acknowledge the positive impact so far, maybe they have a different definition of positive and negative than I do.
I think of positive and negative in terms of the Earth as the Earth is more conducive to human flourishing. I think their view of positive with regard to the Earth is that it has less human impact on it. So their view of the ideal Earth is the Earth that has little or no human impact. You’re either evaluating the Earth on a pro-human standard like human flourishing or an anti-human standard.
What you see really is this general incredibly negative attitude toward human impact on Earth. And what you notice is we were talking about the increase in human flourishing on Earth—from one perspective, what that means is human impact on Earth has been overwhelmingly positive. We’ve taken a planet that’s very impoverished and dangerous and made it unnaturally abundant and safe.
2. Alex Epstein on the myth that solar and wind are cheap and abundant
Interviewer (Michael Quinn Sullivan):
The myth is that wind and solar are cheap and abundant.
Alex Epstein:
Well, abundant is a very ambiguous term because there’s a question of the physical abundance of something and is it abundant or scalable as an actual usable resource? If something is expensive, it’s not abundant in terms of a resource.
If we just focus on the issue of cost, the myth is that they’re cheap, and this is done using a lot of really shameful accounting tricks. But the fundamental one is not factoring in the cost of reliability.
That’s like saying I have a car and I’m not factoring the cost of reliability, and the car only works a third of the time and you don’t know when it’s going to work. That’s not the same thing. So you’re comparing apples to rotten oranges.
3. Rep. Chip Roy and Alex Epstein on energy freedom
Rep. Chip Roy:
You know what I’d like to have in terms of solar and wind? Independence. I don’t want to be on the grid if I don’t have to be. If you don’t have full energy freedom, okay, you don’t have the engine of economic prosperity and growth. You just don’t.
Abundant reliable energy is the life for the engine of commerce that allows human beings to profit and prosper.
Alex Epstein:
They’re not offering a superior technology for customers to voluntarily choose. They’re offering a wildly inferior technology to force customers to use and prevent us from using what works.
4. Alex Epstein on energy subsidies and shackles
Alex Epstein:
Take California where we are right now. It’s not simply that they forced us to pay a bunch of money for solar and wind, particularly solar. It’s that they actually shut down major nuclear power plant near here, San Onofre. They actually shut down natural gas plants. They’re actually starting to shut down our ability to import reliable fossil fuel electricity from other places.
So the subsidies and the shackles are just incredibly... It’s just an incredibly dangerous combination because you end up not only paying more, but you have way less of it.
5. Alex Epstein on inferior energy and dependence on China
Alex Epstein:
There are many problems with China and energy. I mean, the fundamental one is that we are choosing inferior energy. That’s the number one thing because if you have inferior energy, you have an inferior economy, which ultimately means an inferior military, which means a jeopardized country.
Now on top of that, we’re choosing inferior energy that is sourced from arguably our greatest geopolitical threat, which is China. One of the justifications is we don’t want to be so dependent on the Middle East, but our dependence on the Middle East is trivial for oil compared to our dependence on China for the whole solar and wind supply chain.
So even if they were actually reliable and cost-effective, there would be concerns about where they’re coming from, but to make yourself dependent on something inferior is insane.
7. Alex Epstein on lack of energy freedom, not energy
Interviewer (Michael Quinn Sullivan):
It seems that scarcity is a feature rather than a bug for the proponents of wind and solar.
Alex Epstein:
Yes, I agree with this entirely, and I’ve always agreed with this and I’ve argued it since the beginning of my career, but it’s now becoming very apparent, because what they said at the beginning was “use our energy and you’ll be rich and we’re going to have way more energy.” And then what happens is, well, the “way more energy” doesn’t happen; it’s the opposite. Energy becomes more scarce, more expensive, less reliable.
They say, “Well, maybe you can deal with a little bit less energy.” And then you start to see they do these trial balloons like, “Well, maybe you don’t need to eat meat and maybe you can eat bugs and maybe you can live in a really small space.” And it’s trending toward “Maybe you can die.”
Interviewer (Michael Quinn Sullivan):
We’re creating our own dystopian future.
Alex Epstein:
Yes, and it’s all preventable. It’s all bad ideas. Again, we didn’t run out of energy. They used to be afraid of running out of energy. We’re just running out of freedom.
8. Alex Epstein on uninventing the reliable electric grid
Alex Epstein:
One thing I would say for Texans in particular—this applies to all Americans, but Texans in particular—is don’t lose your outrage over how abominable the energy and in particular the electricity situation is.
It is outrageous that so long after Thomas Edison gave us the modern electric grid, we can’t produce enough electricity. We basically uninvented the reliable electric grid. That is an embarrassment.
9. Alex Epstein on Texans being told to use less electricity
Alex Epstein:
We have Newsom saying, “Hey, no more internal combustion engines.” And then six days later saying, “Don’t charge your EV. We don’t have enough electricity.”
And look at Texas, I mean California, but look at Texas. How often are Texans being told use less electricity? That’s not the job of the electricity provider, to tell you to use less. It’s the job of them to give you as much as you want and need and can pay for.
My (different) take on some issues covered by “Red Power”
1. What is China’s role in our growing grid problems?
The documentary presents the perspective that China’s mendacity is a primary source of our growing grid problems.
“China helped us get hooked on expensive, inefficient energy sources that they produce so that we’ll give them money that they can use to buy food and control our power grid.”
China has “manipulated the deceitful politicians and played into the schemes of the handout-seeking corporate cronies.”
My view is that the fundamental responsibility for America’s grid problems lies with the bad ideas we’ve accepted, such as climate catastrophism, that have caused us to massively subsidize unreliable solar and wind and to, even more harmfully, shackle reliable fossil fuels and nuclear.
China has certainly capitalized on that situation by selling us what we’ve asked for. And China, to its credit, has also avoided many energy ideas. So I agree that our policies create a dangerous dependence on China and an energy disadvantage in relation to China, but this is primarily due to our acceptance of bad ideas versus China’s mendacity.
2. What is the role of “corporate greed”?
The documentary presents the perspective that “corporate greed” is a primary driver of our dependence with China for solar and wind supply chains.
“If you think American politicians have yielded too much to China’s agenda, American businesses are even worse.”
“we’ve been deceived by… corporations that put short-term profits over long-term prosperity for our citizenry.”
“corporate greed has given a global superpower unprecedented access into the very heart of our economy.”
My view is that what’s being called “greed” is substantially people responding to incentives that have been created by the aforementioned bad ideas. More broadly, businesses are trying to respond to the ever-changing incentives of our incredibly incoherent overall foreign policy toward China—where our government has no definite position if China is a friend, enemy, or somewhere in between.
3. How should we think about the “environmental impacts” of solar and wind?
The documentary points out that solar and wind, while often touted as “green” and “low-impact,” actually are significantly environmentally impactful.
“Environmental concerns and economic concerns abound about the impact of intermittent energy sources, these so-called ‘renewables.’”
“We are told that we’re supposed to fall for green energy because it’s so clean and so good for the environment. But here I am standing on a pile of windmill waste that goes on and on and on and on.”
“wind and solar… is obliterating the landscape of America.”
The validity here is that we should look at the full process of every energy source, and weigh positives and negatives. However, we should avoid just focusing on negatives of solar and wind. Above all we should certainly avoid the idea that challenges of solar and wind like land use, mining, or waste are insurmountable.
The main problem with solar and wind is that currently they’re not actually good substitutes—or in most cases even good supplements—for low-cost, reliable fossil fuel energy.
However if solar and wind actually became economically superior, then we could and should find responsible ways of doing them; we shouldn’t demonize them.
4. The role of energy subsidies and shackles
The documentary presents the perspective that subsidies for solar and wind are the worst threat to our grid.
“The issue of subsidies is at the heart of the problem facing Texas.”
“those subsidies are absolutely killing our ability to prosper by driving prices up, by making it difficult to go get oil and gas exploration”
In my view, the biggest source of our grid problems is not the promotion of solar and wind, it’s the shackling of fossil fuels.
As I explained in my recent testimony to Congress, our administration has shown us that it will do anything it can get away with politically to rapidly eliminate fossil fuels: pipeline blocking, federal leasing bans, LNG prohibitions, power plant shutdowns, EV mandates, SEC rules, etc.
In particular EPA’s recent power plant rule is literally the single greatest threat to our grid in the history of electricity, since it would ban up to 1/6 of our reliable power and prevent replacements amid an electricity crisis.
While subsidies for solar and wind are destructive, the number 1 threat to our grid is our government’s all-out war on fossil fuels.
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Great job, Alex. Forwarding to all my Texas friends.
Excellent read! Thank you so much. Just passed it on to a young couple that is all in on “green”. One army officer the other a federal contractor. Hopefully they take the time to educate themselves.