Ping-Pong Policies and the Effects on Energy, Jobs, and the Environment – with Tom Pyle [Ep. 55]

P101-ep-55-podcast transcript

Linda J. Hansen: Welcome, thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Prosperity 101 Break Room Economics Podcast. My name is Linda J. Hansen, your host and the author of Prosperity 101, Job Security Through Business Prosperity: The Essential Guide to Understanding How Policy Affects Your Paycheck, and the creator of the Break Room Economics online course. The book, the course, and the entire podcast library can be found on Prosperity101.com. I seek to connect boardroom to break room and policy to paycheck by empowering and encouraging employers to educate employees about the public policy issues that affect their jobs.

My goal is to help people understand the foundations of prosperity, the policies of prosperity, and how to protect their prosperity by becoming informed, involved, and impactful. I believe this will lead to greater employee loyalty, engagement, and retention, and to an increased awareness of the blessings and responsibilities of living in a free society. Listen each week to hear from exciting guests and be sure to visit Prosperity101.com. 

Welcome and thank you for joining us for this episode of the Prosperity 101 Podcast.

Today, I have a friend and repeat guest, Tom Pyle. Thomas J. Pyle is the president of the Institute for Energy Research, or IER, and he also serves as the president of American Energy Alliance, AEA. In this capacity, Pyle brings a unique backdrop of public and private sector experience to help manage IER's and AEA's Washington, D.C.-based staff and operations.

He also helps to develop the organization's free market policy positions and to implement education efforts with respect to key energy stakeholders, including policymakers, federal agency representatives, industry leaders, consumer entities, and the media. I will keep the introduction short today so we can dive into the topic, but thank you so much, Tom, for being here again. This is your third time on our podcast, and I'm just so grateful for your insight and your take on the energy issues of today, so thank you.

Tom Pyle: Absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me back. 

Linda J. Hansen: Well, so many things have changed since we last spoke. For our listeners, Tom has been on the podcast two other times, one I recorded in April of 2020, and the title of that was Do You Take It for Granted? Why Energy Policy Matters to Your Health, Safety, and Livelihood, and we recorded one in August of 2020 entitled Green New California, Will Your State Be Next? And we were just discussing how it looks like maybe the entire nation might be next. So with that intro, Tom, give us your thoughts. We're recording this towards the end of January of 2021.

So much has changed. We have a new administration, new policies, new executive orders, and this is really going to affect the American citizen.

Tom Pyle: They say that elections have consequences, and they certainly do. The incoming administration has a very different idea about how this country should manage its energy. Two immediate things that President Biden did was sign an executive order to deny a permit that was granted by the previous administration, which was denied by the administration before that. 

So, you know, you have a ping-pong with what's called the Keystone Pipeline, which is a critical pipeline that, when completed, and I believe it will ultimately be completed, runs from Alberta, Canada, all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico continuously.

Now, most of this pipeline is constructed. There is a small segment remaining, and the issue with the executive order and the permit is that it has to cross the border. And so the current administration said that, well, it's not really in the national interest to allow this pipeline to cross the border, and they used the issue of climate change as the reason.

Interestingly enough, they didn't say that the pipeline itself would have a disproportionate impact on the climate. It has already been established by even President Obama at the time, Vice President Biden, his administration, their State Department said it was negligible in terms of actual impact, in terms of CO2 emissions, and the ability to affect climate change in that regard. What the administration said in their executive order was, we are sending a message to the rest of the world that we are serious about this issue.

I really hope that they call each individual union worker who will lose their job immediately because of this decision, because that is the impact. I know one personally, a family member in Cushing, Oklahoma, has a friend who just lost their job as a result of that decision. These decisions have real consequences.

President Biden had said that he wants to create good union jobs. He's killing union jobs in his first week in office. It's a tragedy.

It is a message, a symbolic decision, which harms American energy security, unfortunately, harms families, and is ultimately going to result potentially in less safe modes of transportation for these resources. There is no reason to oppose this pipeline. There's none.

If you care about the environment, it has already been established that this is not going to have an impact in that way. To put icing on the cake, the company that owns the pipeline, the owner of the pipeline, had promised that they would invest billions into renewable energy as a symbol of unity, as a way to sort of reach across the ideological spectrum and say, okay, look, you care about renewable energy, we will power the pipeline with renewable energy. That wasn't good enough for the administration.

It's a really, really, really bad decision. I hope that ultimately it might get reversed down the road. Maybe there'll be lawsuits. I don't know. In the immediate sense, all that they did was kill very, very good-paying jobs for individual Americans whose livelihoods depend on, and the dignity of a job. Tough decision.

A couple other things he did really set the stage for a stark contrast. I like to say this: the previous administration had an energy policy. This administration has a climate policy or a carbon constraint policy.

You mentioned one of our podcasts talking about California. They really are looking at California as a model—the things that California has done to make their energy more expensive and less reliable, to make their grid less stable, to create a situation where manufacturing has fled the state of California.

Linda J. Hansen: Yeah. They've fled—like Tesla and I'm trying to think of all the different... 

Tom Pyle: I think Hewlett Packard announced they were leaving.

Linda J. Hansen: Hewlett Packard, yes. So many places. 

Tom Pyle: High net worth individuals like Peter Thiel is out of there.

Linda J. Hansen: People understand. When we did our podcast in August entitled Green New California, Will Your State Be Next? they were dealing with many blackouts. I know people who live in certain communities where their power has been shut off to the community.

To me, it's just insane that we would have this rich supply of energy resources and they are so mismanaged. We talk about climate and yes, everyone is concerned about the environment and we want to have a clean environment, but I know even under the previous administration—even under the Trump administration—our carbon emissions went down. We were leading in many ways on a reduction of carbon emissions, and so to say that we're making these changes just for that is actually disingenuous.

Tom Pyle: You know, it's unfortunate that energy has become a political issue because energy is the lifeblood, the backbone of our economic engine. Without affordable and reliable energy, we don't compete with the rest of the world. We certainly have the most energy underneath our lands and shores than any other country in the world.

We have proven that we can do it in a safe and environmentally sound manner. People look to the United States for their technology. China is building the equivalent of all of our current coal-fired electricity generation in a year, and they're doing it with our technology.

They're making super efficient coal-burning plants because, A, they have to provide electricity for their growing economy. I just read in The Wall Street Journal that they have surpassed the United States in attracting business just this year—and that's a bad sign.

And then the other thing that’s ironic about this whole plan to get us off of those resources that we have like natural gas and oil and make us dependent on China in particular for the resources that we need if we're going to convert all of our electricity to the preferred pet energy sources that the environmentalists would like, such as wind and solar and electric vehicles...

The supply chain is—all the roads lead to China. And if it's not directly from China, it is directly from those interests that are controlled in other places by China. I say cobalt in particular, which is heavily dependent on the manufacturing of EVs, batteries and things like that.

China controls a big chunk of the cobalt mining in Africa. And oh, by the way, the human rights violations—the atrocities that take place there—children are digging this cobalt out of the ground. And I think when the American public sees some of this, they're going to ask a lot of questions.

In 2019, we exported more oil than we imported for the first time since the 1950s. And we exported more natural gas than any other country in the world.

Linda J. Hansen: Amazing.

Tom Pyle: Right? So, we just won our hard-fought energy security, our hard-fought energy independence in 2019. And this administration wants to go the other way.

They want to trade our independence for energy from places like the Middle East or Venezuela and make us dependent on China for our energy. And oh, by the way, it'll be a lot more expensive. We talked about California.

California has the highest energy prices in the country and the contiguous United States. They have to import a lot of it. And when states like Arizona and Nevada need the electricity for themselves, they won't deliver it to California.

And so, the result is—as we talked about—forced blackouts. Thank God they don't live in cold places.

Linda J. Hansen: Exactly. 

Tom Pyle: Right? At the moment.

But unfortunately, Minnesota, for example, wants to go the same direction as California. They just announced a series of plans to ban the internal combustion engine, to do 100% renewable by a certain date. The irony is, all these like “we're going to do this by this date”—you know, it's 2050, it's 2035, it's 20-whatever. None of these politicians are going to be around when the bill comes due. They get to make all these promises.

They get to displace all of our electricity generation. They get to make all these decisions that harm consumers, that make businesses have to pay more unnecessarily. They won't be around when, A, it turns out it didn’t work, or B, they won't have to clean up the mess.

So I really wish that we could get to a place with respect to energy and environmental policy discussions where it's grounded in reality and fact.

That is just what we need. I mean, because people are pretty smart. They're intuitive. They have, you know—yeah, of course we want to be cleaner. Of course we want to be greener.

That isn't incompatible with producing electricity. I mean, I drove in today and I just—I look around and I find it ironic that I'm driving into D.C., I'm three blocks from the White House, and there’s traffic. There are buses. There are construction workers. There's cement being poured. All of this stuff requires coal, oil, and natural gas.

Eighty percent of the energy that we use—the world—is from these three sources. And you have these policies that act like we can get rid of it tomorrow.

Right. And one other thing—I'm on my rant here—you couldn't have a vaccine without these resources.

Linda J. Hansen: Exactly.

Tom Pyle: You couldn't have a vaccine. You couldn't have a sterile environment. You couldn't transport this stuff. The logistics of moving it around and the capacity that we need to get everybody vaccinated—none of that would be possible without these resources.

And people need to think about that.

Linda J. Hansen: And the care in the hospitals and the care facilities is not possible.

Tom Pyle: Of course. I joke that, you know, Biden is trying to, you know, get us out of the situation we're in with respect to the COVID situation. But he's also trying to kill the cure at the same time.

You know, so if we have something like this—God forbid—10 years from now or 15 years from now, and we don’t have these resources nearly as plentiful as they are because of some government policies that prohibit us from using it, then where are we going to be?

Linda J. Hansen: Right. Well, and I was—before the broadcast, we were talking a little bit just about gas prices. And for our listeners—like right now, I know I can go get gas and it can be under $2 a gallon. Right.

I'm old enough to remember when gas first hit a dollar a gallon and we thought the world was ending, you know? But to have gas under $2 a gallon—and sometimes it's been significantly under. But as we look, we think back to the Obama-era policies. Gas was up around $5 a gallon.

And I think some of the younger voters and people who are just emotionally engaged in this climate conversation think that—it’s almost like the “chicken little, the sky is falling” mentality. Because it’s like you say “climate,” and people get emotional. And it's just not true that oil and gas are the problem. And look at nuclear.

Nuclear is very clean, powerful energy. We have great options for continuing to be energy independent, for keeping our energy costs low, and for allowing for clean, reliable, stable energy resources to be used to power our society and keep us not only a leader in the energy industry, but a leader in manufacturing, and a leader in national security. I mean, if we don't have reliable energy, that's also a national security risk.

So it's a health risk. It's an education risk. It affects every single area of our life.

And I know you and I agree that it seems like so much of this has just become part of the politically correct conversation that if you disagree, you must hate the environment. Well, that’s not true. We love the environment, and having good, clean, reliable energy actually helps us maintain a clean environment.

And it’s just heartbreaking to see what’s happening, like you said, politically. I do want to touch a little bit—you mentioned the Keystone Pipeline, too. I was reading something just the other day, and maybe you can help our listeners understand this more—about how actually carbon emissions from the pipeline are less than they would be if we're transporting that fuel without the pipeline, because then we'd be relying on vehicles or trains and things that emit more.

So could you touch on that a bit?

Tom Pyle: Sure. The reason that the Keystone Pipeline is important is because our refineries are equipped to process crude oil that is really not the kind of crude oil that we've been producing in, say, the Permian Basin. You know, different grades of crude—there’s light sweet, there’s heavy sour, there’s different sulfur contents and everything else.

Well, for years and years, we have been relying on certain forms of crude oil. And so our refiners in the Gulf Coast designed their facilities to take these certain types of crude. Alberta happens to have a really perfect recipe for the refineries in the Gulf.

Another country that has a good recipe for the refineries in the Gulf is Venezuela. Last I checked, things weren’t going so great in Venezuela. A little bit of instability—you want a model for what socialism means for people, go look at what’s happening there. They have huge quantities of oil, and yet there are gas shortages in Venezuela. There are food shortages in Venezuela.

I digress a little because I want your listeners to understand the importance of securing this North American energy—a lot of this is about energy security for North America. Even Justin Trudeau, who’s very liberal and has sort of been out there on these issues as well, has said this is a bad decision. This impacts our energy security too.

So that being said, the oil will come to the Gulf, but where the pipe stops, it has to be routed. It gets routed by trucks. It gets routed by rail cars.

Pipelines are the safest form of transportation of these types of resources—of these conventional liquid resources—by far, bar none. There are hundreds of thousands of miles of pipeline underneath our lands and running through rivers, across aquifers. All of this stuff about how they’re all of a sudden “not safe” is, in my view, largely a manufactured talking point.

Rail cars explode. People die. Pipelines rupture. They leak. There’s no question—that’s a bad thing.

But the way that they contain the leaks is impressive. They have literally brakes in between sections of pipe that they can shut the oil down on either side and stop the leak, and then get a crew in there and repair it right away. We’re talking hundreds of gallons, not hundreds of thousands of gallons.

Right?

It doesn’t happen that often, but when it does—man, have you ever seen the news? You’ve ever seen one of these things explode? It’s insane. And those vehicles, those rail cars, they emit more—which is to your point. They emit more.

It isn’t environmentally benign in terms of impact, as a form of transportation for these resources. We should be wanting more of them, not less of them. But there is a movement in this country that wants to keep it in the ground.

And if they can’t keep it in the ground—meaning if they can’t ban it, which they’re doing on federal lands, by the way—we can discuss that briefly. 

Linda J. Hansen: I just saw the news alert on that today. 

Tom Pyle: Then they want to keep it—I call it—keep it from moving around.

So the environmental lobby, the green left if you will, has set their sights on pipelines to try to stop the construction of pipelines. Because they know if they can stop the construction of pipelines, they can make it harder to justify the economics of producing these resources. Because it is more expensive to truck and rail and all that other stuff ultimately down the road.

So as I said, there’s no good reason for this policy. None whatsoever. It doesn’t serve anybody’s benefit other than, as it was articulated in the administration’s executive order, to send a message that we’re serious about climate change.

But what does that mean?

To me, that means sending a message that we are serious about the government controlling our energy. That we are serious about the government choosing for us the types of energy that we can use. What that says to me is the government choosing for us what types of cars we can drive.

It is not about the environment because, as you mentioned, since 2005 we have reduced our CO2 emissions more so than any other country in the world.

Linda J. Hansen: I'd like to pause just on that for a moment. I know that some people did not support President Trump’s decision to get out of the Paris Climate Accord, right? And they were very, very supportive of Biden because he’s going to bring us back into the Paris Accord.

Well, this all sounds great on the subject line, right? It sounds great on a Facebook post.

However, the deep dive into that shows that the Paris Climate Accord—being a part of that and leading the way in climate change or carbon reduction—other countries were not abiding by the terms of the treaty. It was costing America so much.

And even after we got out of the Paris Climate Accord, or the Paris Climate Treaty, we reduced our carbon emissions greatly. I mean, leading the world with that in a sense.

So could you address that? Because it is such a—I like to say—a mind play for people. Because it sounds so great, like “oh, we need to be part of this climate treaty,” but in reality, it was not good for America. It was not good for American energy, and it didn’t do what the headlines say it did.

Tom Pyle: Yeah, I’ll agree with you. I’ll just add a couple of points.

Linda J. Hansen: Please do.

Tom Pyle: The Paris Agreement was a—it’s a treaty. Let’s not get it confused—it’s a treaty.

But the way that President Obama cooked it up with the rest of the signatories to the agreement was that countries could choose to call it a treaty or call it an agreement. Many, many countries who signed up for the Paris Treaty actually went through the ratification process in their legislative bodies.

President Obama treated it like an accord or an agreement and refused to submit it to the Senate for ratification.

President Obama promised two things: that he would reduce emissions from coal-fired electricity generation, and that he would contribute United States taxpayer money—double-digit billions of dollars a year—into what was called a Green Climate Fund, which was basically a slush fund to distribute to developing countries to begin to work on greening their energy systems as well. It was almost like climate indulgences. But it's real money—real taxpayer money.

What happened was President Trump withdrew from the agreement, but he didn’t take it to the next level. He should have submitted it to the Senate for ratification, because what happened was it opened the door for this administration to re-enter the agreement.

Now, what does that mean—re-entering the agreement? It means the United States, and I guess they’re going to send John Kerry, former Secretary of State and former presidential candidate, to these climate conferences in various nice places around the world. Everyone’s going to fly there. Everyone’s going to ride in chauffeured limousines. And we forget—

Linda J. Hansen: they’re flying there fueled by, of course, fossil fuels.

Tom Pyle: But what he’s going to have to do is commit the United States to eliminating the use of these resources. He’s going to have to recommit contributions to this green fund. None of that reduces emissions.

They’re going to have a hard time because they don’t have a lot of statutory authority to just unilaterally cut this or that. What’s ironic about the Paris Agreement is that the United States was one of the only countries not in the agreement, and yet it was the only country that, if it were in, would have been on track to meet its commitments. Because we reduced CO₂ in this country—and we don’t need a treaty to do that.

Linda J. Hansen: We have the political will to do it with American-made manufacturing, American technology, and people in America who truly care about our environment, our economy, and jobs for our citizens. We have the desire to let the free market bring forth positive changes. We don’t need to be told by other countries, or by our president, who just wants to join something for political capital.

Tom Pyle: What’s also funny is that during those years when we weren’t in the agreement—especially early on—we were chastised by European leaders and ridiculed by the media. And yet, none of those countries are on track to meet their commitments, in spite of spending billions of dollars on renewable subsidies, mandates, bans, and more.

The bottom line is this: you have one example where the free market is reducing emissions. And another example where governments micromanage the energy industry, production, and choices—and fail miserably.

It’s that clear. You can have a win-win, or you can have the government come around and tell us what to do. And by the way, Europe pays significantly more for energy than we do in the U.S.

But that’s the road we’re heading down.

Linda J. Hansen: It’s not common sense. If you look at the issues very carefully—and I know our time is coming to a close, and you have a meeting to get to—I want to wrap up by letting people know where they can get more information.

Your websites, which I’ll let you give in a moment, are great resources. The Institute for Energy Research really focuses on free market energy solutions and looks at objective science, trade-offs in public policy, and how to achieve efficient outcomes. It emphasizes that government policy should be predictable, simple, and technologically neutral.Your websites, which I'll let you give after a bit, you can learn so much by going to the websites for Institute for Energy Research or American Energy Alliance, which is more the action-related. 

But the Institute for Energy Research really focuses on the free market solutions for energy, looks at objective science. What are the public policy trade-offs that seem to affect energy? How do we have efficient outcomes? And they really seek to be impartial and unbiased, really looking at the issues very, very carefully, and that government policy should be predictable, simple, and technologically neutral. And so we really hope that people will go to your websites. 

The AEA website has an energy scorecard where you can learn what the representatives are voting on in terms of energy issues. You also have two podcasts, one with each organization. So one is called, the Unregulated Podcast. You might want to listen to that and get Tom Pyle unregulated. So could you tell us a little bit about that?

Tom Pyle: Yeah, a good friend of mine and I who, he's been in in the space for a very long time as well. He has some polling background, also a columnist for the Washington Times. We spent a lot of time over lunch musing about these things and we said, you know what? Why don't we share this with others? So it started out as sort of a why don't we take our lunch conversations onto a microphone? And we've done about 15 or we've done 20 episodes actually. 

We're still work in progress. I think a lot of people would enjoy some of the insights there. We don't talk just about energy either. We, we kinda wax on what's going on that the events of the day and then throw in a little bit of personal stuff too. So it's a, it's a fun listen. 

And then the Institute for Energy Research has a great podcast called, In the pipeline. And it is more of an interview, more energy specific, but also a lot of good insight and analysis from guests and others in the space. So very informative and very insightful. And the other one is a little bit more fun, I think so in terms of just kind of an easy listen. 

Linda J. Hansen: But both very, they're both valuable. 

Tom Pyle: Thank you for that. Appreciate it. 

And I wanna say this, I'm optimistic. I think that this administration has made moves early that they've had to do to appease their sort of progressive left wing of the Democratic party. But we have a very narrow house in Senate and midterms are right around the corner so your listeners can be involved in this conversation right now and have an impact right now.

And employers can right now have an impact by, you kind of challenge me to say what can employers do and I think the answer is just have a fact-based conversation about this stuff. 

Linda J. Hansen: Absolutely. 

Tom Pyle: And a lot of it will take care of itself. There's so much emotion and so much vitriol and so much us versus them and everything else in these conversations. If you just get some facts and recognize that, this isn't as critical, this isn't as eminent, a doomsday scenario as is being portrayed. 

And if it were Linda, I would say these guys aren't doing enough. If it is indeed the crisis that they say it is, they're not doing enough. And that tells you a lot right there. 

Linda J. Hansen: It does. 

Tom Pyle: That tells you that they're not really serious about it. That is more of a political tool. That is shameful because I'm gonna take it all the way to the beginning. 'cause today, right now somebody is sitting at their kitchen table wondering where they're gonna get their next paycheck. 

Linda J. Hansen: Exactly. Well, and it goes beyond that too because today, right now it's somebody's wondering how they're going to get their next paycheck a few months down the road, a couple years down the road we may all be wondering how in the world we're going to pay our higher energy bills. 

We may be in a position where our energy use is regulated, you know, as citizens. Like we're told how much we can drive or what temperatures we can have in our homes, how often we can have refrigeration. I mean, this sounds crazy, but it becomes a reality when people continue to push unrealistic and non fact-based policies. 

So with that too, you mentioned employers, so I want to encourage any employers listening. Obviously we hope you'll start education and the education conversations, shall I say, with some of the prosperity 101 resources I provide, whether it's the book or whatever, but let that be a jumpstart to your conversations. 

Please could you give your websites so they could go get information and please employers refer your employees to these websites so they can get some information that might be different than what mainstream media is telling them. They might be able to learn. I mean, if they're truly interested in taking care of the environment, in having efficient and affordable energy, then they need to look beyond what they're being told in their Facebook headlines or mainstream media, and they need to dig a little bit deeper. 

Employers, you can help them understand how energy costs affect their job and their family. So, your two websites will be really helpful for that. So could you please give both websites? 

Tom Pyle: Yeah. They're just the names of the orgs.org. So it's instituteforenergyresearch.org, and Americanenergyalliance.org. Best thing to do is just Google 'em or look 'em up and then when you get there, just sign up because we're not gonna spam you, not gonna bombard you, but. We are gonna give you good information and the ability to, more importantly, to participate in this conversation because politicians need to hear from people.

If they don't, they're just gonna make decisions on their own. They're not always gonna be in our best interests. 

Linda J. Hansen: Exactly. And I just wanna point people again, Institute for Energy Research has absolutely great research, information, policy, information that people can learn from, and that American Energy Alliance has the action hub where people can truly get some. Actionable items that they can do to help generate better policy decisions in our nation. 

I also wanna remind people that you have the American Energy Scorecard, so you can see how your elected officials are actually voting on energy issues. And if you'd like to reach out to Tom, you can find contact information through either website there, so please do. 

But with that, Tom, thank you so much. What's one piece of advice you would give to our listeners as we anticipate these policy changes impacting our businesses, our families, over the next four years plus? 

Tom Pyle: It is very simple. Just keep listening to your podcast. 

Linda J. Hansen: Oh, thank you. 

Tom Pyle: I'll be on anytime. We can always continue this conversation on the energy side, but you bring on very wonderful guests from different aspects and different sides of all of these issues. And so keep up the great work. 

Linda J. Hansen: Well, thank you so much for that. And thank you for being a repeat guest. I like to check in with you to get sort of a sanity check on energy issues from time to time. And so I really appreciate your insight and your time with us today. So thank you so much. Have a wonderful day. 

Tom Pyle: You too.

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